Some thoughts.

The right to protest is the lifeblood of democracy.

During this deadly pandemic, every aspect of our social lives has been affected, and it is right that a deadly infectious virus will make us protest differently, as it makes us work and socialise differently.
But.

Protest has never been explicitly banned by Parliament, even during the lockdown.

The problem is that police forces have behaved as if it is has.

It is unacceptable that police have exercised this kind of authority without explicit authorisation from Parliament.
The police cannot be the gatekeepers of our rights to protest. They are not fit for that task for many reasons.
This issue has come to head because of the devastating death of Sarah Everard.

Women such as @ReclaimTS who want to express solidarity in socially distanced vigils have been banned from doing so by the very police force which may bear some responsibility for her death.
This has brought into sharp relief the damage which unclear Covid rules on protest can have to our democratic rights.

The Prime Minister has expressed sympathy for the vigils.

But we need more than words.

His government bears responsibility for the unclear Covid rules.
It is essential that his government fixes this problem.

As we have seen, the health secretary can, by the flick of his pen, change the Covid regulations.

He has done so 70 times in less than a year.
He could, on Monday, reinsert the socially distanced protest exception into the gatherings rules which already exists in previous versions.

The right to protest is not being protected (and is being obstructed) by the police.

It must be restored by the government. Image
Also, members of Parliament bear some of the blame here.

They have become too supine during the past year and have allowed the government to control lockdown criminal laws with no effective scrutiny.

It is high time they took back control.
The @metpoliceuk had repeated opportunities in recent days to agree a path forward. After the hearing on Friday when the High Court made clear protests (or vigils) could not be automatically unlawful, there was a window to agree some version of the vigil. They refused.
The @metpoliceuk had the advantage of a supremely responsible group of organisers - a number of of whom are local councillors (I worked with them intensively over 2 days and was hugely impressed). They could have worked together to do this responsibly. Instead look what happened
Police have a legal duty under the human rights act to facilitate lawful protest. They knew that whatever they did people would be there. But rather than being seen to lose face as they had interpreted the law wrong (that protest is automatically unlawful), they doubled down

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More from @AdamWagner1

12 Mar
Have to log out but this is the point:

At 3pm today every police force in England was saying protest could never be lawful under Covid regs.

The position now, because of the ruling, is protest can in principle be lawful and it is up to the police to assess the proportionality
The only reason judge didn't make declaration we wanted (that the right to protest has to be part of every decision made by police re protest) is the police conceded the point just before the hearing, contrary to their policy which we had and also their statements to our clients.
Absolutely amazing effort by @ReclaimTS - we are lucky to have such amazing publicly minded women in our society.

Legal team @TomRHickman @PippaWoodrow @jpormerod John Halford, Theodora Middleton @BindmansLLP put together case in 24 hours.

Will have a big impact, trust me
Read 5 tweets
11 Mar
UPDATE

After the below tweets I spent much of today speaking to women across England about their plans to organise #ReclaimTheseStreets vigils.

All plans include social distancing & masks

It turned out that police were generally saying that all such gatherings were illegal /1
The organisers could face £10k fines, and participants could be prosecuted or face fines of £100s.

@metpoliceuk initially told @ReclaimTS organisers they wanted to allow it to happen but late this afternoon reversed their position and said that their "hands were tied" /2
A great team at @BindmansLLP @BlackstoneChbrs @DoughtyStreet and I are working to get urgent hearing before High Court tomorrow to declare Met Police misunderstood their duties under Human Rights Act.

The case needs urgent support crowdjustice.com/case/reclaimth… /3
Read 5 tweets
11 Mar
Interested to see how the @metpoliceuk police this. In the current lockdown they seem to have been treating protest as essentially banned. I think that is legally wrong. Outdoor socially distanced protest should be permitted under the Covid regulations.
In the circumstances, the @metpoliceuk should confirm publicly that the protest will be permitted. However, if they do, it will be an exception to the policy they seem to have applied through the rest of the lockdown. This shows the problem with the policy.
The police should never be in the position of deciding which causes they prefer to permit to protest. Anyway, watch this space for more on that
Read 6 tweets
5 Mar
🚨Changes to lockdown and face covering regulations coming into force this Monday 8th just published

The Health Protection (Coronavirus) (Wearing of Face Coverings in a Relevant Place and Restrictions: All Tiers) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/247/…
Brief explanatory note
First important change - to the face covering regulations.

Basically trying to prevent face covering rules being “exercised so as to prevent a voter who is otherwise entitled to vote… from doing so”. What does that mean, exactly?

Sounds pretty circular to me.
Read 17 tweets
5 Mar
I am supporting this campaign to help the Markaz in Golders Green, a Muslim community centre, to change it terms of use from a Christian community building to a general religious one

(short thread - mixture of sad and hopeful)

loveoverhatebarnet.com
You may think this should be uncontroversial. I met with the leadership of the Markaz in my chambers a while back (they were lovely) and was shocked to hear about the often racist, sometimes far right, opposition to the centre. I told them I would do whatever I could to help.
The opponents have enlisted someone called Gavin Boby to lead their campaign - he self-describes as "the Mosque Buster" and has this racist logo. He prides himself at blocking planning applications for mosques. gavinboby.com
Read 7 tweets
5 Mar
Also worth mentioning Lady Justice Rose is the fifth Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court in its 11-year history following Justices Phillips, Neuberger, Dyson, Collins (2 of its 4 Presidents have been Jewish). An amazing achievement for a community of 300,000 people
Lady Justice Rose lit the Chanukah candles in the Temple in 2017 at the little annual event I organise which oddly hasn’t made into her official bio!
🕎
Anyway, this has led me to finding this interesting speech given by Lord Neuberger - this para can now proudly be updated supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-17…
Read 6 tweets

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