Democracy is endangered by the clampdown on the right to protest engaged in by governments across the world, with the British prominent among them, eager to arrest the progress of the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Two reports issued this week underline the danger. Michael O’Flaherty, Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, has demanded a review of Britain’s protest laws after the banning of direct action group Palestine Action.
“Domestic legislation designed to counter ‘terrorism’ or ‘violent extremism’ must not impose any limitations on fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, that are not strictly necessary for the protection of national security and the rights and freedoms of others,” he wrote in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
He urges “an urgent review” of legislation in the light of the mass arrests of people peacefully holding placards reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
And a review of the conduct of governments by the International Federation for Human Rights is equally damning, of the British government in particular. It accuses them of weaponising counterterrorism laws to suppress expressions of support for the Palestinian people and opposition to the actions of the Israeli government, widely agreed to constitute genocide.
“The right to protest has come under sustained attack from the British government across administrations and party lines,” says the report, highlighting anti-protest laws introduced by the Tories in 2024 and subsequent measures advanced by Labour, which the IFHR rightly places in the context of the Starmer administration’s determination “to legitimise Israel’s genocidal violence” and desire “to justify support for Israel.”
Now Mahmood is proposing further restrictions, handing police new powers to ban protests they deem repetitive, and even to outlaw particular chants and slogans.
All this is, of course, a tribute to the influence of the pro-Palestine movement and the impact it has had on public opinion. The elite guards its prerogatives over foreign policy most jealously and is clearly rattled by the strength of anti-imperialist feeling in the country.
But the consequential assault on democracy is now attracting negative attention across the world, as are similar authoritarian moves in the US and Germany. The defence of our rights must reach beyond those campaigning around Palestine to unite all those who care for our freedoms.
Source: The Morning Star