Labour’s plan to criminalise recurring protests strikes at the heart of democratic life, transforming political freedom into a privilege granted by the state.

On Sunday, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans for sweeping new powers to allow the banning and restriction of protests. Her move came after the refusal of the Defend Our Juries campaign group to cancel Saturday’s demonstrations against the proscription of Palestine Action, which are increasingly becoming a mainstay on Parliament Square.

The prime minister and home secretary had both urged organisers to cancel their planned actions in light of the Manchester synagogue attack. Though they paid lip service to the right to protest, they claimed that exercising it at this moment would be ‘un-British’, with Mahmood darkly adding that just because you have freedom, ‘you don’t have to use it at every moment of every day.’ Having seen their appeals ignored, the government now intends to remove those rights.

Mahmood said the new powers would target ‘cumulative disruption’ and the ‘frequency of particular protests in particular places.’ In practice, this means giving police the authority to simply shut down demonstrations from happening. Defying police orders may result in six months in prison, an unlimited fine, or both. The home secretary described the inability to outlaw recurring protests as a technical oversight, a ‘gap in the law’ in need of closing. But far from a technical fix, the proposal amounts to the most serious assault on the freedom of assembly in a generation.

Recurring demonstrations are necessary for the very reason that the injustices they confront are recurring. In the case of pro-Palestine protests, the government continues to arm and directly support Israel’s military operations in defiance of public opinion — and even after the UN formally concluded that Israel is committing genocide. The same is true of protests against the proscription of Palestine Action, under which thousands of peaceful demonstrators have been arrested on terror charges merely for holding signs. The classification of the group as a terrorist organisation — a ‘disturbing’ misuse of anti-terror legislation, according to the UN — remains in force.

Proposed curbs are alarming precisely because protests gain power through persistence, demonstrating the scale of public opposition and testing the state’s capacity for containing it. The home secretary’s view seems to be that opposition to injustice should be temporary, even when injustices themselves are designed to last, reflecting a deeper conviction that protest is acceptable only when ineffective. Making protests one-offs and providing police with the discretion to legitimise their existence effectively outlaws meaningful protest.

Saturday’s demonstration against the proscription of Palestine Action may have been the trigger for the planned crackdown, but Mahmood made it clear that the pro-Palestine movement at large is in her crosshairs, promising a wider review of protest legislation to ‘ensure communities can go about their daily business without feeling intimidated.’ The implication is that the mass movement for Palestine, which has filled British streets for two years, may soon be criminalised.

The Manchester attack appears to have given the government the pretext it has long sought to conflate opposition to its own complicity in Israel’s crimes with antisemitism. The fact that the pro-Gaza movement has been overwhelmingly peaceful, explicitly anti-racist, and includes large Jewish participation is treated as irrelevant to recasting it as directed against British Jews — a weaponisation of antisemitism that is both opportunistic and deeply dangerous.

This exploitation of Jewish suffering is also a self-serving attempt by the government to shield itself from political damage. Labour’s complicity in Israel’s genocide has already cost it dearly, contributing to its cratering support. Concerns about the party’s own fortunes are being repackaged as concerns about the safety of a minority community, used to justify the outlawing of an inconvenient campaign. Such duplicity is further evidenced by the fact that the proposals could not have been developed and signed off within three days but must have been planned, with the government exploiting the moment to push them through.

All this is alarming in its own right, but even those unmoved by the Palestinian cause should be concerned. A deeply unpopular government moving to ban effective protest threatens far more than just the anti-war movement, but democracy itself. Protests on any issue, domestic or international, and even strike action, are at risk. No government this cynical should be trusted with such powers. The escalating crackdowns under Starmer’s Labour expose not only its authoritarian instincts but also its political weakness. It is scrambling to shut down every avenue of opposition because it knows its agenda lacks legitimacy and popular support. The task now falls to MPs, trade unions, and civil society to resist this despotic overreach — and to defy and defeat it.

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