Protests and Police Powers
A New Generation of Struggle
On April 3rd 1974, 1,000 school pupils in Brixton came out on strike in support of the Brockwell Three. The pupils at Tulse Hill School formed a Black Student’s Action Committee and led a march demanding that three Black youths arrested at a police riot following a stabbing to raise money and demand justice. Becoming known as the Brockwell Three, the young men had been targeted and beaten by police prior to their arrests. The participants of the march met with Paul Stephenson, leader of the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott; two generations were united in a collective struggle against institutional oppression.
This is just one moment in the long history of protest in the UK. Marginalised groups have taken part in action against governments and the police time and time again. And just as we oppose their over-reaching powers and institutionalised racism, sexism and homophobia, we are met with extreme force and attempts to crush our political rights. The recent Kill the Bill movement is the next installation in this tradition of communal action and defence against attacks on our rights.
The recently-proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is seeking to place more conditions of static protests, such as imposing a start and finish time and setting noise limits. Current laws state that, in order for protestors to have broken the law, they must have knowledge of any move on orders and be actively resisting them. Should the bill pass, protestors can be found to have committed a crime for “[failing] to follow restrictions they ‘ought’ to have known about”.
The Network for Police Monitoring (NETPOL) describe the Bill as “an unprecedented attack on the freedom to protest” and part of “successive governments [being] increasingly hostile towards protests”. You need only cast your mind back to 2016, when David Cameron’s administration passed the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act. Described as “the most serious attack on the rights of trade unions and their members in a generation” by the TUC, the Act introduced restrictions on pickets, campaigning and industrial action ballots.
The Kill the Bill movement is a cross-community response to not only the proposed Bill but a broader, historical culture of protest suppression and the over-policing of marginalised groups. The policing of these recent protests echo issues and concerns from the past. Before quashing the sentence of the youngest of the Brockwell Three, the presiding judge questioned how “the slightly built boy stood before him was… responsible for single-handedly beating and invaliding an experienced 17 stone police officer”. At the Kingsnorth power station in 2008, police reported that 70 officers had been injured by climate change protestors occupying the site. The Home Office was later forced to admit none of these injuries had been caused by protestors, but were instead insect bites and heatstroke. Following a protest in Bristol on 21st March 2021, the Guardian reported that Avon and Somerset Police made claims that “two [officers] were taken to hospital after suffering broken bones. One of them also suffered a punctured lung.” This claim was later retracted.
Any campaigner, activist or trade unionist should support the movement to squash the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. We have stood against the over-policing of communities and protest movements before, and we must do so again.