While the main piece here is about the injunctions served on the Insulate Britain mob, it’s the sidebar that’s interesting. Adam Wagner tries to argue that these blackmailers are simply protestors.
This [Priti Patel’s proposed new legislation – Ed] is a highly illiberal measure. Preventing people exercising their free-speech rights in advance because they are ‘disruptive’ is fraught with risk for a democratic society.
Is it, though? Okay, I am always suspicious of government and they never let a crisis go to waste when it comes to clamping down on liberty. However, I do not accept the disruptive argument. In a free society the right to protest is sacrosanct and rightly so. However, what we are seeing is not protest, it is an attempt at intimidation. Also, as I understand it, this is intended to stop people who already have form from going right out and doing it again. The intention to stop people glueing themselves to the road, I’m fine with as gluing yourself to the road or someone else’s property is not legitimate protest – it is a form of trespass at best and obstructing the public highway at worst.
It is understandable that in the heat of the moment people want to ‘crackdown’ on disruptive protests, but protests are by definition disruptive. This law would, I assume, authorise the detention of a protester to prevent them attending a protest. That is illiberal.
I agree, that would worry me, but let’s not confuse this bunch of lunatics with protestors, they are not protestors they are bullies who want to impose their will upon the rest of us. No one voted for them, no one has been asked if they want these policies and what we are seeing is blackmail. That said, there is no need for new laws as there are enough already on the statute book to deal with these people. All it takes is the will to use them appropriately.
No doubt the ones the public are clamouring against. But important causes have often been unpopular. That is why we have to keep a very careful balance between the right to free expression and the powers of law-enforcement.
Disruptive protest plays a key role in our democracy and should not be controlled by the police or the Home Secretary.
No, frankly. When a protest becomes disruptive, it ceases to be protest – that is the balance, that is when the line is crossed. These people have the right to protest but they do not have the right to cause harm to others and that is what is happening now and that is why ordinary people want the police to stop it, because their liberty has been infringed. If these people had the power they wish for, then “traitors” will find themselves being shot. These people are the new soviets and what they are doing is not legitimate, reasonable protest and reasonable people should have the expectation that they can conduct their lawful business without being “disrupted” by these creatures.
That said, again, I agree that we do not need new laws. Just use the existing ones and remand the bastards in custody until their court hearing.
Yep LR and i for one am fed up with the bullying of these eco-anarchists and the idiot child Greta Thunberg. They all need putting down. Personally i think the notion of a climate crisis is junk science. These twats want to take us back to the Middle Ages.
Climate changes. Climate has always changed. It may be possible that we have a slight effect, but when that maunder minimum hits, it’s going to get cold no matter what.
Even the climate scientists’ dire predictions don’t come close to the insane predictions made by this crowd.
The US Constitution protects the “right of the people to peaceably assemble”. Not that they ever bother about that bit – disruptive protests are permitted all the time, as peaceable ones are denounced as “insurrection” – but the founders put the word in there for a reason. I can see no objection on the grounds of liberty for stopping people from assembling with intent to cause disruption.
There is no universal and inalienable right to prevent people from going about their lawful business. Obstruction of the Queen’s highway, on the other hand, is already an offence.
There does seem to be an urge these days, presumably on the grounds of being seen to Do Something, of making things extra-super-double-illegal. I first noticed it after the Dunblane massacre. Walking into a school to shoot all the kids was already against the law. So was a madman holding a gun licence. The laws already existed to prevent it, but the system of enforcement failed. why the hell they thought passing more laws for the police to quietly pass a blind eye over for their mates would make the slightest difference still baffles me to this day.
Sam, agree completely that (as far as I can remember) Dunblane started this tendency. When terrible events like that happen, I understand that the powers-that-be have to think about whether something might need to be done. But sometimes that “something” is actually “nothing”: but they seem to be too scared of press condemnation to be brave enough to do nothing. See Covid, passim.
Bad cases make bad law.
Surely the fact they blocked an ambulance is reason enough to prosecute them for negligence
https://youtu.be/FiQvXRNwrFc
Wrong video
https://youtu.be/KW7srsD4Xp4
This is the video I meant to post
I watched this one earlier. The man is a pillock.
The thing about protests of this kind that have successful in the past is that the protesters were right. Their antics raised the profile of their cause and, when people were prompted to think it over, they ended up agreeing with the protesters.
These people are forced to be so aggressive because they have no case. There isn’t a climate crisis, and even if there was, their idiotic solutions would never work. Like children, they think that they are so much more clever than the grown ups, basically because they know next to nothing.
