Kill the Bill!

The more you study what is going on with the Just Stop Oil protests and the Public Order Bill, the more weird and inconsistent our national attitude to protesters seems. Britain, according to those opposed to the Bill, is a police state. If you look at their response to the Just Stop Oil protests, however, we look like pushovers.

It would be easy to come to the conclusion, watching protesters block roads and the police often just stand and watch, that Britain is in desperate need of more laws to deal with this kind of thing: to make it clear that yes, everyone has the right to protest but no, they do not have the right to prevent others from going about their lawful business.

The government has certainly been drawing attention to this aspect of the Bill in recent days. It would criminalise, for example, the act of ‘locking on’ – where protesters use locks in order to make it more difficult for police to remove them. It would also criminalise ‘obstruction of major transport networks’ and ‘interference with or use or operation of key national infrastructure’.

But hang on, what’s this? When it comes to obstructing transport networks or interfering with national infrastructure there is a defence in the case where the act in question is ‘done wholly or mainly in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute’. In other words, unions can block roads, oil refineries or what have you, but the rest of us will end up in jail if we do so.

There is another glaring inconsistency in the bill as it now is. Many Labour MPs, by the way, think the Public Order Bill is an outrage. Kim Johnson, a leading light in the ‘Kill the Bill’ campaign, says that the government is ‘clamping down on the ability of people to organise and defend our hard-won rights’.

Fair enough, if that is how she feels. Except that Johnson was one of 158 Labour MPs who on Tuesday voted to add a new clause to the Bill that she wants to kill: one that would make it an offence for pro-life campaigners to protest within 150 metres of an abortion clinic. The clause was introduced by Labour MP Rupa Huq, currently out in the cold after saying that Kwasi Kwarteng is only ‘superficially black’. According to Stella Creasy, who spoke in favour of the clause in Tuesday’s debate, it has nothing to do with stifling anyone’s right to free speech or right to protest but would merely prevent harassment of women visiting such clinics. Except the clause doesn’t exactly support that interpretation (and harassment is already a crime in any case). It does mention harassment but it also threatens with six-month jail sentences anyone who ‘persistently, continuously or repeatedly occupies’ (ie. holds a silent vigil), or who ‘advises or persuades, attempts to advise or persuade, or otherwise expresses opinion’. Perhaps Stella Creasy would like to explain how anyone can protest against anything without expressing their opinion.

This, then, is the position of Kim Johnson and many other Labour MPs who have campaigned to ‘Kill the Bill’. They think it an undeniable human right to block roads, railways, infrastructure and the like in the case of good activists and trade unionists – but when it comes to people who oppose abortion they think it right to criminalise them for merely opening their mouths, or even holding a banner. Not quite the spirit of liberalism.

The Public Order Bill does nothing to introduce consistency. On the contrary, it is going to be very much one rule for trade unionists – and quite another for pro-life campaigners. And that’s under a Conservative government.