Chris Nineham, who faces trial from 23 February, assesses the state’s continuing efforts to repress and silence us

We face one of the most authoritarian governments in our history.

Austerity has led to a slide towards a stronger state and increasing aggression abroad is sharpening repression at home.

Thousands of Palestine supporters have been arrested, the Filton 24 are being held without trial, marches have been banned from whole areas of London and myself, Ben Jamal, Sophie Bolt and Alex Kenny face trials for organising peaceful protest.

Meanwhile, the government is cutting jury trials, introducing new laws to make protesting even harder and detaining and dehumanising refugees.

All this is having a chilling effect on society. Immigration raids are creating fear in communities. In many institutions, people are too anxious to even talk about Palestine, as criticism of Israel is conflated with anti-Semitism to silence dissent. Students and staff have been suspended for supporting Palestine in at least 27 universities, staff have been disciplined in hospitals, the civil service and in the media.

The issue of Palestine and the attacks on immigrants are the frontlines, but we should be clear that this is a general assault on protest and free speech in the interests of the status quo.

When members of minority groups are randomly stopped and searched in the streets, when ‘disrupting the business community’ or offending or upsetting people is criminalised, arbitrary and authoritarian rule is being made normal. With Reform in the wings and a growing fascist movement on our streets, everyone who values the right to protest needs to recognise that the stakes are high.

What the government doesn’t understand however is that the moment a regime switches from consent to coercion is a dangerous one for them as well as for us. Open repression can lead to resistance. In the US, ICE’s flagrant violence has sparked a massive popular backlash. Something approaching an uprising in Minneapolis has forced Trump to retreat.

Our job is to build the same kind of opposition to authoritarianism and the far right here. We shouldn’t forget that the vast majority stand with us. Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly have always been held dear in this country. But our rights, including the right to vote, were never handed down to us from above, they have been won by waves of mass struggle from the Levellers to Peterloo, from the Chartists to the suffragettes and beyond.

Events across the Atlantic should be a warning as well as an inspiration. We need to stand up against attempts to repress and silence us. We need to strengthen and broaden the movements for Palestine, against war and austerity and against the far right in every corner of the country so that we too are in a position to organise coordinated popular resistance.

Join the protest on Monday 23 February, 9am at Westminster Magistrates Court, 181 Marylebone Road, London, NW1 5BR

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet