UN Human Rights Chief Urges UK to Reverse ‘Deeply Troubling’ Public Order Bill
ohchr.org
ohchr.org
> Police accused of ‘alarming’ attack on protest rights after anti-monarchist leader arrested
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/06/head-of-uks-...
Prior to the coronation the Met Police tweeted:
> Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low.
> We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration.
https://twitter.com/metpoliceuk/status/1653745710724968448
Again, this has been seen as further moves by the Met to quash the right of protest in the UK.
> Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low.
> We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration.
This sounds like you'll be arrested if you leap in front of the motorcade, scream something in church, etc. Not if you carry a sign protesting the monarch along the route
They had cargo ties to hold their placards during transit. Of no practical use for locking on.
The metropolitan police has since says it 'regrets they were unable to join other protestors'.
Between this and the online safety bill there are some dreadful dacronian laws making it onto the statue books in the UK in recent months. Compounding other forms of monitoring and criminalising speech under hate and anti terror laws.
It definitely could happen here.
The protestors arrested say a) they were reversible plastic straps (i.e. no use for human locking on at all), and b) they had discussed their plans with the official police liaison team who approved it all before the event, then the police on the ground refused to care about that nor tried to discuss with the liaison team while making the arrests.
There's also various clips going round, for example this police officer saying they "might" arrest people just for chanting "not my king". Which is just blatantly wrong, albeit possibly down to incompetent officers as much as bad policy (though bad policy seems likely). https://twitter.com/francesleach_/status/1654789805685854208...
"Lock on" protesters have used things like bicycle locks and handcuffs to shackle themselves to railings or each other. These are difficult to cut without injuring the person, especially if they're not cooperating.
Here's the Public Order Act, rushed through and taking effect from 3 May, with the coronation on 6 May: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/15/enacted
I'd argue cable ties, straps and string aren't capable of causing "serious disruption", and I assume the police/prosecutor agree. It's very concerning that the police made the arrests anyway.
(I also disagree with the law, but I'm more concerned that the police abused it.)
Nonsense, all you need to tie a sign to a pole is a piece of string that wouldn't hold a human body. If they want to keep that legislation in it should be specific - things like handcuffs, heavy chains with padlocks.....even that I think is an overreach, but it would be better than whatever the law says now.
Personally I think this has generated renewed interest and publicity for the republican movement, which means in a way, the protest has been a success due to the police action.
I'll not be at all surprised if later this year the Metropolitan Police arrest protesters from linking arms while surrounding a building or blocking a road.
> which turned out to be luggage straps.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/09/labour-says-...
Easily cut or removed in either case.
For the record I do not think locking on should be criminalised in general in the first place, much less for it to be preemptively policed based the discretion of some copper.
> groups and individuals were planning to use and throw rape alarms in order to disrupt the coronation procession.
... which is less defensible. Personally I hope a balance is found between allowing protest and preventing egregious disruption.
[0]: https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article29914468.ece/AL...
The crime of offence, to someone.
I am referring to people being actually arrested in the past week for the crime of having a sign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/09/world/europe/uk-police-co...
>The police found placards and “items which at the time they had reasonable grounds to believe could be used as lock-on devices,” according to the statement, and arrested six people “on suspicion of going equipped for locking on.”
>The protesters who were arrested said that the devices were in fact luggage straps to fasten banners. After the police investigation failed to prove that anyone had intended to use the straps to lock on, all six had their bail canceled and no further action would be taken against them, the police said.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/08/arrests-coro...
However I do like to see logical, robust arguments.
> "Our tolerance for any disruption, whether through protest or otherwise, will be low."
> "We will deal robustly with anyone intent on undermining this celebration."
(and then later)
> And yet... people were arrested for having signs along the route.
Be clear in what it is you object to. It seems like you want to attack the hypocrisy of arresting non-disruptive protests.
Quoting the police saying disruption will not be be allowed, when instead you are concerned about non-disruptive protesters being arrested, weakens and distracts from your argument.
> Personally I support disruptive action (insert rationale here).
> Furthermore, the talk of disruptive action is frequently used to mask action against non-disruptive protest. People were arrested for having signs along the route. Others they were arrested and held for 16 hours on the basis of 'being equipped for locking on' which were actually cargo ties to hold their placards during transit - of no practical use for locking on."
By responding to the current topic, before bringing up the other, it strengthens your points on both.
However. There is clearly wider context that makes having a fair discussion about this difficult.
On the side against the police and government, there have been far too many instances in the past few years of bad calls, misconduct and, in some cases, using the position of authority to sexually abuse or murder women. There have also been reports finding evidence of systemic racism, homophobia and misogyny within the Met. These do not appear to be isolated incidents. It would appear the Met has a serious cultural problem, and the new Met police chief has admitted this is the case. There hasn't been any real discussion on whether authoritarianism is a factor, but police officers are bound to lean towards authoritarianism and would imagine that's makes them likely to abuse their power. On top of that, this recent police powers bill has been rushed through and hasn't been scrutinised as much as it probably would have been if they weren't working to the deadline of the coronation.
On the other hand, there have been a lot of disruptive protests lately causing, I think it is fair to say, a level of havoc that is not considered by most British people to be a protected form of protest. The Just Stop Oil, Animal Rebellion and Extinction Rebellion protests in particular have illegal disruption as an explicit goal. They have been blocking roads, gluing themselves to trains, throwing paint over art at galleries and have publicly stated they have plans to step up the disruption. The majority of Brits do not support this form of protest and have been demanding the police crack down on them, and I suspect there would have been a huge level of criticism against the police if they had allowed one of these groups to disrupt the coronation. Demonstrations and organised marches aren't controversial, but few people consider these new disruptive tactics to be a legal expression of protest. The other thing to consider is despite the recent issues, the UK is one of the countries where you are least likely to experience any sort of police brutality or corruption, and despite the coronation being controversial and attended by many thousands, only 52 people were arrested over the weekend, which is pretty good going for such a major event.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to these protest movements and agree with their goals, but we need to have a limit to what we consider protected protest. If they still want to take part in illegal protest and risk prosecution for political purposes, that is entirely up to them to decide whether their cause is worth that. But obviously we need to make sure the crack down on those sorts of groups doesn't spill over into limiting free expression as it has done here, and any police officer with these kind of authoritarian tendencies ought to be screened out of the police.
Just to clarify, my comment is not passing any judgment or offering any analysis. I intend to provide context in the aftermath of this weekend, and why I assume this has been posted and voted to the top of the homepage.
Of course there is nuance, and not all "protest" activities can be justified.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1767017/just-stop-oil-c...
I agree that holding up signs is not a good reason for an arrest.
If you are only allowed to talk where noone can listen you then you do not in fact have free speech.
Speaking in a public place is free speech.
Interrupting a motorcade is not free speech. Pushing people around to get in from of cameras is neither.
By the way, I'm using these two possible behaviours as examples of disruptive actions that do not constitute free speech. I'm not stating that people in London were arrested due to such behaviours.
Depends entirely on the kind of interruption. Remember that a mortorcade is itself already a disruption of the normal use of a public space.
> Pushing people around to get in from of cameras is neither. By the way, I'm using these two possible behaviours as examples of disruptive actions that do not constitute free speech. I'm not stating that people in London were arrested due to such behaviours.
Yes, that's called a strawman. And you are using very imprecise language to boot - pushing people around can describe a number of behaviors from a gentle nudge to ouright assault.
Saying that protests should be allowed to be disruptive does also not mean that any kind of disruption needs to be accepted. Obviously if a protest prevents effectively detains you it is not ok. But having to take a slight detour or hearing people say things you want to ignore, that's something that is effectively required for a protest to have any result at all.
I'll say it again: you don't have the right to expect that your protest be successful.
Democracy (and the UK isa democracy) means that the status quo is fine for the majority of the people. If anyone had the right to change things at their whim, that would become a dictatorship.
Protesting is to inform people at large of a problem you feel important, but the solution cannot be up to you alone. And if you can't even convince people to listen to you without coercing them, why do you think your protest should be successful?
Am I not exercising free speech if I talk over you? Why is interrupting a motorcade any different? Motorcades are arguably expressions in and of themselves.
