Over 100,000 people have now signed our petition opposing the government’s new Policing Bill and calling on the National Police Chiefs Council to adopt our Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights, setting out how police should protect, not restrict, the right to protest.
It is now evident that the government wants to use its 80-seat parliamentary majority to rush through the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. We have to stand against this.
Netpol’s Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights calls for protection – not restrictions – on the right to protest.
The bill, announced last week, includes plans to “strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament”. The debate on the second reading of the bill starts today.
Tens of thousands are opposing these changes to the law, but we should not accept the argument that “this law is unnecessary, as the police already have sufficient powers.” The police already have far too many powers.
Decades of criminal justice legislation had created dozens of new offences and broad new powers that inevitably have since been reinterpreted and abused. The existing Public Order Act is already used to restrict protests and criminalise protesters.
Government and police will always attack our rights, demanding new powers and new controls. We have to start demanding a change.
This is why we are launching a new Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights. We are demanding police respect existing international human rights standards – or explain why they refuse to do so.
In an online survey conducted in October 2020, we asked 25 organisations ranging from large national groups to small, local grassroots campaigns about their attitudes towards the right to freedom of assembly. The results show a clear demand for increased protections for the right to protest and widespread concerns at the lack of safeguards against police surveillance.
The results of the survey helped us to finalise the wording of a new Charter. Its eleven core statements are:
| ONE: | Public assemblies need not only facilitation, but also protection |
| TWO: | Public assemblies need protection based on equality and non-discrimination |
| THREE: | Potential disruption is not an automatic excuse for denying protection for assemblies |
| FOUR: | The use of civil disobedience and direct action tactics are not an automatic excuse for denying protection for assemblies |
| FIVE: | The use of police powers to collectively restrict the right to freedom of assembly is justifiable only in exceptional circumstances |
| SIX: | Although public assemblies are collective activities, protesters are individually rather than collectively responsible for their actions |
| SEVEN: | Choosing to take part in a public assembly is not an invitation to surveillance and denial of privacy |
| EIGHT: | Organisers of public assemblies, not the police, must decide their level of communication and dialogue |
| NINE: | Independent monitoring of the policing of protests is essential for defending the right to organise and participate in public assemblies |
| TEN: | Imposing financial burdens on organisers restricts the right to freedom of assembly |
| ELEVEN: | The police have a particular duty to protect the rights of vulnerable or disabled people wishing to exercise their rights to freedom of assembly |
In the absence of any other meaningful guidance available to local forces, we are calling on the National Police Chiefs Council and the College of Policing to adopt these eleven statements by endorsing the Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights.
You can find a full briefing on the case for the Charter here.
Most of the demands in the list are fine – we should all have these as basic expectations in the UK. But the final one about the police protecting the rights of vulnerable and disabled people seems to misunderstand the role and methods of policing. The purpose of any police force is to promote and protect power – not those lacking it – and its sole methods are arresting and charging. That is the remit of the police, which in the UK are called ‘forces’ for valid reasons, not ‘services’. We protesting people need to look to ourselves to protect those of us who are particularly vulnerable for whatever reason, using trusted people and with complete transparency in how it is planned and carried out. The police will never under any circumstance allow community control over their operations, nor will they permit inquiries into what they do after the fact. They are above the law and will always be so until we abolish and replace them. To expect them to be soft and fluffy and help us is almost absurdly naive.