---

Public Demonstrations (Repeals) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Miller on presenting the Bill, the principle of which I support strongly. I am one of many who have been inspired over the years by listening to speeches by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby, and today is no exception; I agree with her every word. She did, however, set me to thinking of the demonstrations I marched on in the 1960s, while a student in London, against a Government of which she and possibly the noble Lord, Lord Judd, were members at the time. I was just thinking of the themes that we marched against. We used to do a lot of marching. The LSE held an almost permanent demonstration; one occupation lasted many, many months. We used to march up and down Whitehall with students from the LSE to the strains of Dylan’s ““A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall””. Nuclear weapons were a common theme. I recall, too, marching against the decision of my noble friend’s then Government that Rudi Dutschke should not be allowed to address us at student meetings in London, and that Danny Cohn-Bendit should not be allowed to make similar speeches in London. Of course I also recall marching up and down Whitehall many times for greater student grants. I can tell your Lordships that we failed on every occasion. Many of the demonstrations were disorganised. We were certainly more aesthetic than Mr Haw; I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about the aesthetics of Mr Haw’s demonstration. We wore flared trousers and, I suspect, pink or pale green shirts. Much of what we did was entirely spontaneous, and I do not think that it harmed the country a great deal. I regard it as serious formative political experience. I was a member of the Labour Party then, which certainly had an effect on me as I was demonstrating against a Government who I supported. I had the satisfaction of exercising a right of protest in a place where protest sometimes must be heard. If protests cannot be heard here, where else will it be worth having them? Political protest is not a creature that should be shunted on to car parks. It should not be forced into places where demonstrators are talking merely to each other or to the odd passing journalist who has nothing better to do at the time. I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we do not want protests that are distasteful in appearance and that damage the aesthetics of a very attractive and important London, if we can avoid them, although that is another civil liberties matter. My view is that Mr Haw’s protest was the ““Mousetrap”” of demonstrations but far less interesting—a footnote in the Guinness Book of Records. It will eventually be forgotten, except by lawyers; we always manage to make something of such incidents and there is some seminal law arising from Mr Haw’s approach. This is not about Mr Haw. It is about other people—the young people today who want to do the sort of, maybe fairly trivial, marches that I was involved in when I was a student at King’s College, London. This is about people who want to feel that they are involved in the political process. It may be at a very mundane level, but people want to feel that they can do something. To place this artificial barrier one kilometre around Parliament seems to contradict the standards that, when I was protesting, I regarded as givens in this country. Of course it is important to deal with public safety and national security. I do not know how many cameras, observation points and surveillance posts there are on Whitehall, but I can guarantee that there are as many as on any street in the world, including Pennsylvania Avenue. If demonstrators go down Whitehall, you can be sure that, as with the demonstrations that we went on all those years ago, there will be plenty of police. Today, there will also be a mass of surveillance. Whitehall is probably the safest place to hold a protest in the United Kingdom. I do not believe that special powers are needed for that one-kilometre radius. There are extensive specific powers to deal with issues arising from terrorism. As I understand it, my noble friend is not arguing in this Bill for the repeal of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allows for searching for terrorist material without suspicion that the person who is searched has such material. That is a controversial provision, but it is certainly justified in certain parts of London. There are other powers, such as the power to search with reasonable suspicion for drugs and the public order powers of the police. The real question is: have we made a mistake in legislating in the way that we did, which is now under criticism in my noble friend’s Bill? Have we been too cautious? For reasons that have already given, which I will not repeat, I believe that we have. If we have, we need to go one stage further and say that we are prepared, even the Government are prepared, from time to time to admit that we have legislated a step too far. All my noble friend is doing in this Bill is saying that we have gone one step too far. Now let us step back and restore those standards that we regard as essential in our precious democracy.