Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

My friend @casparhenderson just found this in his archives. 26 years ago, during our invasion of the Twyford Down cutting, foot in plaster after getting it impaled and smashed by security guards at the Solsbury Hill road protest, but still limping on.
Christ, I feel old.

We felt so confident then. We were up against almost everyone: the government, the construction companies, the roads lobby, the motorists of Middle England. But we seldom doubted we would win. And we did. We stopped John Major's road building programme in its tracks.

We were also much freer then. A series of laws were subsequently passed that severely restricted the right to protest:
1994 Criminal Justice Act
1997 Protection from Harassment Act
2000 Terrorism Act
2005 Serious Organised Crime Act
by governments that claimed to value freedom

All those laws purported to be for other purposes, and just "happened" to make various forms of protest illegal. We warned the government they would have this effect, and in two cases we were promised that they would not be used that way. Whereupon they immediately were.

The Thatcher and Major governments introduced some terrible laws (1986 Public Order Act, 1992 Trade Union Act, 1994 Criminal Justice Act), but the Blair government was just as bad. Between them, they criminalised civil disobedience - the lifeblood of democracy.

It's hard to express to young people today just how free to dissent we were. We have lost something precious in this country, something we should strive to regain.

When John Clare wrote about the enclosers who "Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free", he could have been writing about any of the governments of the past 40 years.
Freedom is their doctrine. But what they mean is freedom for the rich and powerful, against the rest.