In civilized places, we do not talk over another. We take turns to speak.
> Why is interrupting a motorcade any different?
It is not different indeed. They are both wrong. Especially if the motorcade is organized by the public authority in a democracy, and the protestor is a small group in search of an audience that could not be bothered to listen to their arguments.
Now, I doubt the sincerity of that regret, but the fact that they're choosing that message at all means there's no cause for a devil's advocate here. It's a bad law, poorly implemented.
They're fascists. That used to be hyperbole, but now they're actually arresting people for their peaceful opinions on the government.
People should hold up a blank piece of paper, that echoes what people do in russia to protest against the war.
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/russian-police-arrest-...
And he whole society is shifting in the process, the public becomes more tolerant of the erosion of liberty. While the government starts to clamp down on our freedoms more than ever before. That is how we arrived at the place we are at now, with widespread mass surveillance and censorship.
All supposedly accepted by the public in the name of "safety". With the public maybe so accustomed to that feeling of supposed safety that they might actually oppose rolling back the surveillance in some cases?
The US’ freedom of expression rights are so much stronger than any other state I’m aware of that calling them extreme is quite accurate. There’s nothing like the First Amendment in any other country.
Many of the other countries in the world are collectivist. The recent shift in the Overton Window is a regression towards pre-Enlightenment values.
Yeah, there was a little backlash this time. The police have issued an apology, maybe a few front line officers will be disciplined (somewhat unlikely), then it'll all be forgotten and next time it will barely make the news, and after that its just an everyday occurrence.
The opposition (Labour) party is refusing to say they will repeal the legislation if they win the next election, they haven't said they won't, that's not the politicians way, but what they did say was “We can’t come into office, picking through all the conservative legislation and repealing it” [0].
make no mistake this isn't a law our government wants, its a law our parliament wants, both sides of the house, and it is here to stay, whether we the people want it or not.
It's almost like people that want power and control become politicians to enact laws that give them power and control... Maybe we need some kind of checks and balances on the power of parliament, or maybe, the desire to be a politician should make you ineligible for the role.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/08/labour-urge...
This is exactly what many arrested were doing (or were intending to do)
If only they had this much zest and conviction for actual, troubling issues, dangerous issues. While I agree that disrupting a ceremony now is in poor taste, there are much bigger issues at play in the UK that deserve hands-on policing.
Sorry, what? And it's in good taste to piss away hundreds of millions of taxpayers money on a coronation? Please explain why people having a problem with this shouldn't exercise their right to protest.
The British royal family is accretive to the U.K. The coronation brought in billions of dollars of tourism and earned media. There are legitimate gripes one may have about the British royals, but costing the taxpayer isn't one of them, unless we're at the point of seizing their private lands.
Most people would consider coronating Jimmy Saville's BFF king to be in extremely poor taste. The protesters are the only respectable thing about this farce.
They have a chain of command, and at each level decide where to focus their efforts (guided by existing laws, to be sure). Patrol routes are chosen, dispatchers must (effectively) triage calls, and officers make decisions like whether to assess a warning or a citation.
So there is definitely at least some sense in which the police have discretion. The question is when and how much.
[1] I don't actually know if that's illegal in the UK; in the US it's a federal offense.
It sounds to me that addressing that problem at the enforcement level, as opposed to the legislative level, is the wrong place to address it.
I think it's a little silly people pointing to the extremely limited "discretion" police have and saying they should have used it to ignore the law. That's not how police discretion works and in modern policing it hardly exists alongside it's counterpoint which is : neglect of duty.
Policing is not a job I'd want to do. Damned if you do, damned if you don't; and everyone knows how to do it better than the people actually doing it. But those people given the chance wouldn't do any better.
A real monarchy with absolute power is a facist state by today's standards.
Like you literally didn't have any rights and could be killed on the whim of a noble. Even Magna Carta didn't grabt any rights to peasants and riffraff. The times before it were even more tyranical
But yes, fascism typically includes an appeal to a (imagined) past glory, a close collaboration between corporations and the state, a designated enemy who is both weak enough to be an easy target and strong enough to pose an existential threat and an empowerment of the military and police force. This list doesn't cover most monarchies by any stretch of the imagination even though there are obvious overlaps.
EDIT: I also think it's simplistic to call fascism an ideology as even the historical examples share as many differences as similarities when analyzed as ideologies. I think it's more accurate to call it a strategy or mechanism, or maybe a meta-ideology. There is no "fascist economic model" for example. It's goal is to bring about a social hierarchy through the use of excessive force and typically waves of ever-expanding mass killings of undesirables. It needs an other to eliminate to maintain itself, making it inherently self-destructive.
I think the most accurate description I've seen of fascism is as an "immune system of capitalism" or "capitalism in crisis": it primarily kills the weak, those unable to work, those unwilling to work and those posing a direct or indirect threat to the social order required to maintain the owner-worker hierarchy (e.g. trade unions, socialists, even progressives) and when it eventually collapses, is overthrown or fades away, it reinstates a liberal market economy (i.e. capitalism) while having mostly maintained the power of those that were previously wealthy or were even able to expand their wealth through collaboration.
In the context of this thread, there seems to be the implication that the new laws the UN is objecting to have something to do with the arrests of protestors. After some digging, I can't find evidence that more than a few people (6) were arrested under that law (which generally seems rather bad)? And these people weren't even all charged? It seems to centre around the claimed possession of devices to lock themselves to things in public. Arresting a handful of people you think are maybe going to chain themselves to infrastructure to disrupt an internationally important event---maybe the government didnt act the best here but this hardly seems indicative of a great threat to human rights or a rise of fascism in the UK. I would personally worry more about airport security.
It was literally conceived as an economic system between socialism and capitalism. I think your interpretation is simply incorrect.
https://www.stupidlaws.com/it-is-lawful-to-kill-a-scotsman-i...
Read up on how fascist regimes centralize power, arresting people who object was and is a major aspect of it. By outlawing decent you eventually normalize support for your regime such that even people who despise what’s going on are eventually unwilling to say so.
They may have gotten external damnation for it, but China’s cracking down on protests worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests... What seems counterintuitive is the CCP still makes it very clear you’re not allowed to talk about it because they want people to live in fear. Thus, they very much want people to know and not talk about it.
> Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_work
> 1. a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
> 2. a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
The current Uk government has introduced laws to limit protest as described in this topic; it's also looking to limit the right to strike (ref. current health service pay disputes). Both are consistent with the definition above.
¨Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki ... was an American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a US government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki became the first US citizen to be targeted and killed by a drone strike from the U.S. government.¨
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
He was a terrorist but he still had rights. And then there was the murder of his non-combatant son who was "collateral damage" from a drone strike on a restaurant:
¨Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki ... was a 16-year-old United States citizen who was killed while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant in Yemen by a drone airstrike ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama on October 14, 2011.
...
¨Another U.S. administration official speaking on condition of anonymity described Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as a bystander who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time," stating that "the U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki's son was there" before the airstrike was ordered.[8] When pressed by a reporter to defend the targeted killing policy that resulted in Abdulrahman al-Awlaki's death, former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs deflected blame to the victim's father: "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children. I don't think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."¨
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Aw...
Really? If Charles suddenly issued an order, "seize @trasz4, take him/her to the Tower of London, and chop off his head," do you seriously think anyone in the UK would obey him? More likely Parliament would start the process of declaring him to be Mad King Charles and appointing William as Prince Regent in his place.
I've seen messages online heralding how great it is that everyone loves the king, their evidence being the BBC had no news of any dissent, and there was no evidence of dissent on the ground.
The reality is police arrested people for planning peaceful protests, and the BBC provided their usual biased reporting.
This is not good.
The British government is seriously leaning into censorship, surveillance, and nationalism which is a very dangerous combination. They have even vilified an out group namely immigrants and cracked down on decent. Add in propaganda with strong ties between the government and large private companies really does make me nervous, though I am not expecting things to devolve very quickly the historic left/right divide isn’t particularly important here.
Totalitarianism equates dissent with violence [1]. And here in the UK we have the "Prevent programme" where people who dissent against the prevailing political opinions can be labelled "extremists" even though they have not done anything illegal [2]. Which is very, very concerning. The laws relating to this were passed in 2015.
