Tell The Home Secretary To Recognise OUR Definition Of the Right To Protest

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood

image shows protesters gathered with banners and placards and a green square concealing their faces

Every time politicians and the police say they 'believe' in the right to protest, they take our rights away.

So Netpol has defined the right to protest for them. Now we want you to demand that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recognises the Definition – or explain why the protest rights the government expects of other countries do not apply here in Britain.

Since 2019, there has been a relentless attack on the right to protest with a series of new laws, new police practices and an increasing willingness to define protest movements as existential security threats to justify these exceptional measures.

At the core of this change has been a wilful ambiguity and misrepresentation by the government about what protest rights are. This has, despite numerous criticisms from national and international experts, benefitted the powerful by portraying protesters as marginal and extreme, their tactics a diversion and distraction from the horse-trading of ‘real politics’.

The Definition of the Right to Protest seeks an end to this wilful ambiguity: because the public needs to know what citizens should expect and demand from the police when exercising their rights.

Every time politicians and the police talk about ‘recognising’ the right to protest, they take our rights away and then hide behind vagueness and uncertainty about what protest rights mean in practice. It's time we took the defence of our right to protest into our own hands, rather than simply complaining about the endless crackdown.

To: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood
From: [Your Name]

We call on you as Home Secretary to recognise “The Definition of the Right to Protest” launched by Netpol as a necessary and valid expression of Britain’s human rights obligations to protect our rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.

It is available online at https://netpol.org/definition-protest/

“The Definition” clearly explains what we as campaigners see as “the right to protest” when we are taking urgent action for a better world.

It does so by setting out what the public should expect and demand from the police when exercising their right to collectively express their disagreement, disapproval, or opposition to those in power. It is based on international guidelines on the protection of the right to freedom of assembly, from monitoring bodies and experts, that the British government has already accepted.

If you believe the right to protest means something else – that it only applies to protests that cause no disruption, or where nobody is arrested, or only demonstrations your government happens to support – then we challenge you to explain how this reflects Britain’s international legal obligations.