Climate strikes: police and schools must positively respect children’s right to protest

Sep 19, 2019 | Comment, Protest

PHOTO: Flickr This Friday, tens of thousands of young people will take part in the Global Climate Strike, demanding immediate action to address the global climate crisis. Students who have not been granted permission by their headteachers to participate may find their...

Netpol condemns calls for expanding surveillance on “far left, anarchist and environmentalist” groups

Jul 17, 2019 | Comment, Domestic Extremism, Protest

PHOTO: Julia Hawkins on Flickr The report published today by conservative think-tank Policy Exchange, attacking campaigners from Extinction Rebellion, is a direct call for expanding surveillance on “far left, anarchist and environmentalist extremism”. The report’s...

A War on Dissent?

Oct 31, 2018 | Comment, Domestic Extremism, Protest

This essay by Netpol was first published by the Transnational Institute and ROAR Magazine in October 2018. An accompanying short film is available here. Writing in 2016, Netpol observed that the government and the police in Britain are in a “permanent state of war”...

Police are encouraging shale gas industry to go to court to disrupt anti-fracking protests

Jun 6, 2018 | Comment, Protest

Yet another interim injunction has been granted to the fracking industry, this time at a hearing in Manchester last week that sought to prohibit a range of disruptive protest tactics at Cuadrilla’s site at Preston New Road in Lancashire. Once again, this...

WATCH: Alex S Vitale on “The End of Policing”

Mar 21, 2018 | Comment

A discussion on “The End of Policing” in London, March 2018 Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College in New York, was in London on 15 March to talk about his book “The End of...

“Something has to change” – new Netpol report calls for immediate review of policing of fracking protests

Nov 20, 2017 | Comment, Protest

New report calls for “comprehensive review of national policy” on the policing of opposition to the onshore oil and gas industry Outside shale gas company Cuadrilla’s site on Preston New Road near Blackpool, Netpol is today launching its new report,...