David Blunkett, in his days as Home Secretary, sneaked a clause into his Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which comes into full force on August 1. The new law gives ministers the power to draw up an exclusion zone, anywhere within a kilometre of Parliament Square, in which demonstrators are to be banned from protesting without permission from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
This week, Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, exercised to the full his new power to set an exclusion zone around the Commons. He has banned all spontaneous demonstrations within half a mile of the Palace of Westminster.
The Telegraph
The right to demonstrate peacefully, without the permission of the Government or its agents, is an absolutely fundamental part of our democracy. Elections and opinion polls may measure the numbers of people who support a particular party or policy. But only demonstrations and protest marches can show the strength with which people hold their convictions.
It is one thing to stroll round the corner on election day and put a cross on a ballot paper. We can all do that, whether or not we care very strongly which candidate should win. But to join a protest march on Parliament requires vastly more time and commitment, and shows a strength of feeling that no ballot can.
The actual numbers of people who supported the Countryside Alliance in its campaign to stop the ban on foxhunting were not all that enormous, as a proportion of the electorate. But the fact that so many of them were prepared to go to the trouble of organising coach trips to Westminster from Aberdeen and Penzance, and marching all the way to London from Wales and Yorkshire, showed the sheer passion with which they held their views.
All right, the campaign failed. But there were many MPs representing urban constituencies who simply didn’t realise how strongly people felt, before the marchers arrived in Parliament Square. At least the marchers made them think - and that can only be good for an MP.
Politicians are insulated quite enough, as it is, from the people whom they represent. They are insulated by their index-linked pensions, their generous expenses and secretarial allowances, by the concrete tank-traps outside the Commons and the cheap beer inside. This new Act, with its powers to restrict the numbers and noise of demonstrators, can only cut them off further.
I wonder what the young, idealistic Tony Blair would have thought if somebody had told him in his student days, as he strummed his guitar and campaigned against apartheid and the Bomb, that one day he would restrict the freedom of British subjects to demonstrate. What would he have thought, come to that, if he had been told that he would introduce house arrest, restrict the right to trial by jury and try to force all British subjects to carry identity cards.
