Changes to the Right to Protest speech by Dick Scroop to Wolverhampton TUC November 2025:
Listen to his speech or read it below [there are links to further info at end of article]
The People versus The State
Because that’s what protest is about. It’s the people versus the state.
A relationship that goes through cycles of repression, resistance and kickback, and it goes on.
In recent years, a primary focus for that kind of resistance and kickback has been arguments around issues associated with the environment and climate change, which were a major feature of the period, well up to today, but the last 10-15 years. In response to escalating levels of protest on the streets, from climate action groups, we’ve seen a very significant kickback by the state. There’s been manifesting legislation and by other measures which will spill over into other areas of protest; already has done so very much in respect of Palestine and it will do, I’m sure, in other areas as we go forward.
So we’re at a stage where we’ve had a period of quite volatile activity on the streets, from climate activists and around Palestine, and the state is beginning to formalise its kickback to that.
That’s going to manifest itself in three broad ways, I think:
– Firstly, new laws, some of which have come, have come in already, and some of which are about to come in, which are going to be an important area of struggle.
– Secondly, and very importantly, the repurposing of established laws and some of that is important.
– And thirdly, and this is repurposing again, the repurposing of terrorism laws to direct them against local organisations and local campaigns and move away from what we all know anti-terror laws used to be about, but it’s changing and it will change to our detriment if we aren’t careful.
So I’ll start with the question of new laws and I won’t spend too much on it; it’s actually quite straightforward and if people want to look at the details, they can call these acts up on the internet and read them for themselves, but really over the last few years, in response to protests on the street, there’s really been three significant pieces of legislation.
First of all, in 2022 there was the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. Introduced a redefinition of a public nuisance which used to be a common law offence and is now a statutory offence with a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment, for public nuisance. And that might be something that comes along and bites us at some stages as they seek to apply that in, in what we might see as perfectly normal street activity.
Along with that, introduced new police powers to impose restrictions on static and mobile demonstrations; don’t need to look at them too much here, because they’ve been overtaken by some of the subsequent legislation that’s come in since 2022.
It introduced a new law, in respect of trespass, which at the time was seen as very much a law directed against travellers, allowing them to be moved on much more aggressively, than has been the case in the past. But it is likely to be repurposed, I think, in other situations, most particularly, perhaps in respect of occupations of factories and demonstrations inside factories.
One interesting aspect of the new trespass laws, which has been overlooked, I think to some extent, is that it is now a criminal offence to disobey the instructions of a private individual.
Police have always been able to give you instructions to move on or move out or whatever, move away. In applying the trespass law, the owner of land as a private individual can give instructions for you to cease and desist or move away and to resist the instructions of an individual private individual is now a criminal offence. It hasn’t had much impact so far, but I think it will as time goes by.
Interestingly, of all the laws that have come in recently, perhaps because it’s the first and the newest, that was the one that resulted in the most aggressive resistance, particularly for some reason in Bristol, where there were a large number of arrests in a couple of demonstrations; 15 were imprisoned, most of which were for Riot. And the use of Riot for this kind of situation is not entirely new, but is becoming more prevalent than it used to be. We saw it of course, in the miners strike when it was grossly misapplied. We’ve seen it in Bristol and again, it’s something as people will be organising protests at some stage, we have to recognise it might be something that we have to deal with.
The next piece of legislation and more significantly is the Public Order Act of 2023.
You can see what this Public Order Act was targeting, by the key elements within it, primarily in the first instance aimed at climate activists, quickly extended to Palestine activists and will again be extended to other kinds of protests. I think as we move forward.
The first new offence, a specific offence that didn’t exist before, it made locking-on a crime, targeting initially climate protesters and then very significantly, Palestine activists. Tunnelling became a specific offence, targeting climate activists’ protests. Damaging key infrastructure, targeting climate activists. Introducing greater Stop and Search powers which will be used against all of us. Stop and Search powers in the vicinity of protests and demonstrations can now be applied without there being a need for reasonable suspicion. Police can now Stop and Search without giving any indication of the grounds for reasonable suspicion that they have. That will come back and bite us.
It also introduced a broader definition of serious disruption, making it easier for police to act on the basis of levels of disruption that wouldn’t previously have met the test of serious disruption, and it also extended the powers to impose conditions on demonstrations.
