Facilitating Peaceful Protests

The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has published a report on the policing of recent protests in central London and the preparations for the forthcoming 'March for the Alternative' planned for this Saturday, 26 March 2011. The policing of protest engages several human rights, including freedom of expression and assembly, the right to life, the prohibition against inhuman or degrading treatment, and rights to liberty and privacy. The report welcomes the advance cooperation between the police and organisers of the TUC march, and the planned involvement of human rights observers in the control room on the day of the march itself. It also welcomes police initiatives to communicate better with protestors by using leaflets and Twitter. But concerns remain about kettling and the use of batons, including: a lack of clarity about the circumstances in which the police can resort to containment or 'kettling', and the apparent lack of opportunity for non-violent protesters to leave; the lack of specific guidance setting out the circumstances in which the use of the baton against the head might be justifiable. To meet the human rights requirement that the use of force should be proportionate, operational guidance to frontline officers needs to address this issue specifically and directly; the need for a nimble system for assimilating lessons learned.

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed and, sometimes, causing them to fail. They find that nonviolent resistance presents fewer obstacles to moral and physical involvement and commitment, and that higher levels of participation contribute to enhanced resilience, greater opportunities for tactical innovation and civic disruption (and therefore less incentive for a regime to maintain its status quo), and shifts in loyalty among opponents' erstwhile supporters, including members of the military establishment. Chenoweth and Stephan conclude that successful nonviolent resistance ushers in more durable and internally peaceful democracies, which are less likely to regress into civil war. Presenting a rich, evidentiary argument, they originally and systematically compare violent and nonviolent outcomes in different historical periods and geographical contexts, debunking the myth that violence occurs because of structural and environmental factors and that it is necessary to achieve certain political goals. Instead, the authors discover, violent insurgency is rarely justifiable on strategic grounds.

This book examines protest policing and the toolbox of options available to police commanders in response. The right to peacefully protest is intrinsic to democracy and embedded in British history and tradition. The police are responsible for managing public order and facilitating peaceful protest and this has not been without criticism. On occasions, the police have found themselves in opposition to protest groups and there have been incidents of disorder as a result. In response, the development of Police Liaison Teams in the UK has presented the police with a gateway for dialogue between themselves and those involved in protest. Drawing on two contrasting case studies, the policing of the badger cull in South West England and an English Defence League (EDL) march in Liverpool, this book explores the experiences of police commanders, police liaison officers, protesters, counterdemonstrators, members of local businesses and other interested parties. It explores how a dialogical approach with all those engaged in or affected by a protest has assisted the police in balancing human rights and reducing conflict for all. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students, scholars and practitioners of policing, politics, criminology, sociology, human rights and all those interested in how protests are policed.

Written by a police professional with 40 years’ experience, this book examines the evolution of counter-terrorism policy and state narratives on the causes and drivers of Islamist violence and terrorism and issues a direct challenge to the reality they impose on British Musim communities, as well as the wider British public.

Whenever a major event requires police intervention, questions are raised about the nature of the police response. Could the police have prevented the conflict, been better prepared, reacted more quickly? Could they have acted more forcefully or brought the altercation under control more effectively? Based upon real case studies of events from all

The right to demonstrate is considered fundamental to any democratic system of government, yet in recent years it has received little academic attention. However, events following the recent G20 protests in April 2009 make this a particularly timely work. Setting out and explaining in detail the domestic legal framework that surrounds the right of peaceful protest, the book provides the first extensive analysis of the Strasbourg jurisprudence under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, offering a critical look at recent cases such as Öllinger, Vajnai, Bukta, Oya Ataman, Patyi and Ziliberberg, as well as the older cases that form its bedrock. The principles drawn from this case-law are then synthesised into the remainder of the book to see how the right of protest enshrined in the Human Rights Act 1998 now operates. The five central chapters show how the right is defined: the restrictions on the choice of location of a protest; the constraints imposed on peaceful, persuasive protest; the near total intolerance of any form of obstructive or disruptive protest; the scope of preventive action by the police; and the extent to which commercial targets can avail themselves of private law remedies. This contemporary landscape is highlighted by critical analysis of the principles and case law -- including the leading decisions in Laporte, Austin, Jones and Lloyd and Kay. The book also highlights and develops themes that are currently under-theorised or ignored, including the interplay of the public and the private in regulating protest; the pivotal role played by land ownership rules; and the disjuncture between the law in the books and the law in action. While the book will appeal primarily to scholars, students and practitioners of law – as well as to campaigners and interest groups – it also offers political and socio-legal insights, which will be of interest equally to non-specialists.