<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/19/protest-democracy-labour-tories-laws>
"How do you know when protest tactics are working? When governments ban them.
The oppressive laws introduced by the previous government – the Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 – are a tick list
of effective political engagement. Everything from locking on and digging
tunnels to actions on roads, at airports, oil refineries or newspapers, even
marching down a street, has been criminalised. Why? Because these methods work.
If they didn’t, the government wouldn’t have bothered.
The Conservatives justified their draconian measures with the claim that they
prevented “disruption to the public”. But had they cared about disruption, they
would have done all they could to prevent climate breakdown. Nothing is more
disruptive than the flickering and eventual collapse of Earth systems. If you
believe a few people sitting in the street is a major impediment to traffic,
take a look at what a sea surge, a flash flood, a windstorm or a rail-buckling,
road-melting, bridge-jamming heat event can do to transport infrastructure.
The government and prosecutors made great play of the inconvenience caused by
the closure of the Dartford Crossing when protesters climbed on to it in 2022.
The court imposed massive and cruel penalties. But the crossing is frequently
closed by high winds, a problem expected to become much worse as a result of
the issue the protesters were seeking to highlight. No government minister
appears before the cameras at such moments, thundering about the diversion of
ambulances, commuters and parents on the school run, and demanding that the
chief executives of oil companies are locked up.
Instead, the previous government went out of its way to exacerbate disruption,
licensing new oil and gas drilling and an entirely pointless coalmine; blocking
onshore wind power; subsidising at great expense people’s fossil fuel bills,
rather than spending a fraction of that money to help us insulate and improve
our homes.
As we approach the Earth systems horizon, governments and corporations have
gone to ever more extreme lengths to prevent us from doing anything about it.
The Tory government sought to bypass the House of Commons to insert extra
measures into the first oppressive bill. When that failed, it inserted them
into the second bill. It then used “Henry VIII powers” to extend the measures
without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Corporations and public bodies have
slapped injunctions on hundreds of people to prevent them from protesting, in
some cases forcing them to pay huge amounts of money for the privilege. This
outrageous system of private fines for thoughtcrimes has not received nearly
enough coverage. Far from preventing such abuses, the previous government
reinforced them with new injunction powers of its own: you can now be punished
twice for the same political crime.
But perhaps the most pernicious innovation was to shut down crucial legal
defences. One attorney general removed the defence of proportionality; another
removed the defence of lawful excuse. This means that environmental activists
can no longer explain their motives to a jury. They have to be tried as though
they were mindless vandals, inconveniencing people for kicks, rather than
seeking to prevent, at great cost to themselves, the greatest crisis humankind
has ever faced. Some protesters have sought to explain themselves regardless,
and have as a result been imprisoned for contempt of court."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
