...This government is stripping out fundamental liberties with the speed and determination you would expect in the aftermath of a military coup. Knowing that their days in office are numbered, the Conservatives seem to be snuffing out democracy as quickly as they can.
Even before the latest amendment, the public order bill was the most repressive legislation of the modern era, potentially criminalising all meaningful protest. If Rishi Sunak’s new proposal is passed, protests can be stopped before they begin on the grounds that they might be “disruptive”. Disruptive protest was redefined by last year’s Police Act to include noise. Now the definition is being further extended to incorporate “slow marching”. This Minority Report amendment puts us on the wrong side of the law before we even raise our hands in objection.
At the same time, the government is rushing an anti-union bill through parliament that could roll back a century of progress in the workplace. It permits the business secretary, Grant Shapps, to demand “minimum service levels” in the public and service sectors. As the scope of this demand is not defined by the bill, “minimum service levels” are whatever he says they are. His arbitrary powers could, in effect, make industrial action illegal.
These police-state measures coincide with a high court ruling perfectly designed to remind us of how such coercive power arose, and how far back the problem goes. It is a judgment of the kind that legitimised our highly concentrated land ownership and the political power that flows from it: a classic act of enclosure terminating the last legal rights of wild camping in England, on Dartmoor. Because written title didn’t precisely specify these rights, they are deemed not to exist, though they are long practised and commonly understood. This is how the commoners of England, Ireland and Scotland were dispossessed. This is how the legal fiction of written title – and the land-grabbing it enabled – was extended across the British empire.
The standard retort of those who seek to justify our political system is that if you don’t like a decision, you should write to your MP. But what do people living in southern Dartmoor do? Anthony Mangnall, who claims to represent Totnes and South Devon, won his seat in 2019 with the help of a £5,000 donation from Darwall, the man who brought the case. Here, in microcosm, is everything that’s wrong with our politics.
The Tories bleat endlessly about freedom. But the only freedom they respect is the freedom of the rich and powerful to treat other people as commodities and the living planet as their dustbin. Democracy in this country was only ever skin-deep, our power and personhood delegated to a pantomime performed by 650 people in central London, few of whom are permitted to speak their minds. Without the regular participation that would make the word meaningful, protest is the only vestige of real democracy we retain.
No force in the United Kingdom is as disruptive as the Westminster government, no disorder as great as the disorder it has caused. This is a sick, outdated political culture... It is not just a change of government we need. It’s a change of governance.
GM@theGrauniad
Even before the latest amendment, the public order bill was the most repressive legislation of the modern era, potentially criminalising all meaningful protest. If Rishi Sunak’s new proposal is passed, protests can be stopped before they begin on the grounds that they might be “disruptive”. Disruptive protest was redefined by last year’s Police Act to include noise. Now the definition is being further extended to incorporate “slow marching”. This Minority Report amendment puts us on the wrong side of the law before we even raise our hands in objection.
At the same time, the government is rushing an anti-union bill through parliament that could roll back a century of progress in the workplace. It permits the business secretary, Grant Shapps, to demand “minimum service levels” in the public and service sectors. As the scope of this demand is not defined by the bill, “minimum service levels” are whatever he says they are. His arbitrary powers could, in effect, make industrial action illegal.
These police-state measures coincide with a high court ruling perfectly designed to remind us of how such coercive power arose, and how far back the problem goes. It is a judgment of the kind that legitimised our highly concentrated land ownership and the political power that flows from it: a classic act of enclosure terminating the last legal rights of wild camping in England, on Dartmoor. Because written title didn’t precisely specify these rights, they are deemed not to exist, though they are long practised and commonly understood. This is how the commoners of England, Ireland and Scotland were dispossessed. This is how the legal fiction of written title – and the land-grabbing it enabled – was extended across the British empire.
The standard retort of those who seek to justify our political system is that if you don’t like a decision, you should write to your MP. But what do people living in southern Dartmoor do? Anthony Mangnall, who claims to represent Totnes and South Devon, won his seat in 2019 with the help of a £5,000 donation from Darwall, the man who brought the case. Here, in microcosm, is everything that’s wrong with our politics.
The Tories bleat endlessly about freedom. But the only freedom they respect is the freedom of the rich and powerful to treat other people as commodities and the living planet as their dustbin. Democracy in this country was only ever skin-deep, our power and personhood delegated to a pantomime performed by 650 people in central London, few of whom are permitted to speak their minds. Without the regular participation that would make the word meaningful, protest is the only vestige of real democracy we retain.
No force in the United Kingdom is as disruptive as the Westminster government, no disorder as great as the disorder it has caused. This is a sick, outdated political culture... It is not just a change of government we need. It’s a change of governance.
GM@theGrauniad
