Neutering protest

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There is a valid debate to be had about how much notice should be given to police and other authorities about the intention to hold a large demonstration and, in principle, planning to increase the notice period from 6 days, as the Home Secretary is apparently considering, isn’t a wholly unreasonable suggestion. It does take time to plan the police presence and make any other necessary arrangements. How much notice is needed is another question again, however; and the idea is not without other problems. Firstly, some demonstrations happen as an immediate and almost spontaneous reaction to events where people wish to express their feelings immediately, and secondly – more practically – defining a ‘large’ demonstration in advance isn’t as easy as it might appear. In truth, even the organisers will rarely know how many people to expect.

Whilst being presented as a reasonable step to take in terms of practicality and planning, the real agenda here is to make it harder to organise mass protests and to constrain – yet again – the right of people to protest. The Home Secretary himself almost says as much with his comments about the protesters’ aims, telling the Times in response to protests about what’s happening in Gaza, “They have made a point and they made it very, very loudly and I’m not sure that these marches every couple of weeks add value to the argument. They’re not really saying anything new.” There is, within that, an implicit view that people should protest once, make their point, and then become silent, even whilst the actions about which the protests are being held continue unabated. It completely misses the point that those demonstrating are also seeking to influence events (whether demonstrations are the most effective way of doing that is an entirely different question, but they are one of the few ways that people actually have of expressing themselves). And, as we know from experience, once people stop protesting, the powers that be will simply assume that the issue has gone away, and that people no longer feel so strongly. Protest, almost always, needs to be sustained if it is to have any effect. But the idea that protest might actually influence events is precisely the reason why authoritarian governments want to stamp it out. Making it more difficult to hold a protest is just the first step.