Shhhh! Be quiet peasants!

The somewhat reassuringly sounding Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is on its way to receiving Royal Assent. After a year of the tussle between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the controversial bill will become law. A new gift from this scandal-plagued government to the people. The government that didn't bother to comply with its own draconian and grossly disproportionate COVID restrictions is legislating away whatever is left of the fundamental right to peaceful protest. The government headed by a Prime Minister who wants us to believe that he didn't "knowingly" break the law he thrust on the entire population is happily endorsing vague provisions expanding police powers to throttle criticism of the government. This bill may satisfy the fascistic tendencies of the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, whose other recent strokes of genius constituted a policy of relocating asylum seekers crossing the English Channel to Rwanda for processing. But it is a profound and saddening truncation of the right of the people to hold their government into account. 

The forthcoming law will authorise police to ban "noisy protests" that cause "intimidation or harassment" or "alarm or distress" to the public. Consequently, the police will inhere the power to anticipate the noise levels of an upcoming demonstration and presumably judge in abstracto whether such an event will constitute a criminal offence. Failing that, boots on the ground on the day could adjudge a protest as criminally "noisy" and disperse it; those who resist will be arrested. The very essence of the right to protest is that it will often be raucous. In fact, (non-violent) protest may serve its high purpose best when it invites dispute, inflames passions, and causes alarm and distress to the public. The right of the people to criticise their government is at the heart of any democratic order. Protests against foolish wars, vacuous environmental policies or governmental corruption cannot be nicely constrained into monastic events. Indeed, in recent times, there is ample fruit for discontent. From the government's brazenly corrupt handouts of contracts to pals during the first wave of the pandemic to the current punishing wave of rising taxation stealthily imposed by an out of his depth Chancellor seemingly incapable of grasping the enormous strain on people's pocketbooks, to the seemingly endless booze-athons in Downing Street, while the rest of us were legally prohibited from inviting a relative for dinner in our homes. If there ever was a time for some noise, now seems like a perfect moment. 

Vague laws are destructive to liberty and anathema to the rule of law. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 62, incoherent legislation "poisons the blessings of liberty itself." Such laws fail to provide any fair notice to individuals about what the law forbids, leaving them guessing its meaning. Vagueness further heightens the spectre that a law is so standardless that it permits seriously discriminatory enforcement. Criminalising "noisy protests" and authorising the police to make such arbitrary determinations puts the rights of the people at the mercy and grace of administrative discretion. For shame!