I’ll give as an example of that, the Section 12, Section 14 of the Public Order Act; this can impose conditions not only on mobile protest marches, they can impose them on static protests. Those conditions can be in respect of the location, the duration of protests. In assemblies, it can apply to an assembly of one person, and in fact the first application of the law, was immediately after it had been implemented, as to act against the guy who lived in Parliament Square for a number of years at that stage; they moved in the following day and removed him. So that ability to exercise, to impose conditions that allow intervention in protests, is very much extended. The restrictions can be set before the demonstration, which has an implication of how we organise demonstrations, or they can be set during the demonstration if the circumstances are seen to change.
Restrictions can be imposed where the police see there to be a danger of serious disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community. Some of these are very vague categories, serious intimidation of people or serious noise disruption that either disrupts or distresses people.
Now, what that means I really don’t know. There’s no been, no instance I know where they’ve attempted to impose a section related to protests being too noisy. They have talked about it to us at Shenstone on a couple of occasions, when they weren’t really very noisy at all.
So we have a number of powers there that exist really at the discretion of the police. They can be imposed before a demonstration takes place or they can be imposed during it.
The one piece of advice that might be something for you to be aware of as people who might be involved in organising demonstrations is the test to take action, is the person they’re acting against must have known or ought to have known that that an order was in place.
And the legal advice that’s now been given to people organising demonstrations is that you don’t tell people. If you become aware of there being an order in place, don’t tell people. If they don’t know and they can’t really be expected to know, then no action can be taken against them. That seriously is the advice that’s been given out by the Green and Black Cross for example, there is the general legal position that’s been adopted.
If you put out an e-mail or a WhatsApp message that says to people you know are going to be involved in your protest, that’s to say, the police have given this order, you can’t go to this area, you’re restricted to that area, or you must do this or must do that; as soon as you’ve said that you’ve made them liable under the legislation if they breach those measures. If they don’t know and haven’t had the means of knowing that they can’t be in breach of the legislation. So that’s something to be kept in mind.
Somebody did an analogy with the signs that you get on Sainsbury’s or whatever in terms of see, hear, tell about inappropriate behaviour. Green and Black say don’t do it, don’t say it, don’t tell it, don’t hear it. It’s only if you know or can be expected to know, that they can take action against you. So that’s perhaps the imposition, or the potential for the imposition of conditions, is the one that will have the most significant impact.
I was involved in the protest outside the Elbit plant in Leicester in 2023, just after this had come into force and restrictions were imposed as to where that protest could take place. It was shifted out of the vicinity at the entrance of the plant and progressively squeezed down to smaller and smaller areas to make the demonstration ineffective and that was implemented by posting notices on lampposts and telegraph poles up the road, so people couldn’t say they weren’t aware of it. So that’s a key element of the 2023 legislation, the Public Order Act.
In terms of legislation both those acts, particularly the first one, were quite vigorously opposed by the Labour Party in opposition but to no avail because the Tories had the majority.
What we’ve now got is the Crime and Policing Bill 2025, where that is at the moment is, that it’s wending its way through Parliament. It is a big Act. As of early November, a couple of weeks ago, it ran to 444 pages. It’s a huge Act and it will grow.
It’s not clear fully what its scope will be. It goes far beyond protest laws, covers a whole range of issues completely unrelated to questions of protest, but it does include a number of measures, not yet, because it isn’t enacted but there are a number of measures that may find their way into it, that have already been identified that will present problems to us, as people who might be organising protests in support of whatever campaigns we may be involved in.
A key one, the wording of this is interesting, willful obstruction of highways causing serious annoyance.
What serious annoyances are completely undefined, but of something the highway causing serious annoyance will become an offence under this legislation, and that could be extremely disruptive to many of the kinds of protests that we might want to be involved with, whether it be a workplace related disputes, strikes, for example, where you may be willfully obstructing the highway in a number of ways and other campaigns that you might be involved in.
It extends further, and the limits of this aren’t clear yet, because we aren’t at that stage in the legislation; it will give more powers to the police to impose conditions, in terms of defining the circumstances in which they can be imposed, and it will give further immunities to the police, from problems that may arise on their action.
I think the first time, it also introduced across a range of offences, including the protest related offences, and will introduce mandatory minimum sentences, removing from magistrates and judges, the opportunity to set sentences, where they’re feeling appropriate, at a level below the mandatory level set without reference to specific circumstances below the mandatory level determined in the legislation itself. The whole tenure of that legislation suggests that it will be used to deter people from exercising the long established rights that people have had, and the rights now establishing statute in European Conventions to exercise our rights to free speech and freedom of assembly.
