‘When Peaceful Protesters Face Harsher Sentences Than Violent Racists, Something has to Give’

We are now in a position where peaceful and non-violent protesters are receiving harsher sentences than those engaged in racist, violent disorder. 

In July, five Just Stop Oil protesters were handed sentences of up to five years – the longest in British legal history for peaceful protest – for conspiracy to block the M25.

In contrast, less than a month later, when racist, anti-immigrant and Islamophobic violence erupted across the country, rioters received an average sentence of two years. While these rioters were not convicted under protest legislation, the far harsher sentencing for peaceful protesters shows how far restrictions on peaceful, non-violent protest have gone.

We find ourselves here because the previous Government brought in a number of new restrictions to protest in a relatively short space of time through two key pieces of legislation, the PCSC 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023. 

The new government appears set to keep the new legislation in place, recently confirming they would continue the previous government’s appeal against a high court ruling that its changes to the definition of ‘serious disruption’ were unlawful. 

While these legislative changes have been controversial, politicians have felt safe in the knowledge that they will get the support of the majority of the public. We have been told that the public don’t like disruptive protests because of the impact on ordinary people’s lives. But the reality of public opinion is more complicated than that. 

Demos’ new report The People’s Town Square on Protest: Looking beyond the headlines, supported by the respected non-profit Liberty, reveals the flaws in this interpretation of public opinion. And that in turn calls into question the justifications for recent legislation.

Firstly, a focus on concerns about disruption glosses over the overwhelming majority (83%) of the public who agree that everyone has the right to protest peacefully and non-violently, according to new polling for the report.

Secondly, an overly simplistic reading of public opinion ignores the nuances, tensions, and contradictions within our views that make us human. For example, while the majority (67%) of the public do believe that restrictions should be put on protests when they cause serious disruption to people’s everyday lives, the public’s tolerance for disruptive tactics varies significantly depending on the protest cause, with over half (52%) supporting these tactics for protests on the cost of living, compared to only 29% for transport worker strikes.

All of this raises the question of where the public thinks the limit to our right to protest should be. We cannot answer this question through polling alone, as understanding surface level public opinion is not enough on a contentious issue such as this. The prospect of getting stuck in a traffic jam due to a protest will never be popular when asked about in isolation.

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Josiah Mortimer

This is why we held the first deliberative process on the topic of protest in the UK – our People’s Town Square. We brought together a representative sample of 24 members of the public from across England to learn about the history of protest and protest legislation, hear a range of perspectives and experiences, and discuss issues with other participants who hold different viewpoints with the aim of reaching agreement on ways forward.

One of the most memorable aspects of the experience for participants was speaking to people different from themselves, who they otherwise wouldn’t have spoken to. Participants shifted from a perspective focused on the impact of protest on individuals to a perspective more focused on the common good. The result was an increasing concern that the right to protest must be protected, and a decrease in concern about disruption that protests may cause.

Views on protests can, and often do, change with time. When we look back at successful protests in the past, it can feel like those causes have always been just, and those tactics justified. We ask ourselves how anyone could’ve opposed them at the time. Given strong support from the public for the right to protest, the new government must ask itself: how do we want future generations to look back at our response to the protests of today?