7th October 2025
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The Home Secretary wants to ban more things
There are many ways in which freedom can be expressed.
For example, the eminent jurist Janis Joplin averred that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
And our current Home Secretary has found another way to convey what freedom means.
Freedom, for Shabana Mahmood, is just another word for there being a gap in the law.
Generally speaking, in a liberal democracy, the position for the individual is that they are free to do what they wish as long as there is not a law against it.
(Until the ECHR case of Malone, the position of the UK government was also that it was free to do as it wished – even to citizens – unless there was a law against it, and one of the many unsung benefits of membership of that convention is that this is no longer the case.)
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For the Home Secretary a freedom to do a thing only means that there must be “a gap in the law” which presumably must be filled.
What an individual is free to do now should be prohibited.
Something unbanned should be banned.
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In this particular context, a right to protest should only be allowed once or twice. It does not matter if the thing being protested continued, that is it: your time is up, you’ve had your fun and now you’re going to be arrested and prosecuted.
Immediate protests only will be allowed and if they don’t work then one cannot repeat the protest.
The problem here, of course, is that some Bad Things endure. They can last days and weeks and years and even decades.
In principle, a person should be able to protest about a Bad Thing at any time and for as long as the Bad Thing continues.
And sometimes a Bad Thing – like Apartheid in South Africa – eventually buckles, in part because of the constant protests.
Sometimes a protest needs to be frequent and repeated because of the frequent or repeated or continual or worsening nature of the Bad Thing being protested.
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Of course, freedom of expression is a qualified right, and so it needs to be balanced against the rights of others.
But that balancing exercise should be on a case-by-case basis.
Blanket prohibitions by the state should be avoided.
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There are many “gaps in the law” where people act freely without prohibitions.
These “gaps” are not somehow failures of the law.
Indeed, prohibitions (and mandatory obligations) are instead the divides between free spaces.
And those free spaces should always be as wide as possible.
Amen to that!
Thank you
👏🙂❤️
Let’s not forget the frightening comment from the Home Secretary when being questioned by Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC (5th October) – “just because you have a freedom ‘doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day'”. That should make every citizen’s blood run cold. It’s reminiscent of saying ‘you only have rights when we decide they apply to you’.
Excellent blog post.
I recall when I began working in London some 50+ years ago what struck me was a feeling that I had very few rights unless they were enshrined in law, common or otherwise. Local bylaws seemed to add further restrictions and even venturing onto the seashore involved a convoluted understanding that the beach itself was the sovereign’s territory which could prohibit certain undocumented activities.
Since those heady years, further restrictions have been heaped on top, enforcement of which in many instances has been devolved to private companies, many with little or no thought or regulatory oversight, ultimately seeking to make everything illegal unless it isn’t.
It’s a sobering thought in the current febrile international environment, under this latest restrictive punt, the well justified protests at Greenham Common would have been prohibited and forcibly removed.
Very powerful
More than a few Labour MPs have become concerned about the party leadership’s mantra, “We are builders, not blockers”.
Understandably, they have raised the point that such a stark division allows little room for even reasoned objections to applications for planning permission that are designed not to block, but to modify and/or improve.
There is a strong desire amongst the leadership of the Labour Party and amongst right wing backbench Labour MPs, some of them members of the socially conservative Blue Labour faction, to stifle challenges to their Government’s capital projects.
As an aside, Shabana Mahmood identifies as belonging to Blue Labour.
It does not seem unreasonable to assume that what Mahmood is proposing might be applied to lawful, if to some people irritating, protests about construction projects.
A token protest would be allowed, but not perhaps vigils lasting more than a few days?
One imagines thoughtful folk are working out whether rotas of protestors or protests held on private land, adjacent to the target building site, might frustrate the Home Secretary’s plans.
The European Convention on Human Rights, of course, protects the right to freedom of expression.
What shocked me most was the Home Secretary’s statement (I paraphrase) that people should have the right to go about their daily lives free from anxiety and fear. Of course that’s right BUT she was proposing to amend the law to use it against mostly elderly people who sit down silently holding placards about freedom. In whom do they instil anxiety and fear? If she were proposing to do something against racist marches, she might merit a hearing.
“Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian’s fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
Catch-22
The Home Secretary’s underlying view on this issue is even more sinister than the blog implies. She seems to be suggesting that if any activity of which she disapproves is not yet banned, then that constitutes a « gap in the law » which needs to be filled by repressive action immediately. This is not just an inadequate view of freedom but a recipe for tyranny.
To give just one example of the utter absurdity of this proposal, consider “Speaker’s Corner”, Hyde Park, one of the most famous landmarks to Free Speech in the world.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Metropolitan Police have worked steadily to restrict those freedoms (I find records of them prohibiting the use of e.g. *actual soap boxes* as far back at least as far as 2017… [Irony is dead, obviously]), it is currently entirely lawful for me to go to the Corner [without my soap-box, sadly] and protest about pretty much anything I choose.
Based on this latest, it would now be illegal for me to attempt that more than once.
I remember when the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 was introduced… there was a stipulation in there somewhere – Section 15? – that set out that 3 or more persons congregating in the same place could be classified as an “illegal assembly”. This Act and these provisions were put in place mainly to try and outlaw “raves” – unlicensed parties held mainly in abandoned buildings or construction sites.
Both attempts poorly-conceived, coercive, and pointless.
I remember that it was the fragrant Mrs Thatcher who brought in the Public Order Act 1986, abolishing the common law offences of riot, rout and unlawful assembly. This act, using unlawful assembly, included 3 persons or more and 2 if threatening or violent behaviour caused an individual of sound mind to be fearful. I paraphrase, slightly.
I remember that. I had a work-related visit to Bournemouth in Dorset, either that year or the year after, when the Conservative Party held their conference there.
I had walked down to the town centre in the middle of the day – to have a look around and get some lunch – when I happened upon a group of about eight or nine uniformed police. All but two wore high-visibility gear; the two who did not were carrying weapons.
Out of nowhere, we all heard some odd chanting at the same moment; heads turned, and from the throng emerged three very colourfully-dressed protestors, home-made placards aloft. They walked single-file and with good separation, but it was impossible to mistake their single purpose because they had a brightly-decorated length of rope joining them and kept more-or-less taut. At the tops of their lungs – and with vast merriment – the trio were chanting, “We’re twenty-one metres apart – Ha ha! We’re twenty-one metres apart!”, over and over.
The lunch-time public seemed quite unable to take this in, but the police in hi-res gear chuckled in a good-natured way. To be fair, the armed duo were actively scanning the crowd – I remember to this day the sense of keen professionalism they showed. When the boisterous trio got to the officers, their lead nodded in a half-bow, offered them a “Mornin’!” between verses, and just kept walking. I didn’t understand the context at the time – back at work that afternoon, I asked my colleague and was told of some determination [and I remain unclear to this day whether this was in statute or by case law] that if individuals were more than twenty metres apart, the Crown could not argue that they had “assembled” and thus the principle of “illegal assembly” could not apply.
By today’s standards, utterly unremarkable. But for 1990s Bournemouth, sleepy coastal town, it just felt utterly surreal.
It seems quaint to express a feeling of nostalgia towards public protests, but I find myself wishing “If only we could still be so good natured and relaxed about things…”
I think you mis-state the HS’s intention here, which would enable the police to move the protest to another place or time. That shouldn’t mean being unable to continue protesting about a continuing injustice. I think the main point is to stop one street or place being besieged for days or weeks on end, especially in residential areas, or around one place of worship, business, etc, preventing people going about their lawful business. At least, I hope that’s what’s meant.
Your hope may be true of this Home Secretary, but what of future ones, say a Reform Home Secretary?
I think you will be sadly disappointed. If the MPS or WMPS (those bastions of liberal democracy) get their teeth into this the right to protest will be dead on it’s feet.
You have excelled yourself here. Clear, concise, and very much on point!