In terms of deterring people, and again, this is a little bit vague because it isn’t legislation. I think it’s on this way through, so at the committee stage, it will change. It will reduce the range of offences that can be dealt with by a Crown court, which means reducing the range of offences for which will be tried by a jury. It passes more power to judges and magistrates to determine cases over and above the level of level of seriousness as it is currently set; basically cases that can result in a sentence of up to six months imprisonment are heard by a judge in a Magistrates Court without a jury; that boundary is going to be extended. More serious offences are going to be heard there. I suspect it will tip into that higher category, many protest related cases.
In the main, juries are less likely to convict than judges and magistrates. I think the figures are that juries typically convicted about 55% or 57% of cases; judges convict in 71% of cases.
They’re much more inclined to bring in a guilty verdict than juries are, so that will have an impact on all those whose cases are transferred into that arena. That’s an important aspect of it.
The other important aspect of it, one that’s already flagged up as being in the Bill and one is going to make its way into the Bill. There’s a new category defined as repeat protests.
This is justified on the basis that if there is a subject of repeated process protests, that’s increasingly disruptive of their lives. An obvious area to point to in that respect is the Palestine protests that we’ve had over the last two years. They are quite clearly, repeat protests, and if this comes in at a stage when the struggle for a free Palestine is continuing and those protests are taking place, it is almost certain that will almost immediately be applied to the PSC marches that are currently being held.
The other aspect of that legislation is a repeat protest doesn’t have to be the same organisation calling on the same kind of protest in the same area. There can be completely unrelated protests; they can have one protest by one group about a climate related issue, the following week of protests by another group about Palestine the following week, a protest by another group about rights to abortion, etc. They are repeat protests in terms of the law.
Because the defining criteria is that the same areas, the same people have been disrupted by the protest, so they can say you can’t have a protest about Palestine in Westminster this week because there was one last week or the week before by this other group and it is cumulative. It will be enormously disruptive in London.
Now the other area where it’s likely to be disruptive is in strike situations. There used to be a time when outside of factory gates, we used to have pickets and we still do.
But we now have pickets and protests at the same time, and the Birmingham bin strike is a good example of that. Their regular picketing and in association with those pickets, not on every occasion, but on most occasions there is also a protest. When you bring people in from outside the factory, the people on strike, they can have six pickets. That’s what the law says. Anything above that they aren’t pickets, they’re part of the protest. So if you use that as an example in the Birmingham bin sites. If that law had been in place, they would have very quickly have moved to the stage where they’d be saying you can have six pickets and nothing more because of the protests associated with that picket are becoming repetitive and therefore they are prescribed by the legislation. It will directly have an impact on every long running industrial dispute that takes place that goes beyond involving solely the people involved directly in the dispute and those people will be limited, limited to six on every occasion. That will be in the law. It’s not there yet, but it’s been flagged up on its way as part of the law. The detail is not certain yet.
The other new bit that’s important, particularly as I’m involved in Palestine protests quite regularly, Keir Starmer himself flagged up a couple of weeks ago, that there’s likely to be in it, a banning of slogans. Now we all know who that’s aimed at, but it might in the fullness of time, go beyond that. Banning of slogans means action against Palestine activists. They did attempt to do that right in the very early stages after October 2023. Priti Patel tried to ban “from the river to the sea” as a protest and she couldn’t do it. The police wouldn’t do it because there wasn’t a legal basis for it. Well, they will be given the legal basis for it and it will extend to other protests, I’m sure; and it may have a wider application than that piece of legislation which is clearly targeted at demonstrations in support of Palestine; I can think of other situations where it might apply.
So in terms of direct legislation, they are the three pieces that have already come into effect.
Equally important, perhaps more important in some respects, is the repurposing of existing legislation.
I and five others were arrested at Shenston in July, for breach of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Consolidation Act 1992, and as far as I can establish, there’s only been one prosecution since 1992, and that was against a climate action group. It was designed to deal with unruly pickets at workplaces and has never been applied in that situation, but it was applied against a demonstration in Shenstone, which was basically a picket. It did obstruct cars going in the kind of thing that might have happened in a factory and it resulted in Conspiracy charges. Conspiracy is a serious charge. Which can involve house raids and everything that flows from that, and that was a repurposing of a piece of legislation that was never intended to be used for that purpose, but came in handy at the time.
