OPEN LETTER: A plea to politicians to support the right to protest

Wednesday 24 March 2021

A group of islanders is calling on Ministers to raise concerns with the UK Government about its 'Policing Bill' and confirm that Jersey's own Government has no intentions to interfere with islanders' ability to protest.

As the adoption of the UK's bill moved closer last week, a group of 19 islands had this to say to States Members...

Dear Member of the States Assembly,

In the UK, we are observing the greatest assault on democracy since the end of the Second World War. 

The UK’s ‘Policing Bill’, which passed its second hurdle Tuesday evening in Parliament, is a pernicious body of laws that threatens to lead the UK down a path which no reasonable individual could possibly want and we need to understand that the implications are far reaching and will impact our island’s population if it is allowed to proceed through its remaining stages. 

We need to keep in mind how many of our young people and others move to the UK for university, for work and indeed travel to attend protests to raise awareness about important social issues, including the destruction of our planet that threatens all of our lives. This is legislation that WILL impact someone we know, someone we love.

Pictured: The UK’s ‘Policing Bill’ passed its second hurdle in Parliament recently.

The bill, amongst other things, seeks to effectively criminalise protest, the very benchmark of a functioning democracy.  It also gives the green light to pogroms against the centuries vilified Traveller and Romany community. We ought to be able to remember the last time this happened and what followed it and understand that history tells us it will never be limited to one group once we allow this door to be opened.  

In 1933, the Nazis used the Reichstag fire to implement “emergency powers”, which consolidated the power of the fascist regime. One of the key and vital elements of the legislation they implemented in that fateful year was the nullifying of civil rights, it is vitally important we remember this and are able to recognise when we see similar patterns arising, even when they arise in our nation. We must NEVER be so naïve enough to believe that we cannot lose our democracy, indeed we must understand that for a democracy to thrive it needs to be consistently nurtured. 

Just a couple of months ago, the government passed the ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources’ bill, also known as the ‘Spycops’ bill, which for all intents and purposes has legalised undercover security forces, not limited to the police, and informants to commit the very worst of crimes, including rape, torture and murder, when deemed as ‘necessary’. All attempts to add safeguards to this legislation including the smallest of checks and balances were voted down. 

In addition, the legislation is not just limited to the intelligence and police services, but a multitude of agencies, including the environment agency and the food standards agency amongst others. This new law also covers the use of such undercover agents for the purposes not just of ‘national security’, but in order to prevent ‘public disorder’ and ‘harm to the economy’, which are all rather ambiguous terms and clearly open to abuse.

The ‘Spycops’ legislation followed the release of a concerning report that highlighted how former ‘Spycops’ had infiltrated hundreds of groups and behaved in a reprehensible manner, including forming relationships and fathering children with campaigners, whilst already having families in their real lives. Aside from three far-right groups, the vast majority of groups that had been targeted were human rights and environmental groups legally and publicly set up. 

This new bill would mean that the families of victims of ‘Spycops’ will not only not have any mechanism to hold the state accountable through the judicial system, but in addition would not even be able to protest such acts.

Every year we celebrate our liberation from occupation by a fascist regime, we witness our States Members giving powerful, emotive speeches reminding us to remember the sacrifices that needed to be made in order to win our freedom. The following excerpts are from the Bailiff’s Liberation speech of 2019:

"...Let us not forget that Liberation Day is a day to come together as one community, a day to prompt a common way forward; above all else a day to remember that the essential freedoms which we have were secured 74 years ago at great cost to the Allied forces and to our own people," 

“Those freedoms, granted to this Island and her people centuries ago, were restored in 1945, but both the past and present shows that they come regularly under threat and we should be assiduous to defend them."

Now our nation is witnessing a time when those freedoms, for the first time in 76 years, are NOT guaranteed, so we look to our States Members for leadership and we ask that you come forward and defend the words and values above and take a stand for us all.

We need to understand that this is an issue that transcends almost all political stances and begs just one very simple question of ourselves and it is this: do we believe in the democracy that our grandparents fought and made the ultimate sacrifice for? 

Many have spoken about the need to protect freedom of speech, indeed there is a great irony that members of the Conservative Party are trying to champion themselves as the protectors of freedom of speech, whilst simultaneously seeking to abolish any speech that they find ‘annoying’ or a ‘nuisance’. How we move forward now as an island will determine whether we truly cherish those ideals our democracy was built on and fought for.

We must never forget that without protest women would still not have the vote, black people in the United States would still be living under Jim Crow laws and the Berlin Wall would never have fallen. 

Protests for some may be ‘annoying’, but as our War Tunnels remind us, there are worse things than being temporarily inconvenienced!

Therefore, we the undersigned implore the States Assembly to take immediate action on this issue as a matter of urgency in the following ways:

• We request that The Minister for External Relations, Senator Ian Gorst, raise our concerns with his UK counterpart and confirm the outcome of his communication
• We request that the Government of Jersey publicly confirm that they have no intention of adopting similar oppressive laws in the island and that the right to protest will continue to be protected with the government working to enhance the island’s democratic processes

Signatories:

Natalie Strecker (Human Rights Campaigner)

Bram Wanrooij MA, M.ed, PhD Student

Kit Ashton BA, MA, PhD Student

Nicole Thorne TEP 

Samantha Losh MA PGCE BA (Hons)

Jane Perrin Thorp B.Ed (Hons)

Tina Hesse MAPPCP

Liam Renouf BA (Hons) Lond

Gill Hutchinson BSc (Hons) PhD Student

Nigel Jones MSc, BSc (Hons), PGCE (Environmentalist)

Ollie Taylor (Writer)

Rachel Wijsmuller BA MSciMA (Cantab)

Alexander Pearce BSc

Ruth Baier-Rolls (Ceramacist)

Kaspar Wimberley (Business owner/Environmentalist)

Alexander Andrews ICSA

Eckhart Weber MPhil Oxon (Environmentalist)

Tom Oxenham Med (Cantab)

Sarah Grassini MA