Theresa May’s blanket ban on all protests, following a request from the Metropolitan Police, is certainly outrageous, not to mention ironic, coming as it does just days after her boss David Cameron talked about his role in introducing political freedom to Libya. But UAF has no one but itself to blame for this extraordinary clampdown on the right to protest. For an apparently radical leftist campaign group, UAF is awfully fond of asking the Tory government to ban things – it has frequently demanded the outlawing of EDL marches, on the basis that they “spread fear” and might brainwash stupid working-class white people into turning racist. And when you cravenly invite the Government to play the role of in loco parentis in community life, to squish heated marches or protests on the basis that they might warp people’s minds and hearts, you really shouldn’t be surprised when it jumps at the opportunity. If you spend your every waking hour going cap-in-hand to the powers-that-be, demanding “No Platform!” for people you don’t like, you’re not in a very good position to complain when the authorities decide to deny you a platform too.
Now, UAF has issued what must rank as one of the silliest political statements of the year so far. “We the undersigned welcome the banning of the racist English Defence League’s march through Tower Hamlets,” it says. “But we are appalled to discover that the Metropolitan Police are applying for a blanket ban on ALL marches across five London boroughs… It is our human right to peacefully march in Tower Hamlets.” Wait – how come UAF has a “human right” to march, but the EDL does not? Are EDL members not human? Moreover, it really is spectacularly daft to talk about the importance of the right to march in the same breath as you welcome a government decision to ban a march. What UAF is effectively saying is: “We should have the freedom to march, but they shouldn’t.”
Which rather confirms that the anti-fascist Left doesn’t know the meaning of the word freedom. Freedom of speech only exists if everyone has it. The freedom to protest must mean that everyone, from worthy Left-wingers to cranky EDL types, should be at liberty to gather where and when they please and to demand whatever they want. What UAF is fighting for is not freedom but privilege. If a thing is denied to some people but granted to others, then it’s a privilege rather than a right – and UAF wants the “privilege to protest” in certain London boroughs where it expects other, less privileged, possibly non-human political activists to be silenced and curfewed on its behalf by the government. That is, UAF only really believes in Government-approved, Tory-approved, forms of public agitation. Maybe now, having fallen victim to its own boneheaded illiberalism and censorious stupidity, UAF will recognise that privileges can quite easily be taken away.
