Email your MP: protect our right to protest

sign reads "protesting is a human right"

Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Our right to protest has won us freedoms: from the weekend to women’s right to vote, and it holds the powerful to account. Ask your MP to protect the right to protest now.

Protest must be protected.

Right now, the UK government is trying to pass ANOTHER anti-protest law: the Crime and Policing Bill.

This Bill will be in the House of Commons on Tuesday 17th June 2025.

But an email from you, a constituent, could change things.

We only have until Tuesday 17th June.

Your MP has the power to protect our right to protest.

Your MP can support an amendment to make peaceful protest a statutory right.

After years of endless anti protest laws, it is time that Parliament reminded the police that they have the obligation to protect the right to protest.

The police have more powers than ever to crack down on peaceful protests. A society where police do not facilitate protest is not a free society.

Those in power have the opportunity now to change course.

Email your MP now.

Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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We only have until Tuesday 17th June 2025 to email MPs on this.

Email your MP now to protect our right to protest and halt the crackdown.

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As your constituent, I am writing to you ahead of the Crime and Policing Bill Report stage to urge you to support the right to protest by;

1. Signing on to and speak in favour of New Clause 50: A Statutory Right to Protest 
2. Speaking in favour of New Clause 49 if it is called at Report stage 
3. Speaking out against Clauses 108-111 
4. Speak against Clause 114 
5. Speak against Clause 126

New Clause 50 would create a statutory right to peaceful protest and impose obligations on public authorities, in practice most likely the police, to respect, protect and facilitate the right to protest. NC49 reflects the recent findings of the Court of Appeal and would return police powers to impose restrictions on protest to their appropriate level, so that they are able to restrict activities that would cause genuinely serious disruption but not interfere with protests that fall short of that threshold.

Clauses 108-111 are largely repeated from the previous government’s Criminal Justice Bill and as such must be understood in their broader context, as part of an ongoing crackdown on the exercise of peaceful protest rights. That the new government seems to be continuing this crackdown is deeply disappointing. Of particular concern are the clauses that introduce a police power to ban anything that ‘conceals identity’ at a protest. These powers are premised on the false notion that concealing identity at a protest is inherently illegitimate and are in any case far too widely drawn, meaning that people with perfectly legitimate reasons for wearing a face covering, including religious or health reasons, will still face arrest.

Similarly, clause 114 is also far too broadly worded. It is said to be intended to protect rights to religious worship, but in fact wrongly risks giving political opponents of a protest an effective veto power over the route or timing of that protest. It is open to misuse through vague undefined terms such as ‘vicinity’ of a place of worship.

Clause 126 hands police power to impose an immigration condition on a caution, requiring people with perfectly lawful leave to remain in the UK to leave the country. People affected will include refugees, victims of trafficking, students, workers and family members. This power is entirely inappropriate for a police officer to be operating. They are not in any position to assess whether a person’s forced expulsion might breach the UK’s human rights obligations. There is no due process, appeal rights or even oversight of the use of the power. It is a poorly thought through and wild overreach of a measure that is intended to further the political aims of looking ‘tough’ on ‘foreign criminals’. It will have a particular chilling effect on protest rights as students and refugees are both major participants in protests and police regularly arrest protesters and issue them with cautions.

I kindly ask that you take this opportunity to support and stand for my and all of our right to peacefully protest.

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Email your MP: protect our right to protest

Our right to protest has won us freedoms: from the weekend to women’s right to vote, and it holds the powerful to account. Ask your MP to protect the right to protest now.

1,171

Help us get to 2,000

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We only have until Tuesday 17th June 2025 to email MPs on this. Email your MP now to protect our right to protest and halt the crackdown.

Email your MP: protect our right to protest

Our right to protest has won us freedoms: from the weekend to women’s right to vote, and it holds the powerful to account. Ask your MP to protect the right to protest now.

1,171

Help us get to 2,000

Add your VOICE:

We only have until Tuesday 17th June 2025 to email MPs on this.

Email your MP now to protect our right to protest and halt the crackdown.