I don’t think it would be fair to apply this characterisation to all Home Secretaries, but for far more than we would like, the law is like a cable-tie.
Once the loop is made, you’re trapped. You might not feel it at the time that loop is closed, but you are. And they only draw tighter with time, notch by notch. There seem to be no circumstances by which a government admits a law was bad and elects to repeal rather than replace.
To be fair – this doesn’t apply to all laws. But there is always the risk of that insidious scope creep.
It is, to me, troubling, just how illiberal this Labour government, and this new Home Secretary, seem to be. It seems there is a political tide in this country flowing in a direction which should concern anyone who values our hard won rights and freedoms. Both Reform UK and the present Tory leadership have committed to removing the UK from the ECHR, and I believe this Home Secretary has already indicated her intention to examine whether convention provisions should be amended or set aside. Troubling times.
My sense is that this is being driven entirely by theatre – which makes it much more insidious.
The news media is playing up the number of illegal immigrants crossing the English Channel by boat – and successive governments claim to be powerless to stop it.
Today, we have thermal cameras, RADAR, surveillance aircraft, drones, an entire fleet of naval off-shore patrol boats, yet, somehow, a rag-tag bunch of men in inflatable dinghies manage to make it across some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
Between 1939 and 1945, with no RADAR, no thermal imaging cameras, no drones, no modern communications, no remote cameras of any kind… the UK managed to stop the approaching Nazi forces from landing troops on the mainland. And the government want me to believe that they are unable to catch these boats at sea?
We can put patrol aircraft over Afghanistan, but we can’t monitor the English channel? Come on.
And now… “Something must be done!” And now… we have a unity of purpose that the pesky ECHR is the thing that is stopping this… and thus we must, ever so reluctantly, set aside the ECHR? One has to wonder what other protections it affords – for British workers perhaps…
I thought it was Kris Kristofferson, but hey. On a more substantive thought are we moving towards a legal system where if it is not allowed it is illegal rather than of if it is not illegal it is allowed. I thought the latter was the English way. Am I wrong?
I thought linking to the original with full credits would be enough to prevent irksome responses like this, but hey.
Ouch. But to the substantive point; is the English common law approach that things are allowed unless they are specifically illegal as opposed to everything being illegal unless it is allowed by law? Thus “filling the gaps”.
Thanks for stain g so clearly what should be tattooed on the chest of every politician.
As usual, and particularly in this case – well said sir.
We will be free to protest. Under these conditions.
At home, in silence, and behind closed curtains.
Make sure you don’t think any mean thoughts about Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch.
The tyranny of homogeneity is not a good thing, whether in the realms of politics, culture, sport or any other human endeavour.
Being challenged by what others do and say and being uncomfortable because of that is how we learn and grow.
If that is no longer desirable…
Or in the currently most-used place of assembly – Social Media
Richard Ratcliffe, the husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, spent 15 days on hunger strike outside the Iranian Embassy in London and 21 days on a second hunger strike outside the Foreign Office, in a bid to have his wife released from custody in Iran.
Presumably if Shabama Mahmood had been Home Secretary at the time, she would have urged the police to have Richard “moved to another location” for his frequent and repeated protest.
There is no gap in the law here. What she means is there is no law to ban any protest the Home Secretary doesn’t approve of. This is a kneejerk reaction to Palestine Action proscription protests going ahead in the aftermath of the Manchester attack on a synagogue. The PA protests are silent vigils, entirely peaceful and are not anti Israeli. They are protests against the government, which the government wants to stop.
Banning repeated demonstrations at the same locations is absurd, and a blanket ban on all ongoing protests, however peaceful and orderly.
A lot not being said here. Shades of Confucius and The Rectification of Words wrapped up with Orwell and Political Language. The significant players are staying schtum and staying behind the scenes.
All sounds a very little thing, preventing a bit of a nuisance. But it is a very big thing with forever consequences. So it will be interesting to see if and how this legislative change ever gets made. Depressingly I think it or something with its effect will. A tricky job managing the framing and the arm twisting without the gaff being blown.