“AWAY in a police car” echoed outside the Home Office on Wednesday as campaigners belted out renditions of Christmas carols, calling for the government to repeal draconian anti-protest laws.
Dressed in Christmas jumpers and Santa hats, carollers from Amnesty International UK, Greenpeace and Liberty sang festive songs including The Twelve Days of Protest and Silent Protest.
They then handed in a petition to the Home Office, calling on it to scrap protest restrictions introduced by previous governments, alongside a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper demanding an urgent meeting to discuss the state of protest rights in Britain.
A series of repressive laws have made the right to protest increasingly hard to exercise.
They include the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which allows police to ban or restrict “unacceptable” protests, and the Public Order Act 2023 which criminalised protesters “locking on” and fastening themselves to each other or objects.
Punitive jail terms handed out since their enactment include one Just Stop Oil protester being sentenced to six months for slow marching on a road for 30 minutes, while five others from the group received a combined 21 years for co-ordinating a non-violent action over Zoom.
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