I fear that those who complain about the restrictions on freedom of speech and erosion of civil liberties in general, here in the UK, could be considered "extremists" by this government and subjected to Prevent related surveillance by intelligence agencies such as GCHQ.
1. https://fee.org/articles/14-signs-of-totalitarianism/
2. https://www.rightsandsecurity.org/assets/downloads/Prevent-i...
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fascist
“a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.” Not the OR is intended as either applies rather than an AND where someone must also have extreme right wing view.
China is not just nationalist but often racist, two characteristics of Fascism but not Communism (which is internationalist and egalitarian). China pushes a market economy under strict government control, creating three legs of Workers, Business Leaders and Government, a facet of Fascism; this is contrasted with the single leg of Communism where everyone is a Worker.
Regardless of whether they're Communist™ or Fascist™, the Chinese government is brutal to its people and often threatens (former) citizens abroad with harm to family members in the PRC. The label is less important than recognizing what they're doing.
And then a switch flipped.
In every government which abuses its people, arresting dissidents was the first resort of the dictators and autocrats.
Beyond that they really just took things much further, it’s hard to find direct parallels to the scale and influence on society of say the Hitler Youth in the 1800’s or before.
History is full of dictators and political purges, but before this they focused on those with actual power.
Fascist political movements/governments however pioneered them. Thus they techniques are labeled fascist even if they where quickly adopted by communist countries etc.
PS: Fascism: “2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
As to timing, it’s the same technological developments which resulted in large companies becoming common and being linked to government for the first time with new options for governmental control.
Radio, telegraph, calculators/computers, and trains allowed for much larger a more homogeneous organizations. The Hitler Youth for example didn’t have similar parallels in the 1800’s and before.
At the same time individuals became less useful to the state. Large prison populations are really expensive in terms of guards and lost productivity. Similarly execution means removing potentially productive people. Historically, only a small number of people within a society would get made examples of until industrialization increased productivity to the point where states could suddenly afford to have secret police capturing large percentages of the population.
Mostly because the technology and bureaucratic mechanisms were not yet sufficiently developed to implement it. It's not as though kings wielding absolute power, ostensibly justified by their god, were champions of liberalism. Maybe a handful liked to think of themselves as liberal humanists, but that was just vanity. More often, these kings had every inclination to be an overt absolute tyrant but simply lacked the technical and organizational means to control large populations in the ways which were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Calling internet censorship etc fascist is a natural evolution of things, but IMO somewhat dilutes the idea. Creating an out group and book burning are part of the playbook, but public spaces have always had some regulations.
The king has no power, that's why he's able to easily bend the national broadcaster and the police force to his will with ease ... that's why we have to get his consent to pass any laws ... that's why the armed services pledge allegiance to him (as monarch) and not to the UK ... that's why we pay him 100s of £millions from taxes ... that's why we organise a hugely costly parade for him in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis ... these are all signs he has no power /s
Of course we do, the order would be ignored. (To whom would he even give the order?) English history is written in constitutional crises.
Well, the death penalty was abolished in the U.K. in the 1990s, so there's that. More significant: habeus corpus, which goes back to somewhere between the Magna Carta and Interregnum.
Even at its height, the Crown's power to unilaterally command executions was intentionally curtailed for centuries.
Liberal democracy is a check on the possible dangerous consequences of full naive democracy.
Hitler's regime came to power democratically.
Breaking the rules to prohibit protest in one specific case may not be fascist, but it isn't the rule of law...
So I guess the MET can point to that as an example of historical precedent and how they handled themselves with relative restraint.
I am still waiting for US public to rise up againsy unconstitutional survailance.
His fate is almost certainly worse than death.
... and how "Eastern" it's starting to look.
Freedom, along with a whole lot other words, doesn't mean what it used to mean.
>Cannabis is a Class B drug in the UK, meaning there is the possibility a five-year prison sentence if you are caught in possession of the drug. >In what countries is weed legal?
>While medicinal cannabis was made legal in the UK in 2018, it is still illegal to use it recreationally.
>If you are caught growing Marijuana, you can face up to 14 years in prison, an unlimited fine or both.
https://metro.co.uk/2023/04/20/what-is-420-the-meaning-behin...
Now, whether there are backchannels on this for the coronation is a different matter...
While failing in their objection to allow a peaceful protest for a one off event...
This reminds me of the meltdowns around the state media labels on Twitter for government-backed state medias.
Ultimately, these are entities created and funded by the government...
The police as an institution always also has their own influence on politics. And if there is one thing police across the world wants, it's to get rid of protests.
People here don't care about being monitored by CCTV because they believe that so long as you keep your head down you'll be fine – and that any respectable person is going to keep their head down anyway.
You'll also find a lot of people here just dislike the act of protest in general. Again, I think it's because protest involves drawing attention to yourself which a large percentage of people here dislike on an instinctive level. So you find even the most agreeable protests seem to receive some level of pushback and shame which I think bleeds into our attitude towards policing. That said, I don't know what it's like in other countries. I just get the sense that the UK has a much more conformist attitude which enables the state to take a more authoritarian approach to policing protest here.
As an example, I'm not an anti-monarch but I was extremely angry about how the police handled anti-monarch protestors during the coronation. Yet when I've spoken to people about this over the weekend, most people have expressed to me that it was rude for there to be protestors at the coronation... But that's the point of protest!! Still, this doesn't change the fact that the act of protest is largely incompatible with our otherwise polite and conformist culture.
Is this the south of England? In my experience, anyone north of Birmingham holds the opposite attitude.
Many monarchists are offended by republican views. For that reason alone, I would have recommended against a republican demonstration in the middle of a large crowd of monarchists (if I'd been asked!)
Also, I don't think republicanism is very widespread among cops, a group of people that tend to have an authoritarian mindset.
I think some people have a sense that the monarchy "is theirs", as if this hyper-privileged family were their own children.
I didn't watch any of the coronation coverage on purpose, but it's been devliishly difficult to avoid. Something that struck me is that many of the most ardent monarchists in the crowd seemed to be yanks and aussies. I find that really weird.
It's not weird if you consider that only foreigners who give a shit will bother to come. Add that to them this whole thing is distant enough to treat it as a theme park where they can larp their mediaval fantasies and it only makes sense.
Too bad they aren't phased by covering up sexual crimes then uh?
We've handed over many public spaces to private interests and cctv proliferated that way, arguably with even less oversight than had the gov done it.
By and large the UK feels like a gutted country, where every scavenging corporation took one organ and left.
[1] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/475342/police-step-up-su...
Yes, it was.
> But that's the point of protest!!
No, it is not.
From Cambridge Dictionary: "protest": a strong complaint expressing disagreement, disapproval, or opposition.
You can express your dissenting opinions without being rude. And, by the way, the monarchy has been in UK for centuries, and it is still there: if you don't like it, you have any day available to protest. No need to pick that particular day when you can be most disruptive.
Why should your right to be seen be more important than the right of the government to organize a nice party for an event that will be in history books?
You have the right to protest, but the others must retain the right to ignore you. You talking in the centre of the public square, in the middle of the market, is ok; you screaming in my ear is not.
Unless you want to call right-leaning and left-leaning dictatorships both "fascist".
There are people thinking that we should not spend our public money on the monarchy. This viewpoint is absolutely topical on the very day when a large chunk of money is being spent on celebrating something they don't want to celebrate.
If you think that is rude, bad for you. Sometimes people will be rude to you and you have to take it.
They may be right, they may be wrong. They surely have the right to express their opinions. But the fundamental question is: who cares? Or, actually: how many people care?
If enough people cared, that would be on the agenda of a major political party. If it isn't, they have to suck it up.
I don't know. But I care about their right to shout their slogans and wave their placards more than I care about the existence or non-existence of the monarchy.
I do, too. I would have sympathised more with them in any other day, though.
Actually, I personally could not care less about coronation, so every protest going on that day just slipped over me :-)
If you didn't care, why would you even be in this thread?
Maybe they care but are scared by the nazi squads, ehm the police?
... Yes pick a day when no one will notice.
sips tea with pinky out
The monarchy is classism personified.
Do you not think that by not being anti-monarchy you're tacitly OK with a class based society, and that's a part of where the conformism comes from - class identity?
Bear in mind the various loyalty swearing that goes on - MPs, Armed Forces, Police, is loyalty sworn first and foremost to the Monarch - implicitly a person at the top of a heirarchy of class.
No. Newborn babies aren't anti-monarchy either. Are they part of the problem? This rhetoric of "silence is violence" is deeply polarizing.
Actually they are since monarchy is at odds with the basic human rights we are all born with.
Similarly, we're born with human rights as ratified in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. To your point, they're moot if not enforced -- I get that. But it's easier to enforce what exists than to fight for the original law.
Why does the UN get to dictate human rights and not some other body? Did those human rights exist before the UN or not?
After the New Model Army chopped off a previous monarch's head (they purged parliament and the remaining MPs passed legislation that found King Charles I guilty of treason) I can see why subsequent monarchs were somewhat keen to have an oath of Loyalty.
This is exactly my position too.
And if you force me to chose between a) democracy, free speech and right to protest OR b) a monarchy, then I will very quickly become an anti-monarchist.
The fact that the government felt that they had to rush in legislation in the last week which was - completely predictably - used to detain people unlawfully, to save possible embarrassment during the coronation, has done nothing to improve my view of our monarchy whatsoever.
I struggle to believe that this would have happened without some sort of implicit or explicit pressure from Buckingham Palace. They did afterall have veto rights on aspects of BBC coverage [0] so it seems highly unlikely to me that they weren't also working with the government to attempt to "contain" possible protests.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/05/revealed-roy...
As for why I support this, I think it makes sense diplomatically to have an apolitical head of state and I also believe the British monarch functions similarly to second amendment in the US. If the UK ever needed to revolt against the government the monarch serves as way in which the public (and armed forces) could side with the state over the government. I cannot express how much I like that our armed forces swear allegiance to a largely powerless Monarch that represents the state rather than Rishi Sunak.
However, getting back on topic here, the fact the UK has a monarch in my opinion has zero relevance to the fact the UK is becoming a place increasingly hostile to protest. Instead, it seems to me to be far more to do with the fact our two major political parties both have authoritarian tendencies, which I suspect stems from the UK having cultural values which lend themselves to certain kinds of authoritarian social policies.
Specifically, laws around limiting "improper" behaviour like rowdy protests, being rude online, and consuming porn that's a little too edgy seem to be ways in which our dislike of improper behaviour manifest politically. In most ways we're quite a liberal society, but there are certain ways that our conformist and overly polite nature seems to work its way into our politics via democracy – protest perhaps being the most clear example of something that people here seem to struggle with since freedom of expression requires an acceptance of impoliteness.
> Specifically, laws around limiting "improper" behaviour like rowdy protests, being rude online, and consuming porn that's a little too edgy seem to be ways in which our dislike of improper behaviour manifest politically.
Jimmy Saville was way worse than any porn, yet his main enabler just became king. The outrage about the “impolite” seems very unevenly distributed.
No. They dont.
>He’s also powerful enough that people can be arrested for protesting his coronation.
Also No. That was the government.
I'm responding to this post:
> If the UK ever needed to revolt against the government the monarch serves as way in which the public (and armed forces) could side with the state over the government. I cannot express how much I like that our armed forces swear allegiance to a largely powerless Monarch that represents the state rather than Rishi Sunak.
The article we're commenting on makes it very clear that the UK is a monarchy and that the monarch has the power to disrupt public life at great expense to the public and to have said public arrested for offending them.
It absolutely doesn't. The article doesn't even mention the word monarchy.
It was written before the recent arrests at the coronation.
We can talk about what influence the monarchy may try to exert on the government behind the scenes (and I believe there will be some - and there shouldn't be) but back channeling aside, our democratically elected government is the body which runs our country, not the monarchy, and therefore is correctly the target of this article.
You don’t need a monarch to have problems with police overreach and overly draconian/authoritarian laws being brought in.
I think we can safely say that this happens in all types of political/governing systems.
That’s the crux of the issue being talked about in the article.
The issue of the Royal Family is related (and particularly relevant given recent events) but the two issues should not be conflated fully.
I was up in arms, and shouldn't have even commented.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vette...
The UK is a democracy.
> Can I ask why someone wouldn't be anti-monarch in 2023?
The sibling comment by kypro [0] answers this question much better than I could have. But at the same time, I'm not the British Royal Family's most diehard supporter by any means.
The UK is a democracy, technically a more well functioning democracy than some supposedly first world nations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#List_by_countr...
I never understood how this conformist attitude came to be exhibited from a people that on every other occasion, to the styles itself as proud.
Seems like, domestically a very different game is played.
What we call 'The King's Peace' is the British sense of fair play. You can do whatever you like as long as you don't interfere with my equal right to do the same. Where those two try to occupy the same space, then the current majority opinion will prevail and the minority suppressed.
Breaching the King's Peace is a public order offence.
The right to protest in the UK is the right to be heard and listened to voluntarily, not to dominate proceedings or act in a manner that heads towards terrorism. Where there is intelligence that physical disruption was on the cards, the authorities are right to step in and head it off. That is the British way.
Most people in the UK still support the monarchy. Nobody stopped Spiked publishing their views on Republicanism, and nobody was forced to read it. That's free speech.
If the individuals objecting had waved a few placards and otherwise been respectful to those whose views differ from their own they would have been left alone. They didn't do that and were removed. I suspect that was the idea since that leads to greater publicity.
A bit difficult to get heard once you get arrested for having violated no law… Funny that when putin does this to political opponents he's a dictator, but king charles is a great guy uh?
Come to the Bay! Honestly it's not the first time I hear the exact same sentiment from Brits living here in California.
Has King Charles made any efforts or donated any money to causes that could help the people in this time of recession and retraction from the EU? I know he isn't supposed to be involved in politics, but if he doesn't speak as the "conscious of a nation" then he really does seem without purpose at great cost.
These types of bills/laws are those of authoritarian governments fearful of its own population wising up to what has happened or what the authoritarians are up to and they want to make sure they can snuff out any little bit of burgeoning opposition before it can organize and get off the ground. It’s the repression part of 1984 style government. It’s the same thing all authoritarian, evil governments do, regardless of how long they can get away with it or how much the brainwashed masses go along with it, even if just out of fear.
The presence of the cameras is a marker for what's going wrong with government and society. That the state is imposing the surveillance on us. And the people happen to tolerate it.
It has the potential to get worse, the Police are rolling out facial recognition, but by that time I will have left the UK for good, due to our civil liberties situation, in particular the forced encryption key disclosure laws.
I wonder if those cameras will ever go away. How long is it going to take, 20 years, 50 years, or even more?
When are we going to get our public spaces back? So we can be ourselves, be spontaneous, silly, eccentric, protest and so on, without experiencing the psychological effects of pervasive recording by the state. And thus the chilling effects.
I'll point out that the vast, vast majority of the UK's CCTV cameras are privately owned and installed, not connected together, but having worked in retail positions, an awful lot of them aren't even working or turned on and used soley for deterrance.
Like, going by this: https://clarionuk.com/resources/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-in... (which may or may not be accurate, looks like they did their work on it), cameras controlled by the Metropolitan Police, local councils and TfL come to less than 10% of the total.
Blame insurance companies, not the state.
Maybe the state was the first to introduce the cameras, once the public got accustomed to them, then private actors were able to get away with it afterwards?
We also have the TfL London Underground and National Rail cameras, which are very likely to be linked to Police systems. Public transit is where people's movements can be tracked very effectively.
And we now have services such as Facewatch where these private cameras are networked. And the Ring doorbell cameras. No idea what intelligence agencies might be doing with that data? Running facial recognition on every video stream? Just as they did with people's webcam images (from the Snowden leaks).
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webca...
And Amazon does have a lot of contracts with the government for cloud computing services. They wouldn't want to lose those, would they? So it's a distinct possibility, given what we learned from the Snowden leaks.
It got pretty ridiculous at one point where one restaurant I knew of was told to put up 5 CCTV cameras by the police as a condition of their alcohol licence.
