New human rights report slams Starmer’s war on protest

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has slammed Keir Starmer’s ‘lawfare’ war on UK citizens’ protest rights. It also demands an end to the criminalisation of civil resistance and changes to legislation to restore rights stolen by Starmer and his predecessors.

Damning for Starmer

The report, Silencing the Streets: The Right to Protest Under Attack in the United Kingdom, condemns:

• Starmer’s use of pre-existing legislation like the ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022’  and the Public Order Act 2023 to attack protest rights
• his police-state exploitation of the vagueness of legislation – terms like ‘serious annoyance’ or ‘more than minor disruption’ to criminalise protests the government dislikes
• the chilling effect of these laws and government exploitation of them on civic participation, freedom of expression and dissent

It also notes that Starmer is pushing through new legislation to intensify attacks on UK rights. For example, the Crime and Policing Bill 2025, which Starmer is pushing through parliament:

• Clause 118 of the Crime and Policing Bill 2025, which would criminalize the concealment of identity during protests. These provisions are overly broad, risk penalizing peaceful protesters for legitimate reasons (e.g. health, safety, privacy), and create a chilling effect on participation in lawful assemblies.

• Clause 124, which would expand police powers to impose protest restrictions in the vicinity of places of worship. Existing powers are sufficient to address threats to places of worship and the new measure risks being misused to suppress legitimate protest in public spaces. It must not be used to target particular groups or viewpoints, especially in light of recent responses to pro-Palestine protests.

• The proposed “cumulative disruption” amendment to section 13 of the Public Order Act, which would allow police to ban public processions based on aggregated disruption rather than the impact of the specific protest.

HRW says that Starmer’s actions – which are unquestionably intended to protect Israel and corporations – breach the UK’s obligations under international law. This has led to a draconian “criminalization” of actions that would previously either not have been prosecuted at all, or would have received far lower sentences:

The criminalization of protests has resulted in harsher sentences, including prison sentences up to several years for non-violent actions like slow marching, planning protests, or bringing protest equipment. These are actions that in the past, in most cases, would have resulted only in fines or suspended sentences. In several high-profile cases, climate activists were convicted and sentenced to between two and five years in prison under the statutory offense of public nuisance for participating in online meetings planning direct action or staging peaceful stunts aimed at raising awareness. On appeal, courts have at times acknowledged these sentences as “manifestly excessive,” yet the chilling effect on dissent remains substantial.

Government data shows hundreds of charges have been brought under new protest laws since 2022, in some cases for actions as minor as carrying placard straps or holding signs outside courtrooms. For example, Trudi Warner, a retired social worker, was charged with contempt of court simply for holding a sign about jurors’ rights. These developments underscore the increasing legal uncertainty and criminalization surrounding protest in the UK and raises serious concerns about the erosion of the right to peaceful assembly and expression.

Lawfare

This lawfare war has been marked by arbitrary arrests, contradictory police instructions and deliberately unclear legal thresholds, making protesters unsure of what they can safely do and giving police extreme latitude for abuse. This abuse has been especially clear in restrictions on protest, and arrests of protesters, later exposed as entirely unjustified.

One example the report provides should be shocking, but will not be to anyone who has followed Starmer’s and his police enforcers’ tactics. It concerns Muhammad Rabbani, managing director of human rights group CAGE:

…despite protestors liaising with police via phone, personal, and email communication, and consulting with three lawyers (at the suggestion of the police) about the images on placards protestors planned to use during the protest, police advised that they would not be able to say whether action would be acceptable until the day of the protest. The protesters, following lawyers’ advice, added a line to the placards featuring images of coconuts saying, “This is satire.” On June 26, 2024–the day of the solidarity protest outside Westminster Magistrate’s Court–things took a bad turn, according to Rabbani:

At around 9:50 a.m., roughly 20 minutes into the protest, the [police] commander said the placard is a problem. I asked “what does that mean? If it’s a criminal offense, we will take it down. Is there a risk of arrest?” Police just told us to take them down. Police didn’t tell us if it was a criminal offense … I collected all the placards and walked with them to the wall of the court building and left them there. I went over to the front door of the building, which was when the police came over to say I was arrested. They gave no justification but said I had committed a section 5 offense [of the Public Order Act – for displaying threatening or abusive writing.] They handcuffed me and dragged me into the police van.

In at least one other case, police even entrapped then brutally arrested anti-genocide protesters.  The Metropolitan force first told marchers to cross police lines then brutally arrested and even charged them for doing so. Police have also arrested people for protesting when they were not even protesting.

The report also notes the intrinsically racist nature of Starmer’s legislation and policies:

The legislation also risks disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups, including those with limited immigration status, by extending police authority to impose conditions that may lead to removal from the country…

…Liberty has expressed concerns that the bill’s blanket ban on face coverings at protests, without upfront exemptions, will deter peaceful participation and disproportionately impact marginalized groups.

A dire assessment of our waning freedoms

Among the report’s conclusions, HRW calls for:

• The repeal of all the repressive legislation Starmer is using to wage war on protest.
• The end of police ‘no suspicion’ stop-and-search powers at protests.
• A review of all arrests, prosecutions and convictions under laws and policies already legally ruled unlawful.
• An independent review of police conduct.
• The establishment of a statutory right to protest.
• The enactment of “the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into UK domestic law, to strengthen the protection of the right to peaceful assembly”.
• An end to the courts’ use of excessive sentencing against protest.
• An end to the political use of extreme lengths of ‘remand’ imprisonment and restrictive bail conditions against arrested protesters.

and more.

Tragically for UK freedoms and democracy, there is a ‘left of zero’ chance of Starmer heeding the report, let alone acting to end the police state he is creating. To the “Zionist without qualification” Starmer and his cronies, the interests of Israel and of giant corporations outweigh the good of the British people. There is no hope of any better from the Tories or Reform, so UK voters who want to be free need to act accordingly.

Read the full report here.

Featured image via the Canary