We thought he was a demonstrator
What I should learn from the experiences of Roy Keane and Ray Gosling is that admitting your crimes to the public is ill-advised. But I’m going to admit to two crimes here, one in breach of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005) and the other in breach of the Terrorism Act (2000). Both were acts of civil disobedience protesting against what I perceived as inherent injustices in the Acts themselves and both crimes were about as serious as talking in class. I have stood in protest with Brian Haw on Parliament Square without written permission and for many years have displayed a Greenpeace poster, defined as an act of terrorism by the 2000 Act. Since the Labour government was elected in 1997 I have voted several times, marched many times against tuition fees, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and poverty and climate change, and stood on several picket lines over lecturers’ pay and student welfare. Prior to the Labour Government my crimes would have been legitimate expressions of my democratic right to protest, yet when the police killed Ian Tomlinson, a man walking home from work during the G20 protests, they defended their actions by saying they thought he was a demonstrator. Protest is being criminalised and we are encouraged to think of those who choose to demonstrate as nutters on the fringes of criminality, yet without people exercising their democratic right to protest woman wouldn’t be entitled to vote in tomorrow’s elections.
Democracy isn’t just about voting every five years, although we should all turn out tomorrow, even if just to spoil our ballot papers. But democracy is also about what we do between elections, not sacking your MP or having endless referenda but standing together when what politicians are doing is not in our name, be that bombing Iraq or using our money to fund moat cleaning. Democracy is about government by the will of the people and when it stops being that I hope we’ll all be standing together on Parliament Square to say so, with or without written permission.
