Anti-protest laws defeated (for now)

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Scary plans to widen the scope and use of ASBO’s (anti-social behaviour orders) and replace them with IPNA’s (injunction to prevent nuisance and annoyance).were  defeated in the House of Lords on Wednesday evening.

Lord Dear said ipnas could be used for anyone over the age of 10, only required proof “on the balance of probability”, could last for an indefinite period of time and result in a prison term if breached. The crossbench peer said a power which had worked for dealing with housing issues would be inappropriate to be used in the “public environment”.

He  warned:

“It risks it being used for those who seek to protest peacefully, noisy children in the street, street preachers, canvassers, carol singers, trick-or-treaters, church bell ringers, clay pigeon shooters, nudists. This is a crowded island that we live in and we must exercise a degree surely of tolerance and forbearance.

“Because I shall continue to be privately annoyed at those who jump the bus queue, those who stand smoking in large groups outside their office, drinkers who block the footpath outside a pub on a summer’s evening, those who put their feet on the seats on public transport, those who protest noisily outside parliament or my local bank, but none of that surely should risk an injunctive procedure on the grounds of nuisance and annoyance.”

Baroness Mallalieu, a QC and Labour peer, said:

“My main concern is the extent to which lowering the threshold to behaviour capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person has the potential to undermine our fundamental freedoms and in particular the way in which the proposed law might be used to curb protest and freedom of expression.”

Peers were told that, under coalition plans, the police, British Transport Police, the Environment Agency, local authorities, Transport for London, the health secretary and housing providers would be among the bodies able to apply to  ipnas.

Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a Conservative former lord chancellor, also opposed the government’s current wording, telling peers:

“One of the fundamental freedoms is the freedom of speech and it is surely clear that in exercising that one may annoy other people, one or more.”

He added: “If I have an opinion which I know some people, many people, will disagree with, I’m surely entitled to come out with it. Do I have to reasonably consider whether it will cause annoyance to somebody else? And if so, what should be the consequence? Am I to muzzle my point of view in order to placate people who may be annoyed?”

Labour’s Baroness Howells of St Davids was  worried about the effect on race relations.

“This clause could have as damaging an effect as the sus laws, which black people have struggled to have repealed,” she said. “It will have serious effects on the black communities and the divisions will be further and further stretched as we know under the sus (Stop and Search) laws.”

The Haze says:

This is an important moment but the battle is not over yet.

That this deeply repressive legislation ever reached the Lords in this format  is extraordinary and this is another crime against democracy for which the Lib Dems will never be forgiven.

This law would allow police to run an unchecked police state outside of any democratic oversight or control. Almost anything one does in the public domain is bound to upset somebody or be regarded as a nuisance, especially any form of protest, so this legislation was a simple two step process to criminalise and imprison anyone who the police regarded as a nuisance.

Its not hard to see that this legislation was dreamed up to head off any repeat of the Occupy encampment outside St Pauls or indeed any mass movement against neoliberalism and austerity.

Our fundamental freedoms are under attack and everyone needs to stay hyper vigilant and very vocal in their opposition.