For a Government led by a former human rights lawyer and one that continues to underline the importance of the right to peaceful protest the authoritarian drift of recent times is marked.
It didn’t start with the mass arrest of many hundreds of people holding signs containing words on Palestine that the Government doesn’t like but that was an indication of the direction of travel. The entirely peaceful protesters are apparently alleged terrorists. Clearly the pen must be mightier than the sword.
The latest development is the arrest of four Led By Donkeys activists for projecting images of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein on to the walls of Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening. Trump was in the UK but not at Windsor at that time.
The protest was entirely peaceful and there is by now a long tradition of various groups projecting images on to public buildings including Parliament.
By contrast at the Unite the Kingdom rally on 13th September there was disorder and attacks on police. Few arrests were made on the day, due to lack of officers. Facial recognition cameras, used controversially at the Notting Hill Carnival, were absent and the Met Police have resorted to posting pictures of people they want to talk to on social media.
An authoritarian drift with a smidgeon of the two tier it seems
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