By Alexander McColl, Pupil Barrister at Garden Court North Chambers
Protest is as fundamental to and as inextricable from the foundational principles of liberal democracy as the vote. The freedom of the people to raise their voices in dissent against the powerful, and for those voices to be heard, is how we justify otherwise limiting political participation to elections every five years. You will not find a politician who is prepared to publicly disagree with this principle.
Yet successive Home Secretaries, police chiefs and the wider media have homed in on the legitimacy of some of the louder – and arguably more effective – protests of recent years, prompting significant developments in the law.
A string of recent protest actions by groups such as Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil and I...