Defiance: Extinction Rebellion blocked areas of central London in 2019

CAMPAIGNERS will defend the right to protest tomorrow (Saturday) at a major May Day demonstration in Trafalgar Square.

Unions, students, environment activists and groups including Sisters Uncut are to demonstrate against the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

The proposed legislation is the government’s direct response to the Extinction Rebellion climate change protests that brought the West End to a standstill twice in 2019 and stretched police resources to the limit.

But critics say it will hand too much power to police, allowing officers to stop legitimate protests if they consider them to be causing a “disruption” or “distress to bystanders”, while increasing penalties protesters may face.

Sandy Nicoll, a Unison rep at SOAS university, said: “If you think back to Extinction Rebellion, they were using legitimate civil disobedience and disruption as a way of focusing attention on the threat to the climate. That would be clearly illegal if this bill is passed.

“But it goes further. It attacks vulnerable – Roma travellers – and there is an extension to stop-and-search powers. We must have rights to be able to walk the streets without being picked on by police.”

May Day’s protest is one of dozens of coinciding demonstrations exp­ected to draw tens of thousands of people across the country this weekend.

Legal experts say it may violate international human rights by, for the first time, allowing the home secretary to decide which protests can be outlawed. Its clauses are deliberately vague, leaving decisions up to “discretionary inter­pretation by the police”.

Last year the Metropolitan police Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said that “ever since the first large-scale Extinction Rebellion protest” she had been engaging with the government about possible reforms to “enable the police to deal better with protests where people are not primarily violent or seriously disorderly but… had an avowed intent to bring policing to its knees and the city to a halt…”

The Labour Party was originally abstaining, but following criticism of police tactics at a vigil for Sarah Everard – the young woman from Brixton allegedly abducted and killed by a serving police officer – is now voting against the bill at its second reading.

“This is no time to be rushing through poorly thought-out measures to impose disprop ortionate controls on free expression and the right to protest,” said David Lammy, Labour’s justice spokesman.

Home secretary Priti Patel has said the bill will help protect police officers from violent protesters, by doubling maximum sentences for assaulting an emergency worker.

In a recent House of Commons debate she said: “There have been too many disgusting examples of police officers and ambulance drivers being spat at and violently attacked as they go out to work, day after day, to make sure that the rest of us are safe and cared for.

“The government backs the police and will never allow those with an extreme political agenda – such as those calling for the defunding or abolition of the police – to weaken our resolve when it comes to protecting the police.

“We back the police and will do everything we possibly can to make our community safer.”

Groups are expected to meet in Trafalgar Square on May 1 from 11am.