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Right to Protest

The right to protest is guaranteed as part of any decent democracy package – it is the direct means by which you use your right to freedom of speech to tell your elected government your grievances. A democratic government is obliged to be accountable to those it governs. From the Suffragettes to the abolition of slavery, ordinary people have fought for the progression of our rights in this country and that fight usually starts with protest.

There’s a fat file showing the historical successes of protest. Sometimes it influences history. The rest of the time, it’s a resonant symbolic act; as a protestor, you’re marking yourself out as a member of a democracy which allows you to go into the street and vocalise your strongly held views, however unpopular they may be to others or to the government. And it is a sort of check on the government – they may discount it, but public disapproval will always filter through, and while there are other ways to achieve that direct action is… well, the most direct. It’s the front line.

Through the government’s restriction of the right to protest, we can gauge its desire to infringe upon the right of all of us to free speech, and as things stand at the moment, it seems the government would really rather we all piped down. And they aren’t afraid to change the law to make sure we do.

"The world should apply what Natan Sharansky calls the "town square test": if a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom."
Condoleeza Rice

Being allowed to peacefully protest is an important thing, and any restriction or curtailment of it by a government is a warning of what may be to come. Once the right to protest is quashed, free speech itself is knocked back; which means you can’t speak up against detention without trial or torture, which means detention without trial and torture can go ahead; and you can’t speak up against ID cards and surveillance, so they go ahead; and if you’re imprisoned because of a cock-up, people can’t speak up on your behalf. The whole house of cards, which amounts to a democracy, can collapse. And all because a few people with banners and whistles were stopped from standing somewhere.

It must be emphasised that this is still one of the better places to be in the world if you want to speak your mind. Restriction of freedom of speech is still mostly a problem for political activists. But as the Stop the War march showed, more and more people are becoming politically active, willing to demonstrate even if they’ve never thought of it before. So it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the people exercising their right to protest, because they are more than a noisy nuisance – in a very real sense, they are defending one of our most basic rights.

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