On 15 August, the new solicitor general, Sarah Sackman, told the court of appeal in London that she would not be pursuing a case of contempt of court against Trudi Warner.
In March 2023, the 69-year-old retired social worker and Insulate Britain climate campaigner had held up a sign outside Inner London Crown Court saying: ‘Jurors, you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.’
This April, the high court in London had thrown out an attempt by…
Since our last issue, Just Stop Oil has racked up five acquittals and seven convictions – and also claimed victory in their campaign to get the government to stop licensing all new oil, gas and coal projects. That is the policy of the new Labour government. Extinction Rebellion have a new prisoner, Amy Pritchard, as well as big plans for the end of August.
There seems to have been a large-scale pre-emptive police swoop, detaining 27 JSO activists on 28 June, as well as three high-…
The day before the UK general election was called, the government advisor on political violence and disruption published a 294-page report on Protecting our Democracy from Coercion.
The main theme of the report by lord Walney (John Woodcock) was the need for the government, the courts, the crown prosecution service and the police to crack down harder on ‘extreme protest movements’ such as Palestine Action, Just Stop Oil (JSO) and the organisers of the recent Gaza ‘Ceasefire…
The sudden appearance of a ‘National Security Act 2023’ warning sign outside the Bristol offices of Israeli-owned arms manufacturer Elbit was a reminder to campaigners that as well as expanding public order laws, the government has also introduced sweeping changes to espionage laws that cover places where protests regularly take place.
Although this legislation was presented as necessary to counter hostile threats from foreign intelligence services, Netpol warned in 2022 that new…
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s peace formula declares a commitment to democracy. And real democracy, as dialogue-driven nonviolent governance, could indeed put an end to all wars in the world, if pursued seriously. But Ukrainian people in many ways, formally and informally, are left with no choice other than subordination to military command, despite public opinion polls that reveal disgust with military dictatorship.
Ukraine could not defeat Russian aggression by suffocating civil…
One worrying trend even more prevalent in France than elsewhere is the stifling of open public discourse about the situation of the Palestinians, and restrictions placed on the freedom of expression of pro-Palestinian voices and movements.
Even before 7 October, public meetings on Israel-Palestine have been prohibited by the relevant authorities (local boroughs, or departmental Préfets) on dubious public-order grounds.
Since 7 October, the trend has got worse: several…
Campaigning group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) is planning a mass sit-down in the high court in London on 21 February to challenge the government’s attempt to remove the defence of ‘consent’, used by Palestine Action activists recently to win acquittals (see previous page).
This follows actions outside more than 50 crown courts across England and Wales on 4 December: 500 activists held signs defending the right of juries to reach their own verdicts, independently of the instructions they…
On 4 October, British prime minister Rishi Sunak made a series of policy announcements at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.
One of these was a year-on-year smoking ban. Sunak said: 'I propose that in future we raise the smoking age by one year every year. That means a 14-year-old today will never legally be sold a cigarette and that they and their generation can grow up smoke free.'
Currently, the legal age to buy tobacco or cigarettes is 18, throughout the UK.…
Damaging public order measures, which had earlier been rejected by the House of Lords, have been turned into law anyway (in England and Wales), using ‘statutory instruments’ which get less parliamentary time and which cannot be amended by the lords.
The human rights group Liberty is raising funds to mount a legal challenge against home secretary Suella Braverman’s ‘undemocratic decision to ignore Parliament and make law by the back door’.
The new regulations define ‘serious…
The Police Bill received the royal assent on 28 April and thus became law as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
During its passage, the bill was twice returned to the commons by the house of lords with many amendments. The lords removed measures in the bill to give police new powers to: stop protests in England and Wales if they are deemed too noisy and disruptive (in the opinion of the police); impose conditions on protest on noise grounds; stop and search…
It is unwise to generalise too much as why people voted the way they did.
As elsewhere in the UK, the Remain vote was highest among the middle classes and the young. Nationalists were most likely to vote Remain; middle-class unionists were more likely to vote Remain than working-class…
Liz Fekete is director of the seven-person Institute of Race Relations in central London. She is one of Europe’s leading authorities on racism, heading one of the most respected advocacy groups in the UK, a body which has published a rigorously radical journal, Race & Class, since 1974. That could sound intimidating. In person,…
Within days of being elected, the new Conservative government made it clear that a new drive against ‘extremism’ will be a major part of its legislative programme. Universities were already legally obliged to monitor their students and report any suspicions of ‘people being drawn into terrorism’, under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act passed in January.
Conservative home secretary Theresa May introduced the act by declaring that, due to the rise of the terror group ISIS, the…
The internet has been transformed from a tool of emancipation ‘into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen’. Thus wrote Julian Assange* in his 2012 introduction to Cypherpunks, an eye-opening annotated transcript of a conversation between the Wikileaks founder and three other prominent internet activists.
At that time, such a claim might have appeared hyperbolic. However, in the wake of Edward Snowden’s 2013 exposure of the global surveillance…
Reporters from Angola and Saudi Arabia shared the ‘journalism’ Freedom of Expression award for 2015 given by Index on Censorship on 18 March.
Rafael Marques de Morais has exposed government and industry corruption and human rights abuses in Angola despite repeated arrests and threats, including a 40-day detention without charge.
After filing charges of crimes against humanity against seven Angolan generals, Marques de Morais was counter-sued for $1.6m by those same…
