Maybe I'm confused.
(And this post is pretty much the post I didn't make earlier, so eh, there we go)
You appear to be conflating what we'd normally consider to be your traditional legitimate peaceful protestors with the knobends at JSO/XR etc who are expressly pushing
well beyond the limits of the protections of peaceful protest and what we could call 'reasonable behaviour' in their higher profile protests.
The result of which is the implementation of laws which state that you can be arrested for 'serious disruption' as part of a protest. However it was implemented by notorious authoritarian Braverman, so among the brooooad extensions to the bill, the definition of 'serious disruption' has been determined to mean 'hindered to a more than minor degree', a term so empty and vague and with such a low floor that it might as well say "whenever we feel like sending in the cops".
Which means now that anyone who wants to protest, the vast majority of which will be in a manner that isn't as stupid as XR/JSO, is at serious risk of arrest, police violence etc for the most minor of reasons. That has a chilling effect on protest.
Did I read that wrong? Cos I'll eat humble pie if I did. But you can see how I can read what you typed as that, right?
i agree, but i also struggle with the concept of vandalism and massive disruption to thousands of people being classed as peaceful.
My point is that we are talking about two
very difference concepts here - the fundamental right to peaceful protest, and the ability of the state to control shitbags like JSO and XR, ostensibly to prevent them from disrupting major infrastructure. That isn't peaceful protest. The way the law is written allows the arrest of someone to blocking entrance to a hotel where oil company execs are going, which is disrupting no-one other than that business and their patrons, and certainly isn't remotely a risk to life or public infrastructure.
That chilling effect is the problem - the way the law has been applied since it was implemented has been an attempt to stifle protest, because there was never a need to make the law so expansive and vague as to effectively make any protest - the point of which is usually to be a
bit disruptive - illegal, or to at least give the impression that it might be, so that people think "ooh, best give that a miss, I need to keep my background checks clean". It never needed to be so broad, just to prevent a repeat of the M25 protests.
Consider that if a bunch of teachers wanted to protest poor pay and conditions - they now run a substantially higher risk of getting a criminal record just for turning up, because at a protest the police can now use laughably minimal grounds for arrest.
They all need a solid backround/criminal check for child safeguarding. How many do you think would turn up to a protest if they thought their entire career could be at risk? Not as many as would otherwise, that's for sure. At which point, the protest has far less impact, gets less news coverage, and the government of the day gets away with minimal scrutiny on their shitty policies.
As I say, if I've woefully misread that then fair enough. My real issue is shitty governments and shitty laws, and the shitty shits who make shitty governments make shitty laws even shittier.
