The rights to protest and free speech were never generously granted by the British state or its ruling classes. Instead, these rights were won and defined by the struggles and radicalism of the working class over centuries. As the great historian of the English working class E.P. Thompson put it in 1959, “If Campaigners can meet in Trafalgar Square today, it is because of the great struggles for freedom of speech and assembly waged by radical and socialist working men in the 1880’s and 1890’s”.
But since Thompson wrote those words, and indeed many times before he wrote them, these crucial rights of the working class have been under attack from the British ruling class and its state. The Public Order Act 1986, a cornerstone of Thatcher’s war for “law and order”, introduced sweeping powers for the police to limit and restrict peaceful protest. Since then, things have gotten steadily worse.
The last Conservative government, in the context of rising industrial action and protests around climate breakdown and racial injustice, introduced two draconian pieces of legislation, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, that further strengthen the police’s hand when it comes to restricting protest. In truth, none of this new legislation was strictly needed, but it was introduced with the intention of signalling to the public at large that protest will not be tolerated, and to allow the state to more aggressively attack people that do protest.
The main reason leading to this ramping up of anti-protest laws, rhetoric and policing tactics, is that the system we live in is in fundamental crisis. This is reflected in accelerating climate breakdown, spiralling inequality and collapsing living standards, and wars. None of our mainstream political parties are capable of addressing the root causes of these crises, because that would mean addressing and changing the fundamental basis of the capitalist system. So, instead, the focus is on policing and repressing opposition to the crisis.
The root cause of the various crises we see is the very system we live in. The endless pursuit for profit by a small number, leads to widening inequality and collapsing living standards for the working class. The pursuit of endless growth on a planet that cannot sustain it leads to climate breakdown, with the working class as its primary victims. And the competition between different ruling classes and their states for shares of the world’s wealth, leads, inevitably, to wars, with all the devastation and brutality they entail.
Incapable of facing up to any of this, the ruling classes of the world, have opted for increased repression and intolerance to protest. In Britain, this has been seen over the years with the crackdown on climate protesters, and now an increasing attack on the rights of anti-war and pro-Palestine protestors. But these anti-protest laws and tactics will also be directed against workers fighting for decent wages and conditions, or local communities fighting for decent public services and equality.
It is crucial that, as in the past, socialists and the wider working class and trade union movement are to the fore in pushing back against this steady erosion of our democratic rights and the creeping authoritarianism of a decaying system. We must defend the rights of protesters, even if we disagree with their tactics, and call for the immediate release of climate activists held now as political prisoners. We must call for the dropping of charges against anti-war and pro-Palestine protestors, and we must call for the repeal of all the anti-protest laws on the statute books.
But, beyond this, we must understand, that it has only ever been the threat of the people that has forced governments and states to concede our rights. So, we must be prepared, when necessary, to transgress the draconian, and authoritarian laws that seek to stifle our democratic rights. In this fight, we need to build broad coalitions, but trade unions, as the main democratic bodies of the working class, need to be at the heart of this fight. We know that with the present Labour government, nothing of substance is going to change. The spiralling crisis we all see will deepen and accelerate, and so will their attempts to repress opposition to the status quo.
To fight for the re-distribution of wealth and power so that the working class can live flourishing lives, against accelerating climate breakdown, for racial justice, and women’s liberation, we need to defend our democratic rights and freedoms. We do not have to embrace any liberal illusions about the value of rights, or the nature of the state, but history has shown us time and again, that these democratic rights are central to our struggles for a better world – and we must not surrender them.
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It is clear to everyone that our society does not work for us all. Working class people, who produce the wealth, and without whom nothing works, have seen their wages, living standards and quality of life collapse. At the same time, the wealth of a tiny minority in society grows without restraint.
The Origins and Importance of May Day. On this May Day we send fraternal greetings and solidarity to the struggling working classes around the world and re-commit ourselves to the pursuit of working class liberation, socialism and world peace.
Palestine will continue until the structures of apartheid and colonialism are dismantled. There will be peace, but only when Palestine is free, from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Rise will work tirelessly to hasten the day.
