At the weekend, I wrote about why I didn’t think that the Palestinian protest marches should go ahead on Armistice Day. Some people have argued that the protestors were right to go ahead with the demonstrations because there is an important right and freedom to assemble and protest.
It’s important therefore to be clear about what the arguments are. Yes, there were calls from some for the specific marches to be banned. The Home Secretary does have the authority to ban demonstrations in specific contexts. That she did not exercise that authority suggests to me that she realised that it would be very difficult to justify a ban, which would potentially be challenged by Judicial Review. To be explicitly clear though, I wrote that I believed the march should not take place, I was not calling for it to be banned. I agree that there is a right at stake here and that banning things because they seem to clash with other things is not a great direction to go in.
However, I would also suggest that if we insist that because there is a right for something to happen, therefore it must happen and if we cannot voluntarily forgo a perceived right from time to time, then we may be in danger of becoming just as authoritarian as those who seek to ban things.
Furthermore, I also want to argue that just because we have a freedom or right to do something does not mean that the thing is itself good. I believe that generally speaking, the Government should not be interfering in people’s lives and that means I think people should be free to make up their own minds on a whole host of things. I believe that this includes a right to free speech. This means that I don’t think the Government should stop people from saying things even if those things are offensive and repulsive. However, just because I believe we should have freedom of speech, this doesn’t mean that I think we should proactively use that free speech wilfully to say hateful and offensive things. There may not be a legal restriction but there is a moral responsibility.
So, it is my opinion that the freedom to assemble, march, demonstrate, protest is important and should be defended. However, I am not convinced that marching and mass protest are necessarily a good or wise thing. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First of all, I’m not convinced that mass demonstrations are the most effective option. Genuine, permanent change happens when minds are changed and the way that minds are changed is through reasoned debate.
Secondly, marches tend to distort the picture by concentrating and amplifying the voices of some people in one place. This can give a false impression of public opinion, of what is popular and what I unpopular. 100k may march but that doesn’t tell us what the 67 million who didn’t march think. Indeed, there are some positions that lend themselves to demonstrations, placards and chants. I don’t expect the refrain “It’s a little bit more complicated than you think” to catch on any time soon.
Thirdly, it is worth remembering that marches have traditionally been used as a display of power. The whole point of a march, like with a warning is that there are implied consequences to refusing the demands at the head of the march.
Incidentally, I think this becomes even more so when you have a situation as we have over the past few weeks where every weekend there have been large demonstrations accompanied by aggressive placards and chanting in many of our city centres. When the prospect of a demonstration leaves people reluctant, not just because of inconvenience but because of fear to go into our city centres, when it’s preventing businesses from trading and people from using public transport then I wonder how peaceful it really is, especially when it goes on over a longer period.
So, should marches and demonstrations be banned? No? Are we free to organise and join in demonstrations? Yes. Does that mean that we should organise and participate in them, not necessarily.
Faithroots 