This wasn't a pack 'em and feed 'em booze restaurant, just a perfectly normal couples style restaurant.
Afaik the local council eventually reined the police in, but the police just don't seem to view any of it as a massive invasion of privacy, or consider the cost to the businesses involved.
There's only upsides for the police requesting more, no downsides as they don't bear the cost.
Wait until processors for AI start getting integrated into these cameras.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-cameras-highways-stop-tra...
" AI cameras are being set up on highways to catch drivers who throw trash out of their car windows "
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/07/artificial-intel...
Though I can't help thinking that a big part of the creep is driven more by spineless pandering to various public constituencies and short term perceived vote winning rather than a particularly thought through desire to crush dissent.
Never mind the effect is much the same.
Well, a problem of the moment needs a solution now. I hear many fellow leftists complaining about several "authoritarian", "fascist" laws, but I've never heard a proposal for a law that would be less "authoritarian", or "fascist", while at the same time solving the actual problem we had in the first place.
By the way, working "to fix the situation within the existing laws" fits the definition of "doing something", too. But complaining that a law is bad and the instead we should have done "something" does not look like a constructive criticism to me.
No, not all, but definitely some eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_and_Environmental_Zone
> The US kills many more people with guns, but it's so passé, old news, let them die. But a bomb, that gets people outraged, 'we have to do something'.
The United States has not, in the last century or so anyway -- maybe during Reconstruction -- actually experienced widespread targeted violence of the kind experienced in the UK and Ireland during the Troubles. More than 10,000 bombs exploded, many hundreds killed, many thousands injured. And that's just the bombs, not the shootings etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bombings_during_the_Tr... Unlike American spree killers, most of these killings were highly targeted political acts. They weren't making a mountain of a molehill, in terms of the violence itself. It was a black mark for many decades for the two islands.
The people didn’t ask for it, they had a prepackaged idea sold to them leveraging the crisis of the moment (and even then it was controversial at the time.)
True of the Department of Homeland Security, true of many similar crisis responses.
[1]: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/default/files/230-priks.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#Un...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_the_United...
In Sweden the current government is on its way to defund the largest opposition party.
The swedish riksdag recebtly (with broad support) changed the constitution to limit the freedom of speech.
Poland and Hungary are shitfests, with almost complete political control of the justice system.
Spain has increased the ability to give large civil fines, seemingly disconnected from the regular juridical process (please correct me on this one. My Spanish is sub-par).
Edit: my poland name-calling was apparently uncalled for. There are other bad things going on, with Kaczyński at the rudder.
That's not exactly true, Poland is a country where most of the judges are basically in open rebellion against the current government, and the government can't do shit about it.
It's a cliche at this point but this reality is what the American constitution was designed to combat.
Not really true in Poland. They kinda tried to take it over from other political side, but failed, hard.
What's worst is that Polish justice system is, and always was, a shitshow in general - judges have deadlines, but no penalties for ignoring them... and they are only judged by other judges. Complaining can get your case stonewalled, and there are plenty of catch-22 situations where you can't do anything.
And what current ruling party incompetently did basically destroyed any chances of that changing in next 10-20 years, or more.
Gross incompetence is the theme of current government.
Source?
There's been a recurring theme where a Danish right wing extremist named Rasmus Paludan crosses the border every once in a while and burn's the Quran outside of various embassies for muslim-majority countries.
In 2020 there was a proposal to make it illegal on the basis of the consistent consequences of these actions (riots, damaged international relations, increased threat profile against the country ect). AFAIK, this proposal fizzled out and never lead anywhere.
In general, these things indicate how the much cherished and hard-fought rights can be sacrificed at the altar of geopolitics and/or security.
> In Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) Press Freedom Index 2023, Sweden dropped one spot and ranks fourth. One reason is the new law against foreign espionage, which came into effect on January 1st of this year.
> The law, which makes it a crime to disclose information that may damage Sweden's relations with other states or organizations, has already had an impact on journalism.
> Last week, SVT chose to stop a publication for the first time citing the spy law, despite the fact that exceptions are allowed for journalistic purposes. The news concerned map images from the Pentagon Leak regarding Ukrainian energy supply.
Please attempt to be more nuanced.
That's what happens when there's no written concise framework of government but centuries of "tradition" and "precedent" that are improvised upon, and which have no special threshold of change (e.g. to change the constitution in some countries requires a special assembly, or qualified majority, or plebiscite, etc.).
Takes time though but there's examples where the judges have deemed a law unlawful. Usually based on common law basis.
With this law I'd say that all of what it's trying to address is already covered by existing laws.
For example, harassment in public spaces is already illegal.
Oh, that's a great basis. Some random lord sued another random merchant in the 16th century and a judge decided whatever, how very useful as a legal base upon which to decide modern things. (Like that story which is the basis of contract law about some ships a couple of centuries ago).
It's quite sad how obsolete and overcomplicated for no reason whatsoever (as in, to understand a case today, you have to go dig up precedents going back centuries to understand how they might impact this case; no wonder there's entire professions, software, AI assistants to help lawyers navigate this quagmire) common law is, and how countries have stuck with it.
I think the point of "common law" is that the precedents describe laws that people basically understand, and they expect that what governs their behaviour now is the law they understand.
Statute law, especially modern statute law, tends to be a mess of exceptions, definitions and cross-references. It's all legalese, and only an expert can understand it. Plus, it's all subject to intepretation by the courts, so precedent affects statute law as well as common law. And unlike statutes, most court precedents aren't publicly accessible, unless you have access to a law library or Westlaw.
If you expect people to obey the law, then you need to express it in ways that people can understand. If they don't know what the law is, you can't expect them to comply.
One of the nice things about the US constitution is that it's mostly written in fairly plain English. I suppose that might be why many non-Americans admire it. One of the nastiest things about it, though, is that its so damned difficult to change.
My understanding is that typically precedent is used in the absence of statute law and for the interpretation of statute law, so a new law will typically override older precedents.
Perhaps it's up to a judge to decide which takes precedence if two statutes contradict each other, but really that shouldn't happen (Parliament employs lawyers to check for that sort of thing) and if a statute states explicitly that it overrides an earlier one then it does so, as I understand it.
(I'm not a lawyer, not even a competent amateur, just interested in this stuff and hoping someone will correct my misunderstandings.)
The US even went so far as to imprison the leader of the Socialist Party for his opposition to the WWI draft and urging resistance. He ran his final presidential campaign from a prison cell.
People seem to look across the pond with envy at the US, neatly forgetting the completely different arrangements that make their constitution hard to amend, and also forgetting the problems that arise from having a hard-to-amend constitution (e.g. the second amendment).
I wonder why they don't lead their manifesto with the statement "we believe that parliament should no longer be sovereign"?
It's that the excuse the UK uses when it breaks international agreements? And I wonder how it works for the ones it hasn't broken (e.g. Good Friday) or stuff like debts.
And things existing "for a good while" is a shitty reason for them to continue existing. The same could be applied to the monarch, or the legal system.
Any country is free to break whatever treaties they previously signed. There's just usually consequences to doing so, which is why we still have peace in Northern Ireland.
> And things existing "for a good while" is a shitty reason for them to continue existing. The same could be applied to the monarch, or the legal system.
Oh I completely agree. It's just that if you want to re-invent the wheel, you need to be realistic about how much work and disruption will be involved, and the knock-on effects there will be.
I think people underestimate how much expertise and knowledge we have baked into our system based on these long-standing principles, and what we'd lose by throwing them away.
Similarly, there's a lot of hand-waving and contradiction. "The will of the people should be the basis of the authority of government." contradicts "Citizens have the right to be protected from tyranny, whether the tyranny of one or the tyranny of the majority;". If the will of the people is to deport all black people, then which institution is going to protect them? What protects that institution from being dismantled by the will of the people?
I'm no monarchist, but the republican movement really needs to put a bit more effort in than that. This stuff is hard.
I don't really think US is really the amazing freedom loving place they're supposed to be either. There is plenty of spying on citizens, repression of whistleblowers and the like. Luke at Snowden, he should be rewarded in a truly freedom loving society.
