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Armed police raid a peaceful meeting at a Quaker meeting house. Activists are given lengthy prison sentences for taking part in a video call. Protesters on trial are banned from mentioning their motivations in court. A woman is arrested, charged and tried over a satirical placard.
It’s hard to believe, but these are just some of the real-world consequences of anti-protest laws that we have seen in the UK over the last 12 months.
Each year Bond tracks and analyses trends impacting UK civic space — the environment within which civil society exists and the core rights and freedoms upon which it depends.
This year many of the trends identified concern our right to protest and how it’s been impacted by laws, judicial decisions, police tactics and new technologies. Our report, out today, lays bare the realities of what it’s like to exercise your right to peaceful protest in 2025.
Over the last 12 months, we have seen several egregious examples of over-policing, including the decision to raid a meeting at a Quaker Meeting House, where six young women were discussing climate change and the war in Gaza. Another was the arrest of a woman attending a pro-Palestine demonstration whose placard went viral on social media.
Police charged her with racially aggravated public order offences, only for a judge to acquit her, ruling that her placard was instead “part of the genre of political satire”.
Another harmful trend is longer prison sentences for protesters. In July 2024, five climate protesters were convicted for participating in a video call in which they planned to block the M25. Four of them each received a four-year sentence, and one received five years. These sentences are the longest prison terms given to peaceful protestors in the UK, ever.
While they were later reduced on appeal, the sentences of others were upheld, including those of two young women for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, one who was jailed for two years and the other for 20 months
Rulings made by senior judges have continued to heavily reduce the defences available to protesters, who are often prevented from mentioning their motivations in court.
Those demonstrating outside of courts can also face restrictions. Last summer, police arrested 11 people for holding signs outside a court about the rights of a jury to hear the whole truth and acquit according to their conscience.
Police use of live facial recognition and other technologies to monitor protests has also accelerated in the last 12 months.
Between January and August 2024, the Metropolitan Police used live facial recognition technology 117 times, compared to just 32 times over the three-year period between 2020 and 2023.
The technology uses live video footage of crowds passing a camera and compares their images to a specific list of people wanted by the police. It is controversial, and campaigners have raised concerns about its impact on civil liberties and human rights, especially its tendency to misidentify people of colour.
But there is hope.
The Court of Appeal recently upheld a ruling in favour of the human rights campaign group Liberty, which found that the previous Government had acted unlawfully when it sought to significantly lower the threshold for serious disruption.
Judges ruled that the measure, introduced through secondary legislation, would have granted police “almost unlimited powers” to restrict protests. The judgement presents this Government with an opportunity to change tack. It must now look again at these draconian laws.
Awareness is growing about the use of new technologies among parliamentarians, who debated the use of live facial recognition technology in parliament at the end of last year.
Academics and MPs have also raised concerns about the policing of pro-Palestine demonstrations. Forty legal academics and 50 MPs signed open letters to the Home Secretary calling for a review of public order legislation following a protest in January where over 70 people were arrested.
But perhaps most encouraging is new research published by the think tank Demos late last year which took an in depth look at public perceptions of protest. The study found that 83% of people agree everyone should be able to protest on the issues they care about.
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It also showed that views on disruptive protest tactics are nuanced; people become more supportive of the right to protest and less concerned about disruption after they spend time discussing the issue.
It’s become apparent over the last year that laws on protest are out of step with public opinion, which is more balanced and considered than we are often led to believe.
The Demos research shows that the public want the law to be made clearer and believe that everyone should be safe and free from harm, whether they are protesting or not.
At present, this is not the case, and almost three years since new anti-protest legislation came into force, it’s time these laws were independently reviewed and ultimately, repealed.
Read Bond’s, UK civic space: what is happening? 2024-2025 report in full here.