They also think they have the right to decide on behalf of the rest of us. It’s the overweening arrogance that pisses people off. Quite apart from them being factually wrong.
What is truly pathetic is the Police response to these people. Just move them ln immediately! Failing that are handcuffs not a thing? Are batons not a thing? Is pepper spray not a thing? Are tasers not a thing?
And yet the Police don’t even resort to harsh language, so it seems.
If you feel strongly enough about a cause then violent or disruptive actions can be justified. But this is a different thing from trying to raise awareness of your cause. Really it is not protest at all, but ‘freedom fighting’ or ‘terrorism’ depending on your point of view.
The real issue here is not that some ‘protesters’ feel that extraordinary measures are required, but that the public square does not allow rigorous and wide ranging discourse about certain topics, notably “climate change” and the policy response to Covid. Vigorous free speech does take the wind out of the sails of radicalism.
When I was a serving Police Officer,I had dealings with Greenpeace and other Anti nuclear protesters.Although things got a bit hectic now and then,it was all fairly civilised as the protesters knew how far they could go ,or would be allowed to go. They knew that if they tried too much, they would be arrested and taken out of the game. They also knew that they would need our protection against some of the more robust workers they were seeking to disrupt..I fail to understand why the modern service seems so reluctant to act against what is clearly unlawful means of protest.
I don’t like plod or the government particularly, but these lunatics should be arrested, tried in a court of law and if found guilty, banged up.
Protest by all means, but their ‘right to protest’ ends when it interferes with the right of others to go about their lawful business.
And 97% of the electorate rejected the Greens at the last General Election, so they have no mandate from the public whatever they think.
This is the crux. Liberty extends only so far as it does not affect the liberty of others. In this case, it is also causing harm, so is not legitimate protest and they do not have the right to decide on collateral damage.
Apparently, there’s a video going around, though I can’t find it, of these morons being arrested and handcuffed, then breaking away from the Police and returning to the middle of the Road, still wearing their handcuffs, almost as a badge of honour. Simple way to stop this. If two people arrested, one is cuffed around the wrist, the other around the ankle, which prevents both of them causing further problems. It worked 20 odd years ago when, as a Police officer, we had to deal with a large group of, fortunately, non violent protesters. However, I doubt if the workout, SJW, senior officers today would allow it.
I notice that the physics Nobel prize has just been announced. Three awarded and half of the prize went to two of them for (Nobelprize.orgs own words) “for the physical modelling of earth’s climate quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”
What a remarkable coincidence just before the degenerate, corrupt and hypocritical smugfest about to despoil Glasgow.
But “We have only 100 months to avoid disaster” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/01/climatechange.carbonemissions
Oh, sorry, that’s from 2008. I guess it’s already too late now so we might as well give up. 🙂
There are lots more of those dire prognostications, even going back to when it was global warming before climate change had been invented.
It seems there’s always been 10 years or so to save the planet, here’s one from 1989: https://www.climatedepot.com/2015/05/04/flashback-1989-un-issues-10-year-global-warming-tipping-point/
By the way, is cold fusion still only 10 years away? That would be handy.
I’ve never quite agreed with your view that peaceful protest is an indisputable right. If people are protesting for something they should never get in a free and democratic society, such as Communism, I don’t think they should be allowed to do so.
As for disruption, if these idiots were marching through London as a form of protest, they would still be stopping traffic and causing a lot of disruption, but that would somehow be seen to be a legitimate form of protest. It’s no different really.
They are just a very small group of people, so simply wouldn’t be noticed if marching through London. They have to do something smaller but more localised to get attention.
I’m looking forward to the day one of them gets hit by a car and severely injured. I want to see what the police reaction will be. They seem firmly on the side of the protesters so far…
Sunlight is the best bleach. You cannot combat bad ideas if you suppress them.
It’s different because protest marches are pre arranged and agreed with the police. Road closures are planned so people know about them and can divert accordingly.
Mark @ 10.05 “reliably predicting global warming”.
Virtually every single computer model runs hot (those used in the West – the Chinese and Russian versions are actually closer to reality) and this is after decades of ‘adjusting’ them so they can hindcast (ie: we know what the temperature was so the computer model parameters are ‘fudged’ to make them match the temperatures of the past. This apparently makes them ‘reliable’) but none of them has shown any predictive skill when asked to forecast future temperatures. Just look at the IPCC’s own ‘projections over the last 30 – 40 years. All a load of bollocks.