The illusion of freedom is there but I personally think it's really a small fraction of rich people doing pretty much whatever they damn well please with very little oversight and hope of more equality.
And yet we decry the way China handled protests in Hong Kong. The UK population are blindly walking into deeper in to the dark ... but hey, as long as the McDonald's drive-thru is has milkshakes there's no problem?
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/protests-and-marches-letting-the-police-k...
March, not protest. From your own source:
> If there’s no march organised as part of your protest, you do not have to tell the police.
On the few occasions I've organised protests I did inform them, because although they didn't really care about protests they don't like surprises.
I must say, I think that's legitimately a concern for the police.
The issue is the legislation doesn't specify those things and just allows control of protests for basically any reason at the discretion of the police.
The police are not equipped to make those societal decisions IMHO, and the legislation is far far too loose.
Incidentally, the times when the legislation is abused tends to be the times when it matters greatly that it isn't.
Section 14 of the Public Order Act: - Public Assemblies "As with Section 12, the senior officer may impose conditions on public assemblies, which he considers are reasonably necessary to prevent serious public disorder etc. Unlike Section 12, the conditions he may reasonably impose are in this case limited to specifying: a) the numbers of people who may take part, b) the location of the assembly, and c) its maximum duration.
An assembly is defined by Section 16 of the Act as consisting of two people or more"
In effect, the police can limit the size, location and duration of an assembly at their discretion. That is, they can end it, make it so small it doesn't matter or move it to somewhere it doesn't matter.
Effective assembly control.
"The Public Order Act 2023 was passed by parliament exactly a week ago, on 2 May. Regulations were made that day by a Home Office minister bringing sections 1 and 2 — as well as several other sections — into force a day later, on 3 May.
"This is unusual for new criminal offences. A couple of months is usually allowed for the Home Office to issue a circular explaining how the new offence is to be used. Those at risk of committing the new offence — people who carry bicycle locks, for example — can learn how the law has changed and seek legal advice. Police forces have time to train their officers. Police lawyers might regard items that can easily be cut — luggage straps or cable-ties, for example — as not capable of leading to serious disruption.
"Only a day’s notice was given on this occasion, presumably so that the new law could be used against anyone intending to disrupt the Coronation. Home Office officials apparently wrote to demonstrators but it is not surprising that the subtleties of the new law did not filter down to front-line police in time." [1]
I'm absolutely not a supporter of the current UK government, and I think the met police are pretty incompetent when they're not being corrupt, but the above may partly explain some the weekend's events wrt protest.
(Personally I think its a bad law, created for authoritarian purposes, rushed into effect, and incompetently implemented by police who seem only too happy to protect the interests of the state over the freedom of citizens.)
[1] https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/police-regret-anti-monarchy...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "I'm not a supporter of the current government BUT" - it seems like the quote explains perfectly how bad it is.
I agree that that is the government's intention. I'm not sure the police are that smart.
> I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "I'm not a supporter of the current government BUT" - it seems like the quote explains perfectly how bad it is.
In pointing to a commentary that hypothesises that the rapid introduction of the legal powers may partly explain the police's heavy-handed behaviour, I'm not trying to excuse either the govt or the police. The may be multiple factors at work here: government authoritarianism, police complicity with that authoritarianism, and also police confusion.
I'm sure it is a mistake. He surely meant China. /s
One simple bullshit apology later and they have plausible deniability. "Oh, we'll learn a lesson for next time Charles has a coronation"
Democracy is dying by a thousand cuts.
Utterly unacceptable!
Right-wing "English Constitution Party" were going to demonstrate with rape alarms (https://twitter.com/ProfColinDavis/status/165555531421578035...) and that got 'confused' in the more rabid press as 'eco-zealots' plot' sort of stuff.
The Met decided they needed to be seen to act to remove the "dangerous" rape alarms, but the easiest way to do that was to arrest these poor folks (https://twitter.com/ProfColinDavis/status/165561644937587509...). The police knew they knew were around and had rape alarms because that's their job and the police gave them the alarms.
Anyhoo, the rabid press, the deeply populist government, and the disgraced met police (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65164489) are quite a mix.
For instance – I worked in Belfast while a series of flag protests took place (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_City_Hall_flag_prote...) in 2012. In my view, these protestors had every right to make their views publicly visible and known.
But when they organised "rings of steel" around the city, preventing drivers from coming and going about their business, as they did on a few occasions, they had gone too far.
I don't know the full details of the anti-monarchist arrests, but unless they were planning to disrupt the events, I feel they should not have been arrested.
But I would argue that the Cornoation is an important public ceremony / event with every right to go ahead.
It's the same as when a foreign head of state visits and the police cordon off the roads for security.
In my view, this is different to pressure or protest groups disrupting traffic or public events.
If President Biden visits the UK, people should not be able to stop his going about a state visit. But they should be allowed to protest with banners and so on if they so wish.
Same with presidents and whatnot. They can do their jobs without all that theatre.
You can stand around in a group in a fenced off corner and make some noise and no one will care.
You can annoy people, disrupt a small part of their lives and suddenly they will have an opinion on what you are protesting about, but also an opinion on what protesting should be.
Disruptive protests do eventually change the little part of the world around you, for better or worse.
What next, strikes that you can only do while working?
Perhaps we should only be allowed to criticise government with prior written permission where we detail the criticism and they can veto or censor it? ... oh wait, like marches and protests[1]
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/protests-and-marches-letting-the-police-k...
Look I get roads being closed is crap, and you could argue that if they don't allow emergency services through then they're doing direct harm.
A protest isn't supposed to be defined, it is outrage expressed. We're supposed to look and listen and think about how a big enough group of people to be disruptive felt the need.
It isn't tolerated, that's the point.
Note: Blocking roads is directly addressed in Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980 which prevents you from ‘wilfully obstructing the free passage along a highway without lawful authority or excuse’. This police power is often used to remove demonstrators who are standing outside buildings, sitting down blockading entrances or roads and in many public order situations.
This wouldn't be so controversial if people didnt call riots protests.
They've been gradually pushing fascist laws into place for years, this is just the latest in a long stream. I honestly don't understand why nobody seems more concerned about stuff like this.
People are exhausted by a never-ending parade of scandals. The conservative government should have been out in 2019, but were saved by having a socialist, Corbyn led opposition party that did not resonate with any of their centrist Blairite voter base. Labour crumbled into infighting, and the Conservatives swept up another 48 seats.
Most people just want to keep their heads down and make it through this period of financial uncertainty, waiting out until the next general election so they can oust the Conservatives. Of course the Tories are going to try and sneak in as much abhorrent policy as they can in the time they have left.
Do you mean all time high? "Apathy" means a "lack of interest or concern"[1], so "all time low lack of interest or concern" would suggest political interest is at an all time high due to double negatives ("low lack").
Labour have been captured by the fringe outside of its own party, so I don't have much hopes for Labour over the Tories.
I hear this a lot from a lot of people in and around the Labour Party, but no one seems to agree on who is 'inside' and who is 'outside'. Which fringe are you referring to? The "Blairite" fringe or the "Corbynista" fringe.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/inflation-cpi
The problem with the Tories is that they have imposed some of the highest levels of personal taxation ever seen. If the Conservatives are not a low tax party, then they lose their whole purpose and we get the Labour-lite Davos-man bunch of incompetents we have now.
As someone who lives within walking distance of an abortion clinic, I can say that it is a very serious issue and money is pouring in to anti-choice groups in the UK.
And if anti-abortionists can demonstrate elsewhere, which they can and do, it isn't much of an issue. It's not as if the pro-life camp is at risk of not having their views heard if they can't block the doors to abortion clinics and call women whores and killers right to their faces.
That is quite the movement of goalposts. "Outside an abortion clinic" is by definition a public space. Inside my house is not a public space. Demonstrating in a public space should be protected as free speech.
Now maybe try to address my actual point, which is that no rights are absolute and always need to be balanced in context against other rights and public safety.
>Demonstrating in a public space should be protected as free speech.
That, for me, is an absolute.
