Protecting the right to protest

The erosion of the right to protest is to be investigated by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Announcing the inquiry last week, the committee said that its predecessor had raised concerns over the potential restrictions on protest around Parliament during the passage of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA).

It said that these concerns had been borne out in the prosecution of Maya Evans for reading out the names of the war dead at the Centotaph in 2005. Evans was prosecuted under s 135 of SOCPA, which bans unauthorised demonstrations.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher, a human rights and civil liberties specialist at Doughty Street Chambers, says an important issue for the committee will be how to police large-scale protests.

“In London, the Metropolitan Police now routinely photograph or film many such protests, despite the ‘chilling effect’ this has on protestors,” she says. ”Scenes of ‘panic policing’ were unanimously condemned by the House of Lords in Laporte, a test case against the Gloucestershire police brought after campaigners travelling to a demonstration were locked into their coaches by police and forcibly escorted away from the protest, without toilet stops, causing what Lord Bingham described as ‘acute physical discomfort and embarrassment.”

In Laporte, the House of Lords said rights to protest were protected by Arts 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and had long been enshrined in British legal tradition.

Lord Bingham emphasised that these rights were “fundamental rights, to be protected as such. Any prior restraint on their exercise must be scrutinised with particular care. The Convention test of necessity does not require that a restriction be indispensable, but nor is it enough that it be useful, reasonable or desirable”.

Gallagher says the committee will be examining whether recent high-profile events (such as the Laporte and Haw cases) are indicative of a trend towards eroding the right to protest, or an inevitable and necessary reaction to increased security concerns.

“Key issues for them will be the proportionality of legislative restrictions on protest, and existing police powers and their use in practice,” she adds.