In their fight for women’s voting rights, the Suffragettes regularly broke the law to raise awareness for their cause. Politicians and right wing newspapers called for the police to crush their cause, of which Princess Sophia Duleep Singh and Emily Pankhurst were leading figures. A commentator noted during the November 1910 “Black Friday” protest : “I saw a policeman grab women by the collars, shake them and fling them aside like rats.” Would the police today have behaved in a similar heavy-handed way towards peaceful female demonstrators? Would the Home Secretary have supported such police violence if the Suffragette movement was happening today? We will never know whether she encouraged the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to go in hard against the peaceful vigil organised in memory of Sarah Everard who was kidnapped and killed when walking home at 9.30pm on 3rd March. What we do know is that a message was sent to all police chiefs making the Home Secretary’s position clear: she wanted them to stop people gathering at vigils.
The death of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked protests against the brutal treatment of black people by the police. Mass demonstrations, often declared unlawful, spread to every major city in the USA and across the world. They led to much soul-searching, discussion and changes in legislation. The Black Lives Matter protests that swept the UK were described by our Home Secretary as “dreadful”, stating for good measure that she did not agree with the silent and peaceful gesture of “taking the knee”.
The problem with allowing the police and the Home Secretary more power to ban and control protests is that each small step taken towards stifling dissent does not make the dissent disappear – it simply bottles it up for the future.
An index of the freedoms we enjoy is the extent to which legitimate protest is tolerated by the State. The extent to which we tolerate injustice without protest is the exact measure of legislative control that will be imposed upon us. Dissent and protest are a healthy safety-valve for every democracy. The more the Home Secretary clamps down on legitimate protest, the weaker she makes our democracy.