Demonstrating doesn't include blocking a highway or not allowing entrance to such clinic. Not even touching a client or worker. But staying there? Yes of course it should be protected.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the comments, downvoted into the grey, someone even linked an article pointing out that these protests included roadblocks that stopped ambulances getting through. Clearly public safety only matters sometimes. (And to be clear, this wasn't an incidental side effect of some protest where the sheer volume of protesters caused disruption. Building blockades and maintaining them for days/weeks was the protest action.)
Using the term "vulnerable young women" is trying to remove the agency from them, which is despicable.
Would you be okay if, for the rest of your life, protesters stood in front of your home and shouted "die for breathing, die for breathing"? Presumably not, right? Although you're mentally capable of breathing, which should mean you're mentally capable of hearing that doing that is wrong?
> Using the term "vulnerable young women" is trying to remove the agency from them, which is despicable.
Can you explain why? I don't see how any agency is removed from them. Pregnancy itself makes women more vulnerable, and someone going through a very hard decision will be impacted even more. Whose agency did I just try to remove?
Or could it be that you're just projecting?
I wouldn't like it if people shouted slogans in front of my house but they have a right to it.
If women are in a vulnerable, hormonal state maybe they shouldn't be the ones making these decisions. Either they can make the decision and go through the consequences, or they can't. There's no middle ground of doing something and then having people who disagree with what you did silenced.
So? Did your earlier messages include anything on breathing or killing? There were no specifiers.
> I wouldn't like it if people shouted slogans in front of my house but they have a right to it.
Alright, awesome on you for consistency! I don't think they have the right, and I'm lucky to live somewhere that also wouldn't think so.
> If women are in a vulnerable, hormonal state maybe they shouldn't be the ones making these decisions.
Why are you trying to take agency away from women? Didn't you just say this kind of behavior is despicable?
It's absolutely bonkers that convenience murder trumps the terrors of motherhood.
Absolutely bonkers that the rights of a brainless clump of cells trumps the rights of half our population.
Pets can't be vulnerable? Trees can't be vulnerable? Buildings can't be vulnerable?
Perhaps the baby is extra vulnerable exactly because it isn't a person yet capable of defending itself. It will become one though, unless someone murders it out of selfish convenience.
Definitely not in the same way a human can! Or would you leave a person to bleed out after a car crash so you don't damage the tree more?
> It will become one though, unless someone murders it out of selfish convenience.
If we agree that the unborn fetus isn't yet a person, why are you talking about murder? Seems like it's all good to me.
We don't agree that an unborn fetus isn't yet a person. I was deconstructing your logic. I think a person is created the moment sex cells fuse. Sometimes I even think about the hypothetical potential of a person and what they'd want me to do, such that they could one day exist and tell me.
My use of the word 'murder' is for dramatic effect to emphasize my beliefs. I concede that it's an opinion counter to the current laws, and thus technically incorrect. Still gonna call it that though.
I would treat an animal I hit with my car very differently from a human, since I'd call an ambulance for a human, but would bring the animal into an animal clinic myself. Would you not call an ambulance for a human, or would you call an ambulance for an animal? Which one is it?
> I think a person is created the moment sex cells fuse.
Are you trying to do anything about IVF clinics? If I were to follow your standards, that would be way worse for me, since IVF clinics produce a big surplus of inseminated eggs. Every couple might kill multiple "babies" instead of just one.
> My use of the word 'murder' is for dramatic effect to emphasize my beliefs.
Could you try to refrain from doing so for our conversation? I'm going to take what you write literally since I assume you're writing in good faith, so misrepresenting your own positions is just going to hurt the discussion.
True, but at least they do so unintentionally and in the pursuit of creating life. It's still kinda bad, especially if the woman needs IVF because she put off her motherly duties for so long she can't concieve naturally.
A woman getting an abortion is doing so intentionally and in the pursuit of her own convenience. In my opinion that should be criminal negligence, so I call it murder. That's not a misrepresentation of my position, that's what I actually believe. I know current laws disagree. That doesn't affect my position. Laws have been so very very wrong before, too.
So we agree that things that aren't persons can be vulnerable, but we disagree on the degree of vulnerability. Is my understanding correct that in your opinion a human being with a functioning brain is by definition more vulnerable than any other kind of life? So you equate vulnerability with degree of consciousness, presumably due to its ability to comprehend pain and injustice?
That's not true, they do so fully intentionally. That's what should make it way worse than abortion: they create babies just to kill them! Why does it matter that it's in the pursuit of life? Or could it be that you dislike abortion for other reasons than you previously stated?
> A woman getting an abortion is doing so intentionally and in the pursuit of her own convenience.
And a woman getting IVF is doing so intentionally and in the pursuit of her own family wishes. Imagine if every family sacrificed dozens of children to receive their newborn. Why are you not fighting against this monstrous horror?
Nobody goes to an IVF clinic intent to kill babies. Everyone goes to an abortion clinic explicitly to kill babies. IVF could be attempted one life at a time. What you're describing is a cost-cutting measure, a technical implementation detail of the clinic, and who said I'm not fighting against it?
> Why does it matter that it's in the pursuit of life?
Killing in the pursuit of life is less worse than killing in the pursuit of death.
Everyone goes to an IVF clinic knowing they'll kill multiple babies in the process. How can this be acceptable to a single person?
> IVF could be attempted one life at a time. What you're describing is a cost-cutting measure, a technical implementation detail of the clinic, and who said I'm not fighting against it?
You didn't say anything against it so far. So based on your statements it would be okay to abort babies to save the mothers some money, right? After all you find IVF acceptable, where they kill babies to save money?
> Killing in the pursuit of life is less worse than killing in the pursuit of death.
Really? Does the law say that? Is it generally okay to kill people if you also create new people?
Knowledge =/= intent. And I bet most people going to IVF don't know the process involves killing viable babies, unless and until they are informed of it at the clinic. Regardless, it's definitely not the intention, but an unnecessary side-effect. If I had to peruse IVF, I'd take my business to an ethical clinic that doesn't do such cost-cutting, just like I buy ethical food even though it's more expensive. Factory meat is torture and murder for me as well.
> You didn't say anything against it so far.
Factually incorrect. Me, two days ago [1] in reply to you, about killing babies in IVF process: "It's still kinda bad".
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35882796
> Really? Does the law say that? Is it generally okay to kill people if you also create new people?
A very good and complex question with ethical dilemmas and conflicting precedent.
The simplest case is that of self-defense and defense of others. If suspect A is threatening to murder victim B, it's largely accepted that killing suspect A to preserve victim B's life is a necessary evil, especially if victim B is a pregnant woman.
According to the old unwritten Custom of the Sea it was accepted until 1884 that shipwreck survivors were forgiven for killing and eating each other to pervail. Mignonette The case of R v Dudley and Stephens (1884 14 QBD 273 DC) convicted two sailors to six months imprisonment for murdering and eating their unconscious crewmate to survive, which de facto set the practice antiquated and illegal.
Consider the maternal–fetal conflict of an unconscious woman in childbirth with complications lethal to both herself and the baby, doctors able to save one but not both (somewhat common trope in media). My understanding is that the husband gets to decide which of them dies by choosing who to save, and conventional wisdom says to save the baby at the mother's expense. My cursory search provided poor information so I don't know.
From a practical and moral standpoint I consider this an analogue of the trolley problem, and posit that yes, of course an act of killing is less worse if it additionally results in a new life (or saving of existing one(s)). That's the natural precedent for predation.
How does that matter? Have you ever encountered the concept of "negligence"? You're knowingly and willfully killing multiple babies.
> Regardless, it's definitely not the intention, but an unnecessary side-effect. If I had to peruse IVF, I'd take my business to an ethical clinic that doesn't do such cost-cutting, just like I buy ethical food even though it's more expensive.
And yet you're not trying to get those baby murderers classified as baby murderers, are you? You're okay with letting people choose whether they want to murder babies to save money. Why are you okay with it in this context, and not in the context of abortion?
> Factually incorrect. Me, two days ago [1] in reply to you, about killing babies in IVF process: "It's still kinda bad".
Okay, I'll give you that. You paid lip service. Good job!
> The simplest case is that of self-defense and defense of others. If suspect A is threatening to murder victim B, it's largely accepted that killing suspect A to preserve victim B's life is a necessary evil, especially if victim B is a pregnant woman.
