Thousands of protesters marched across Britain on Saturday in protest of a massive new police bill that would create new restrictions on protests in England and Wales and impose heavy fines for not following police orders.
The bill, officially known as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, was introduced in early March and has since been met with widespread setbacks in England and Wales. It also includes sentencing and court reforms, among others, but protesters are specifically upset about the proposed new police forces regarding protests.
According to the BBC’s Dominic Casciani, should the bill pass, police will have the power to start and end protests, as well as noise restrictions – even if only one person is protesting.
In addition, Casciani writes that the bill criminalizes the violation of restrictions that protesters “should have known”, even if they did not receive a direct instruction from an officer, “and ’cause intentional or reckless public nuisance.’
According to Labor MP Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the party’s one-time leader, criminalizes the bill ‘peaceful protest’.
“The right to protest is at the heart of a democratic society,” Corbyn said in a video on Friday. “It’s part of who we are. And together we will beat Boris Johnson’s dangerous proposal to ban protest. ”
This weekend’s “kill the bill” marches are not the first. According to the Guardian, there have been at least five protests in Bristol, in the south-west of England, over the past two weeks, including one that became violent and that at least two police vehicles were set on fire earlier in March.
Nothing on the same scale has been reported so far on Saturday, but according to Sky News, at least 26 protesters have been arrested in London after a clash with police.
The UK is in the midst of its own debate on policing
As the New York Times explained late last month, the bill comes at a sensitive time in the UK. The kidnapping and murder of Sarah Everard in London last month, and the ensuing silence of a vigilance that Everard honored for violating Covid-19 restrictions, both sparked a debate over the role of police in the British front a center.
A London police officer, from the same police force who broke up the vigilance, is charged with Everard’s murder.
The country also saw its own Black Lives Matter movement last summer following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protesters across the UK took to the streets to protest racism, inequality and police brutality, and in Bristol, a crowd a statue drawn of the slave trader Edward Colston and threw it into the harbor.
In London, a statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill was also corrected during the summer.
Bristol, England: Protesters pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, and threw it into the harbor. It has been found and will be placed in a museum 4 / pic.twitter.com/ZZ5rPst6YZ
– Reuters (@Reuters) 12 June 2020
One provision in the policing bill currently before parliament increases the penalty for damaging such statues. According to the BBC, “the measure” makes it clear that damage to memorials can lead to ten years in prison. ”
In response to the indictment and the murder of Everard, protesters’ killed ‘with a text of ’10 years for protest, 5 years for rape’, according to the Guardian. According to the AP, the protesters said on Saturday: “Women are scared everywhere, the police and the government do not care!”
Despite the protests, the bill has progressed in the British Parliament with the support of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative party. In mid-March, it approved its first vote in the House of Commons, 359 votes to 263, and the measure was transferred to committee.
According to the New York Times, the Conservative government had hoped to use the indignation over Everard’s death to pass the bill, but recent opposition seems to have changed that. The committee process was apparently delayed until later in the year, the Times reported, while protests and criticism from the Labor opposition continued.
“The tragic death of Sarah Everard has sparked a national demand for action to tackle violence against women,” Labor MP and shadow shadow justice minister David Lammy said in March. “This is no time to push us through ill-considered measures to impose disproportionate controls on free expression and the right to protest.”