The other example locally is the occupation of the Moog factory up the Stafford Road in August this last year. A group got onto the roof, they occupied it, and they were got down in a few hours and they were arrested. The following day, they appeared at Stafford Magistrates Court and the prosecution immediately attempted to get that trial relocated to the Old Bailey on the basis that although the charges were ones of criminal damage, that they viewed it as a terrorism related case. So they were repurposing anti-terror legislation to deal with the straightforward case of criminal damage, and criminal damage law had been used for all the previous cases.
So they were repurposing anti-terrorism law for that purpose and that happened even more seriously in respect to the Filton 24, people arrested in respect to disruption of the British aerospace plant in Filton. The trial of six of them have started this week, the others are coming down the road.
They were arrested on terrorism charges, which were immediately dropped, and they’ve been charged subsequently with criminal damage, which are quite extensive. But that was the charge, criminal damage. But by using the terrorist laws, they were then subsequently treated as if they were terrorist prisoners, in the way their houses were raided and the rest of it. They’ve been kept in solitary confinement for large periods of time, they’ve had the right to receive and send mail severely curtailed. These are people on remand. Normally they aren’t subject to these conditions, but because they’ve been categorised not as terrorists, but as if they were terrorists. They’ve had solitary confinement periods. They’ve had access to mail limited both receiving and sending. Their general imprisonment conditions have been appalling. And that’s driven them to the extent that six of them are now on hunger strike, in addition to the six who are now on trial. This is a repurposing of existing legislation. Anti-terror legislation wasn’t intended to deal with criminal damage, no damage to people at all, criminal damage in a factory; but it suited their purposes and it will continue to be repurposed.
The other piece of legislation, legislation is not quite the word, the other piece of law that’s been repurposed I’ll mention in relation to the action at Moog. Their trial was relocated to the Old Bailey, I mentioned that. The other thing that happened there, following that action, Moog sought and obtained without an ability to defend it, a High Court injunction preventing initially any incursion into the site, getting on the roof, etc. Were then extending that to include any kind of demonstration in the immediate vicinity of the site, so obstructing the entrance to the site, being present in the road, is now covered by the injunction. And what does that mean? If you obstruct the road, you’re in breach of court and potential penalties in that case could run to between £1.5million and £2million. Injunctions result in a vast escalation of the potential consequences of the actions that you might take.
The final thing about the Filton 24. Those people on trial now, without previously having gone to trial, have been remanded in custody for twelve months in super harsh conditions. The others involved in that site will be arrested a little bit later down the road. They’ve got trials scheduled for April and June next year, some of them will have been in gaol for 18 months before they’re brought to trial, and in conditions associated with terrorism trials. Rather than if you’re abandoned in custody, you’re innocent and the conditions are kept under normal reflect them. So I’ll leave that aspect now.
I just want to move on to the direct application of the Terrorism Act 2000. Wasn’t quite applied at Filton, they were arrested, but the charge has shifted. And similarly at Moog, where we’ve now seen the terms of law directly applied in respect to the proscription of Palestine Action.
When the anti-terrorism law was enacted in 2000, and it was modified in 2008, we all knew what terrorists were. There were people who killed people, who blew people up, who blew up buildings, who brought down planes. We knew what terrorism was, and it did not include criminal damage in factories. And it’s now been extended to include Palestine Action who’ve been engaged in criminal action in factories. There’s one case, although it’s disputed, that may have involved a significant injury to one person in one action that’s disputed, but it is there. But there is no resemblance at all between what Palestine Action are doing and what was clearly the intended scope of the Terrorism Act, it’s been repurposed, and it’s been repurposed to clamp down on normal kind of protest activity; and the legality of that proscription has been tested once and it will be tested again next week. It was tested once because the government brought an action to block Palestine Action not as an organisation, but as individuals. Sought a Judicial Review of the proscription and the first step in that was about three weeks ago now.
The government sought to get the right to bring that action overturned, and they lost that case. The court ruled that they could go ahead with their challenge to the proscription and not only that, they also broadened the scope of the grounds on which Palestine Action brought and sought their judicial review. So they lost that case quite badly. The actual case itself goes for judicial review Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of next week, and it’s an important case for the future of protest activity generally and goes far beyond the details of this particular case. The ruling is expected in late December, it takes time and wherever the result is, whether the proscription is upheld or whether the judicial review overturns proscription, whichever it does, that will be subject to appeal. So it’s going to run on for a long time, and whilst it runs on, you’ve got 2,000 people or thereabouts who’ve been charged under this Act, including me.