Self-defense and defense of others doesn't factor in, because you're not defending anybody against anything. Nobody is in danger, you're just murdering babies because you desire something. Would you mind trying again with some kind of real analogue?
It is a smaller scale version of the cameron government that cut everything to the bone, but they legalised gay marriage (though needed labour votes to actually get it done) so they aren't the bad guys, right? (obviously that was separate bills but I think the point works on a larger scale too)
Right now though, we have these protections and if they repeal (which they should), I hope they leave those protections in place.
Search for UK abortion clinic news. No it's no where near as bad as what happens in the US but it has been getting worse.
The laws already on the books made it possible to secure orders to make a group stop for example, congregating outside your clinic harassing patients, but this power is very limited, it's local (so if your local politicians aren't supportive, too bad, even if they aren't actively working against you chances are you'll never get it up the agenda far enough to actually get a legal order without their support) and it expires - and so you end up with a situation where lots of places would like to get an order, but few secure one, and then when they do local budget constraints make it hard to justify keeping it - after all the harassment is gone, and we could use that cash to do something else.
The ideal would be to live in a society where people didn't feel like screaming "murderer" at strangers and lying to as many people as possible was a reasonable social activity.
Do they also prevent pro-abortion fanatics from demonstrating outside churches and the offices of anti-abortion lawmakers?
How does the US try to export their bullshit to the UK?
Are you sure all of that is not just a consequence of economies of scale and using a common language?
It does not take a grand conspiracy to influence businesses to seek more profit by selling their near zero marginal cost media to other English speaking countries.
But I also would not characterize it as “trying to export their bullshit”.
It is UK residents deciding to spend their time and money on content made by/for Americans, so would it equivalently be described as “UK trying to import the US’s bullshit”?
Fairly new Fox News equivalent but with far less viewers
It would also be a mistake to assume any of this is what one might call natural cultural contamination.
But there's only so much Bieber and Rush you can listen to and I honestly can't even think of a Canadian television show.
So you can see that this frog has already been boiled.
And Canada has always had Canada-first set asides.
But don't be naive. If they are importing this whole mess, it must mean it works to some extend.
Are you sure it’s not voluntary consumption of our media by members of your own nation?
Of course, you do also get ridiculous police overreach where a woman was arrested for praying silently in her head outside an abortion clinic.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268439/legal-abortion-t...
But there are still stories of women getting arrested and prosecuted for having abortions, eg https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-women-in-uk-face-...
They haven't been banned, they've been moved 100m down the road from outside the doors of the clinic.
A very fair, and reasonable compromise I feel.
There are some videos of "religious fanatics" standing alone, silently, outside abortion clinics, being moved on by police, on the suspicion that they are praying in their minds.
You can't really pick and choose which views are acceptable. Either you have the right to protest peacefully, guided by your own conscience, or you don't.
They are allowed to protest and have a protected right to do so; 100m down the road, where they cannot harass vulnerable women.
That's the law, and I hope it stays that way.
[0] https://adf.uk/parliament-introduces-thought-crime/
[1] https://aleteia.org/2023/03/09/pray-get-arrested-repeat-uk-w...
[2] https://aleteia.org/2022/12/24/uk-woman-arrested-for-silent-...
ADF in particular are not nice people. In 2003 they even tried to recriminalise homosexuality in the US.[1]
Speaking as a local resident who has to put up with her group taking up space, disrupting locals and during the pandemic flanking the outside of the abortion clinic with their faces covered, I think they should move 100m up the road where their impact is limited but they can offer whatever "help" they want to people who seek it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Defending_Freedom#Opp...
In some countries, your right to to access abortion trumps someone elses right to stand outside and make you feel bad about it. I'm OK with that. As are the majority of folks in the UK.
-- Apocalypse, John (in some parallel universe not far from ours)
This feels like a partisan hatchet job. There is a balance. Freedom of protest does not give the right to perpetually block roads and motorways putting protestors and others into danger.
This organisation had no issue with governments imposing multi year lockdowns without any form of criticism.
Because we didn't really have any sort of lock down in the UK, the Tories just said the police would need to informally enforce a non-rule. The met responded that they were not going to enforce anything that wasn't an actual rule. There were words said and a couple of high profile incidents which shows how little any sort of lockdown happened. I know I drove around the country still and no one ever asked why, and all my neighbours had garden parties with social gathers still happening.
To hear one of the most shameful periods in our legal history being brushed off as couple of months of half hearted barely observed lockdown is pretty disturbing.
Because you are just making stuff up now.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/pdfs/uksi_20200...
Restrictions on movement
6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.
Driving around still happened, as some of us need to do it to support systems. There were plenty of lorries and cars on the road.
There was no law preventing people travelling or doing anything.
Boris said "it would be best if you don't" and then held parties. He got away with it because he didn't break any laws.
I had to travel for work, so I didn't even break guidance as in their advice, people who had to travel still could. No one ever checked which is my point.
In a time of increasing idleness and voluntary economic non participation by wider and wider sections of society, as their existence is subsidised by the state, by other tax payers, by ex husbands... and in the case of XR&JSO, by donations there might be a need for change.
They have discovered that a handful of people can cause misery to thousands by blocking roads, already an offence, but one selectively enforced when it intersects with so called protest due to court precedent set in recent years.
These groups often have no particular goals that they articulate, no achievable ones in particular and it cannot be assumed that their stated goals are their goals. I believe i have insight as to their motivations and goals and they don't align with the ephemeral nonsense they claim they want to happen. It wouldn't make sense to do so. On that basis this isn't legitimate protest - it's low level terrorism.
If you have to live in proximity to this near endless lunacy it is obvious how ridiculous it has become. How much of society will you allow to be interrupted before enough is enough?
XR/JSO ran for election in London very recently for Mayor - the city they attack the most - and got fewer votes than a comedy candidate called Count Binface.
I looked to see if this was true and couldn't find any joint extinction rebellion/ just stop oil candidates, nor any for either of them split.
> and it cannot be assumed that their stated goals are their goals
I think you are verging into conspiratory theories here, but I'll humor you. What are these goals you have an insight to?
> On that basis this isn't legitimate protest
It doesn't matter why you're protesting, you can do it for any reason. That's a cornerstone of a free and democratic society
I have to hope you aren't one of those people who believe everything is secretly funded by Bildeberg group for some nefarious agenda and that protestors dont really believe what theyre protesting about or whatever . If you are, try talking to some people under 30 about politics, or really just getting outside of your bubble.
> I have to hope you aren't one of those people who believe everything is secretly funded by Bildeberg group for some nefarious agenda etc etc
What does it tell you about yourself that to engage in a discussion you have to assume, despite me making some pretty clear points which I will clarify below, that you immediately label it as a conspiracy?
> doesn't matter why you're protesting, you can do it for any reason. That's a cornerstone of a free and democratic society
They can protest without blocking roads. Blocking a road is not inherently protesting. It's blocking a road. You could be holding a Bible quote or a big orange banner. The end goal of these protests is the act of performative protest, little more. *The end is nigh*
> What are these goals you have an insight to?
The same thing the edgy far left has wanted for 150 years. The absolute destruction of western society, and by proxy capitalism. Except they know that won't happen so the actual outcome they expect is beyond me. You can find plenty of evidence of such thinking from anyone involved. It's why you will find SWP banners handed out at any number of dozens of "protests". The climate stuff is just the latest hook of social injustice they've adopted. I'd love to see this refuted.
> I looked to see if this was true and couldn't find any joint extinction rebellion/ just stop oil candidates, nor any for either of them split.
They are both not an organisation and the same organisation so as individuals involved can say they are not involved. For the purposes of British law when they are tried they don't want to be tried as an organisation or members of one
> looked to see if this was true and couldn't find any joint extinction rebellion/ just stop oil candidates, nor any for either of them split
Maybe you didn't scroll down far enough.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Pink
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_London_mayoral_election
0.2% of the vote.
In fact their website redirect to
I quote:
> Bring Down the Government, replace it with Citizen Decision Making.
You will find a press release on there where 12 members of their party - maybe that's the whole party - were taken to court for criminal damage etc during an XR "protest"