Eoin McCaul

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill passed its second reading in parliament earlier this week, a bill that not only increases the powers given to the police force but also infringes on the right to protest. It’s a direct attack on free speech by a government intent on dragging us further into authoritarianism.

The new legislation will grant the police powers to crack down on demonstrations that are too noisy or cause “serious annoyance”, which, in other words, means leaving the only available form of protest as one that the government can easily ignore. But the whole point of protest is to cause “serious annoyance”. It will put the decision of what constitutes a legal form of protest entirely in the hands of the home secretary, Priti Patel, who referred to the Black Lives Matter protests as “dreadful” and Extinction Rebellion as “criminals”.

Even the DUP minister Gavin Robinson has criticised the bill as “draconian”, adding that it “would make a dictator blush”. When the DUP is the voice of reason in parliament, serious questions are raised about where this administration is taking our society. Not a single Conservative MP stood against this bill, which passed with a majority of 96 votes, and the perpetually weak opposition offered by the Labour Party leaves little standing in their way.

For students, protests (pre-Covid at least) have often been a central means of getting our voices heard as university is the place where many of us learn more about wider social issues and discover what we care most about. As has been especially evident during lockdown, universities and private accommodation companies rarely hesitate to take advantage of students when, throughout the UK, over a billion pounds was spent on empty rooms. It is only through the means of protest that students can fight against the worst of these abuses.

The government is also still attempting to assign a ‘free speech champion’ to sanction universities for allowing students to protest speakers, completely free from irony of course.

Response from the Metropolitan Police was met with criticism

A government report said it “did not find the wholesale censorship of debate which media coverage has suggested”, but they still continue to wage their war on woke at the expense of our civil liberties. No longer will students be able to express their own free speech in criticising those who spout bigoted ideas, instead the Tories intend to protect those who share their values from any criticism.

The decision to increase police powers comes not long after the brutal response to the Clapham Common vigil, where the Metropolitan Police used force to quash peaceful demonstration held in honour of Sarah Everard, who was allegedly murdered by a police officer.

Despite this, we are now being told to put our trust in officers who seem to make these problems worse, rather than solving them, as their reach is even further extended into our everyday lives.

The bill, too, raises the maximum penalty for defacing statues from three months to ten years - which in many cases would be higher than the sentence given for rape, prosecutions for which are at a record low despite reports continuing to increase.

Of course, the Conservatives have no shame in affording more protection to statues than they do for women, as it may gain favour with some of their voting base who believe that building monuments to slave traders is the most effective way to teach history.

Through the lockdown measures, many governments, including the UK government, have used this as an excuse to drastically increase their powers.

In the summer, in Belfast, during the BLM protests, the Police Service Northern Ireland liberally applied a double standard in using these powers against marginalised groups. A week later they proudly bragged that they made no arrests at the Protect Our Monuments protest, whilst continuing to threaten legal action against the organisers of the BLM protest.

Now this populist government with a penchant for authoritarianism wants to further increase their powers to clamp down on anyone who challenges the status quo. And students will pay some of the price.

Eoin McCaul is a first year PPE student at Queen’s University Belfast

OPINION - Students Will Lose Out When Tories Attack the Right to Protest