Johnson on democratic protest: ‘uncooperative crusties and protesters of all kinds littering the road’
People have a right to protest in a Constitutional Monarchy (which Britain is) and democratic politicians have a duty to protect & uphold that right.
Yet the current Prime Minister Johnson was openly contemptuous of Extinction Rebellion protesters focused on the Climate Emergency on Monday evening.
The sentiment is that people have a right to protest, its just that the particular type of protest they have organised, a picket, a sit-down, a march is inconvenient to the rich and powerful.
There is nothing new in this and the right to democratic protest was hard fought for and hard won. Before the nineteenth century the only officially sanctioned protest was the right to accompany a petition to Parliament. Assemblies of more than 49 people were not allowed until well into the nineteenth century, unless sanctioned to come together to organise a petition.
The Chartists, the Suffragettes and the labour movement made hard won gains on the right to protest but it is not something that hard-right Tories like Johnson will ever accept as being a ‘normal’ part of democracy.
As the historian and peace campaigner E P Thompson noted, protest and survive
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