if they tried to make their voice heard this week. They outlined the new powers and the consequences if someone contravened them. The message was perfectly clear.
These threats were accompanied by an all-guns-blazing government PR effort, which mostly focused on climate change protesters. “Today, we have brought in new criminal offences to put people who try to carry out… guerrilla tactics behind bars,” the Prime Minister wrote in“I am determined not to let selfish protesters get away with causing disorder and misery.” Home Secretary Suella Braverman went a step further, suggesting that protesters were seeking “to attack our ways of life”.
That is not an error. It is the purpose of the bill. It aims to make the trigger for criminal penalties so broad, and the meaning of key terms so nebulous, that it will be hard for a protester to know they are abiding by the law. This is its function. It is its purpose. It is a direct attack on freedom of speech.
The Government’s approach has been to give the Home Secretary total power to define that line, at their whim, whenever they please. The Home Office’s previous Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act allowed her to define the phrase “serious disruption” through something called a statutory instrument – a piece of undistilled executive power which receives almost no parliamentary scrutiny at all. She has now done this, expanding the term to include the activity of walking slowly.