Civil Liberties were under attack as never before during the Premiership of Tony Blair, but he has - thank Goodness - finally departed. Gordon Brown, when he at last achieved office, made a number of commitments as to what he would achieve in his first hundred days. One of them was to repeal those sections of the Serious Organised Crime Police Act (2005) relating to peaceful protest near Parliament. Today is his one hundredth day, so how are civil liberties faring under Mr Brown's benign hand?
Nor very well, it turns out. Not only has no attempt been made to repeal any portion of the Act, but it has been invoked in even more draconian form to ban a peaceful Stop The War march due to take place on Monday to mark the return of Paliament from its summer break and a planned statement on Iraq by Mr Brown.
There is not a shadow of an excuse for this. Previous Stop The War marches have passed off peacefully enough, even the 1-2 million strong effort just before the Iraq war was launched. This one is taking place on a weekday, so will be confined to a few thousand at most. Yet the police have been instructed to prevent it going ahead. Such an instruction is surely unconstitutional - or would be if we had a constitution - and so, in theory, the police could and should ignore it, but of course they won't.
The march goes ahead anyway. Those who support civil liberties in this country should report for duty in Trafagar Square at 1pm on Monday. Your right to Freedom of Assembly and freedom of Speech are under threat, and should not lightly be given up.
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