Police must respect protesters’ right to oppose Trump visit
As large numbers of police officers from around the country are redeployed to respond to demonstrations against President Trump’s visit to the UK on Friday, Netpol is calling on police not to undermine people’s rights to freedom of expression and assembly...Victory for Netpol in legal challenge over scale of surveillance on anti-fracking campaigners
In a judgment received today, a tribunal has ruled in favour of Netpol and said that the police cannot rely on safeguarding national security as a reason for refusing to release any information on how often opponents of fracking are referred to a secretive...Injunctions: A Myth Buster for Anti-Frackers
GUEST POST Injunctions are scary sounding things, but that’s exactly what they’re meant to be. Fear, rather than actual prosecutions, is the primary means by which injunction orders succeed in shutting down protest. And you can understand why: if a court...Police are encouraging shale gas industry to go to court to disrupt anti-fracking protests
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...Police maintain absolute secrecy over counter-terrorism surveillance on anti-fracking campaigners
Home Office insists secretive Prevent programme “cannot in any circumstances be considered frightening” Imagine feeling you have to tell your children to avoid talking about fracking at school, in case it is seen as a safeguarding concern. Or experiencing...It’s time to stop smearing anti-fracking campaigners as “extremists”
The way the police persistently label opposition to fracking as “extremism” infuriates campaigners up and down the country. The National Police Chiefs Council NPCC), which represents senior police officers in the UK, will shortly consult on how local...Opponents of Durham opencast mining condemn bailiffs and police over violence at protest camp eviction
Since the start of March, campaigners living at the Pont Valley Protection Camp, between Dipton and Leadgate in County Durham, have been protesting against opencast coal mining by the Banks Group, which has only until 3 June to extract coal from the mine before its...Home Office forced by Netpol to release ‘counter-radicalisation’ training materials
After a two-year battle against five police forces and the regulator dealing with freedom of information, Netpol has secured an important victory for greater transparency of the government’s ‘counter-radicalisation’ strategy, Prevent. After...Netpol’s Activist Legal Action Fund “crucial” to UKOG legal challenge
A sweeping injunction sought by shale oil and gas company UKOG against campaigners in south-east England looks like it has run into difficulties since it was challenged in court in March The draft orders, originally made against “persons unknown”, attempted to...