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People who demonstrate about the environment are now under attack from this government. From 1st August 2005 anyone who demonstrates about the environment or anything else within one mile of the House of Commons can be arrested and sent to prison for up to a year.

Funnily enough, at a time when the police were meant to be stretched to the limit on the terrorist threat, they had plenty of resources to arrest people engaged in a small and harmless demonstration about the issue!

Nic Ferriday, spokesperson for West London Friends of the Earth commented "This new law is an attack on those people passionate enough about the environment to demonstrate, just as it attacks those concerned about other things such as the invasion of Iraq. We have already experienced milder forms of intimidation such as police thrusting video cameras in the faces of people protesting at Colnbrook about the monster incinerator. I have even been video'd coming out of a herbarium!"

Demonstrations like these have nothing to do with terrorist threats, the excuse normally used by this government to defend the removal of civil liberties. It seems that Tony Blair wants to stifle legitimate protest and even debate on anything where he fears dissent. Given his anti-environmental policies on GM crops, airports, incinerators and so on, the temptation for him to go for environmental activists must be strong indeed.

Equally worrying is the police's evident enthusiasm to cooperate with the government in removing our civil liberties. A statement by Inspector Mark Wolski at a public meeting in the Borough of Ealing (Hanwell Area Committee, 3 March 2005) says it all: "I don't believe in all this civil liberties stuff".

Aug 2005

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