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A report expected to recommend a new category proscribing Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action as extreme protest groups is an attempt to silence voices the Government doesn’t like and will lead to a further escalation of violence against demonstrators, a leading protestor has suggested, while a lawyer has argued it will make criminal law redundant.
The report by crossbench peer Lord John Walney, the Government’s Independent Advisor on Political Violence and Disruption, will sanction certain protest groups in similar ways to terrorist organisations, and will reportedly target those who routinely use criminal tactics to try and achieve their aims. The move could restrict a group’s ability to fundraise and assemble.
Last June, the Metropolitan Police said that policing the actions of the Just Stop Oil group had cost more than £4.5 million – and the equivalent of almost 13,770 officer shifts the Guardian reported – with the environmental group causing regular traffic chaos through marches and roadblocks, as well as disrupting major culture and sporting events.
Palestine Action has sprayed red paint on the walls of several buildings across the UK in recent months, including the Ministry of Defence in central London, among other actions.
The BBC, according to a report on 12 May, has seen extracts of Lord Walney’s recommendations and quotes him as saying: “Militant groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil are using criminal tactics to create mayhem and hold the public and workers to ransom without fear of consequence.
“Banning terror groups has made it harder for their activists to plan crimes – that approach should be extended to extreme protest groups too.”
Ahead of the report being published, the Byline Times Podcast spoke with Gail Bradbrook, one of the founders of Extinction Rebellion, who has been found guilty of criminal damage for protesting; and Francesca Cociani, a senior associate at Hodge, Jones and Allen, which regularly represents protestors in court.
“When you conflate us with terrorists who threaten life, when we’re here to protect life, and you use words like ‘extremists’… one of the dangers is that one of us is going to get killed one day off the back of that,” Bradbrook told the podcast.
She added that the move was also a “march further into authoritarianism, to the Government deciding whether protesting suits them or not”, and was something people should be “extremely worried about”.
“It does smack of 1930s Germany, some of the enabling powers that have been given to the Home Secretary,” Bradbrook said.
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She further argued that applying the word ‘extreme’ to protest groups was as inaccurate as it is dangerous. Extreme, Bradbrook said, is when something “threatens a life. It either intends to harm life or it is going to harm life. That’s what we mean when we think about terrorism. And we’re the opposite of extreme. Non-violent, peaceful protestors”.
The term, she suggested, would be more suitably applied to ministers and business leaders, who through climate-damaging policies and decisions are harming lives.
Podcast host, Adrian Goldberg, spoke to Bradbrook about the already significant impact protesting has on the individuals involved, including prison time and career advancement, remarking: “It’s not as though it is cost-free to you to take part in the kind of disruptions that you’ve been involved with.”
Bradbrook said: “I was in the dock last year, three different times I had a prison bag with me because I’ve been threatened. We’ve been sent to jail for simply mentioning climate change in front of the jury.”
But she said that the climate emergency “agenda is too big” to cower to the threat of punishment.
“We know from our history books, and from social science research into civil disobedience, that these methods are more likely to work than ordinary protest,” she added.
The Government was “conflating” disruption with violence when the two are “very, very different”, Bradbrook told the podcast. Marathons, and other sporting events, she noted, also cause disruption to the public.
Goldberg quizzed Cociani about how protestors were being silenced in court with the accused being told “what they can’t say” – preventing them from providing context and establishing a defence.