The government’s cynical exploitation of the attack at the Manchester synagogue must not be allowed to succeed, argues Lewis Akers

In the wake of the horrendous murders at a synagogue in Manchester, the UK government has opportunistically used the attack as a justification for amending the 1986 Public Order Act to make it easier for the police to clamp down on peaceful protest. We should be absolutely clear that this is not being implemented with sympathy or respect for the victims but exploits the deaths of innocent people to further the government’s anti-democratic attacks on the right to protest. It is in no one’s interest but the political establishment.

The government looks set to amend the Public Order Act to mean that police can change the place of protest if it’s deemed to have caused repeated disruption, and to ban protests outright. This attack on the right to protest isn’t isolated. It should be seen as a widening of the same suppression of the right to protest as the criminalisation of Palestine Action and support for it. None of this is designed to protect Jewish people or anyone else for that matter. These measures are aimed at repressing the democratic freedoms of everyone across the UK: they are designed to stop peaceful support for Palestine, which has dominated our political landscape and streets for the last two years.

These are the actions of a desperate government which lacks any popular support. The government wants to silence and quash a movement which is holding its feet to the fire and exposing its subservience to US imperialism and support for the genocidal Israeli regime. In some ways, these actions are a sign that our movement is successful. They are a sign that the establishment is feeling the pressure that the mass movement is exerting on it.

What is most ironic about the announcement is that, for the best part of a year, the far right has assaulted migrants, rioted, and threatened refugees without being repressed in any significant way. This shows that Shabana Mahmood isn’t actually serious about allowing people ‘to live their lives without fear’ of large repeated protests. She and her predecessor have been content to allow the far right to intimidate refugees but have wanted to clamp down on a movement which is opposing genocide and war. This clearly shows this is not about public safety but about politics.

Some of the more conservative elements of the movement may argue we need to accept bans and crackdowns on the right to protest, but to do so would set a dangerous precedent. If we accept that the state and the government can dictate the ways they are challenged as well as where and when, we have no chance of winning our fight. 

In the coming months, we will need to be ready to defend the right to protest. To mobilise as we have never done before. To build confidence amongst our activists to push back against the suppression of the right to protest, and to defy any and all bans on the right to peaceful protest. We stand for democracy and peace, they stand for repression and war. 

We won’t be stopped by the Labour government or Shabana Mahmood, we will defeat them like we did Suella Braverman and the Tories. Our movement has been sustained on the streets for the past two years, it won’t be ended by government diktat or police repression.