The charges that have been brought have been under section 313 of legislation which says basically a person in a public place who wears an item of clothing or wears or carries or displays an article in such a way as to arouse a reasonable suspicion that is a member of, or supporter of a terrorist organisation is guilty of the offence. Two important aspects of that, firstly, and this has already been tested, it has to be in a public place. If I put in my front window a sign that says I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action, that is not an offence because it’s not in a public place and that hasn’t been tested in court yet, but it’s been tested by the police and they’ve backed off and not brought charges. It only applies if you’re in a public place; and it only applies if in wearing those clothing or displaying your object, you’re doing so in such a way as to arouse reasonable suspicion that you’re a member or supporter of the terrorist organisation.
The way that Defend Our Juries are dealing with that is in every instance when they’ve organised action, they write to the police say we’re organising this action, specifically seeking the overturning of the proscription of Palestine Action and not to support Palestine Action. It is legal to seek to overturn the law and they’re making it absolutely plain. We’re displaying the signs of the intention of seeking to overturn the law, and that will be their justification for saying that in displaying the signs, it should not allow suspicion that we were supporting a terrorist organisation because we made our intentions absolutely clear. Close to finishing now, I think.
There’s a Section 13 offence which goes further. It’s where people are alleged to have actively invited support for a terrorist organisation or expressed an opinion in support of, or arranged meetings etc and five people are charged with that, but they were the five people who are most involved in setting up the Defend Our Juries action.
I want to say something about juries, because they are the front line. It’s been argued that juries are the ultimate protection against the oppressive state.
When you have a jury trial, you’ve got the state on one side, you’ve got the jury, which is the people, on the other side; and juries on a number of occasions in the past and going forward have resisted the attempts of the state to impose a law that they don’t like.
It’s history, but I’ll slip it in. It all dates back to the Bushel’s case in 1670, when a jury was instructed by the judge and judges could do that then, to convict a number of people for preaching to an unlawful assembly, and they wouldn’t convict them.
They were locked in a room for two days; this is what the report says. Without food, water or a chamber pot; they stood out for two days, refused to convict and were subsequently imprisoned.
Under a writ of habeas corpus that went to trial and at trial, the judge determined that juries have an absolute right to give a verdict according to their conviction.
If they believe it’s wrong, they can fail to convict and they have done, a woman was arrested for standing outside the Old Bailey, displaying a sign that said juries have an absolute right to make a judgement on this basis and she was arrested and charged; despite the fact that she was outside the door where the jury went in. If she’d been around the front of the Old Bailey she’d have seen, built into the stonework of the Old Bailey, the statement that says juries have an absolute right to give a verdict, according to their conscience.
So they got themselves in a mess. They charged her. It never went to trial over two of the charges. And we’ve seen a whole series of trials over the recent two or three years where juries have refused to convict. It happened a lot on the early Palestine Action trials up in Oldham, where they were most active initially. It continues to happen.
Now the High Court has said to judges and magistrates, you can’t allow evidence to be heard about reasons people had for taking the action, that cannot be heard. Judges haven’t always complied with that. We had a trial in Wolves two years ago, where one side where a judge allowed it, they’re convicted another side a few months later, where the judge allowed statements to be made about reasons, and the jury acquitted them, helped by the fact that the company involved made panels for Israeli drones, but they also made the panels that went into Grenfell Tower, which I think perhaps threw the jury behind the guy a bit.
So what we have to do now is decide what we’re going to do about it.
I have to say in terms of the recent conflicts, trade unions have not been to the fore in engaging in these struggles, and they need to if we’re going to hold off these incursions to long established rights of protest. It’s partly been because of the nature of the issues the protests have been around, but trade unions remain one of the most powerful vehicles for the working class to organise within and we need to see a push back from that area as well as from organisations like Palestine Action and climate action groups.
Dick Scroop is the former Secretary of Wolverhampton , Bilston and District TUC and a Unite Community member
—————-
Right to Protest resources:
Protest
https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/how-to-organise-a-protest/
Protesting at University https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/university-protests/
The Public Order Act 2023 https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/advice_information/public-order-act-serious-disruption-prevention-orders/
Picketing/Industrial Action guides
https://unitealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Industrial-Action-Guide.pdf