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HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

Sign the petition to stop the Government’s latest attempt to silence people and hide from accountability: the Public Order Bill.

It includes almost all the dangerous anti-protest proposals we defeated just last year. Now we must come together to defeat them again.

Just weeks after passing the Policing Act in 2022, the Government launched another attack on our protest rights.

The Public Order Bill resurrects – and in some cases has made even worse – the Government’s most dangerous anti-protest proposals to date. Proposals rejected by the people and already rejected by Parliament. They include:

Protest banning orders that can be issued even if you haven’t committed an offence. They can include electronic tagging and prohibit you going to certain places, meeting certain people, and even using the internet.

A new offence of ‘locking on’ – attaching yourself, another person or an object to anything else. ‘Attach’ isn’t defined, so could potentially mean anything from using superglue to weighing down balloons to linking arms.

A new offence of ‘interfering with key national infrastructure’, essentially meaning an offence of protesting at sites of power.

Expanding stop and search – which is disproportionately used against Black people – to allow police to stop and search people and vehicles for, and then confiscate, any items that could be used to commit the new offences. So really any protest-related item.

The proposals strike at the very heart of protest and could potentially criminalise anyone who takes to the streets for a cause they believe in.

When they were included in the Policing Bill, a huge national movement was successful in getting them removed.

Now we must come together to defeat them again, protect each other and our communities, and stop the Government from making itself untouchable.

Sign the petition today.

TO: HOME SECRETARY

We call on the Home Secretary to drop proposals in the Public Order Bill that have already been rejected by the people and Parliament, and to put an end to all attempts to suppress the fundamental right to protest.

SIGNED: