From the Six Acts 1819 to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021. Tory attacks on the right to protest have a long history
The Tories Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has been back in the Commons today. From earlier rounds Priti Patel has added another 18 pages of illiberal measures to restrict and ban protests
The Bill is a ragbag of measures which proposes amongst other things a possible 10 years in prison for damaging a statue, rather more than the penalty for rape. It also gives the police even greater power to restrict protests.
The Tories have a long history of this sort of thing.
One of the Six Acts, which were actually formally passed in December 1819 after Peterloo, was the Seditious Meetings Act.
Under the Act all meetings of more than 50 people- in reality no more than 49 persons- were allowed. This included any meeting: “for the purpose…of deliberating upon any public grievance, or upon any matter or thing relating to any trade, manufacture, business, or profession, or upon any matter in church or state,”.
The only exception were meetings called by an ‘authorised official’. In addition a meeting of people in one specific area could be called provided permission was given by a Justice of the Peace. He of course required six days-notice. At such meetings no banners, flags or emblems of any sort were allowed.
While the Act was repealed in 1824 a related limit of no more than 49 delegates at any representative gathering remained in place through the Chartist period up to1848.
Indeed in order to try and avoid official interference in protest meetings, these were often held out of town in remote rural spots well away from the reach of the authorities.
It took many years of political organising by the trade unions, the Chartists and others to get rid of these restrictions. It is a perpetual fight but the perspective is important. The Tories talk of freedom, in practice its actual defenders come from a rather different place.
Leave a Reply