Public meeting: Stand up for your freedom to protest! LSE, 2nd December

Gordon Brown plans to extend the restrictions on demonstrations near parliament to cover the whole country, claiming that this will simplify the work of the police. The current law totally bans spontaneous protests, requiring advance police permission, which allows the police to impose arbitrary limits on numbers and effectively act as political censors. The consultation proposes extending these rules to any protest anywhere, in the name of 'harmonisation'. The freedom to protest was won through hard struggle and if we want to keep it we must take a stand to say enough is enough. Come to a public meeting to plan a public response: we propose early January.

Public meeting
LSE room H102, Connaught House
2-4pm, Sunday 2nd December

http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/Default.htm

Brown likes to talk about liberty, quoting everyone he can dig up. Yes, they're all conveniently dead, no danger of them telling him he's talking shit. The police pleas for more powers against demos to be made more restrictive have got a welcome from the government. No surprise there. Whenever our rulers (Labour, Tory, same shit story!) give up buying us off with a half-decent welfare state, housing that real working people can afford, and the right to stand up to our bosses effectively, they always end up trying to beat us into submission.

190 years ago protesters were massacred at Peterloo, the government response was more police powers. Southall, Toxteth, Brixton, Orgreave, Tottenham, Wapping, Bradford, Fairford, more police powers. The government talks as if the freedom to protest is the product of liberal philosophers, in reality it is the product of working people fighting every inch of the way to extract concessions from those who only want obedience. The "war on terror" has just given them another excuse, the war on our liberties never went away.

We have a choice: do we let generations of struggles disappear into the history books or do we say-
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

-----------------------
State of Emergency seeks to highlight and take direct action against the causes and effects of the War on Terror. We stand in solidarity against military and economic oppression by defending ourselves against the ever increasing domination of the state. We recognise that the state of emergency in which we live will continue for as long as our obedience enables them to control us.

stateofemergency
e-mail: info@stateofemergency.org.uk
Homepage: http://www.stateofemergency.org.uk/

Additions

info and analysis

17.11.2007 02:22

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/386033.html

Walter Benjamin

FullGov con-sultation document

17.11.2007 14:29

You can read the full goverment proposals for reducing all our rights to protest to the lowest common denominator at http//www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2007-managing protest?view=Binary

Bonzo

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

info

16.11.2007 14:49

a little bit more info on the details of Browns decree would be helpful

jock

more info please

16.11.2007 15:16

>Gordon Brown plans to extend the restrictions on demonstrations near parliament to cover the whole country

I'm not disputing this fact but could you point me to any other info on the web relating to this statement, as I'm genuinely interested (and alarmed!)

Thanks in advance.

Pathetic

19.11.2007 01:21

So - a group of middle class wanna be activists are now claiming to oppose the state, and want to mobilise against the state by calling for a meeting at the LSE? Laughable, absolutely laughable. And as for Walter Benjamin - surely you could try harder?

Karl Marx

how precisely are we going to save the world then?

29.11.2007 13:24

Karl marx is a twat and so was the real one. At present we need the workers to control the means of production and then smash it up.
Is it the middle class per se asking for help to smash the state or just trying anything at all he finds laughable? If he wants the chavs to rise up, they'll be a long time prising themselves away from their widescreens and onto the streets. Not unless primark have got a sale on. And apart from meetings and telling people about stuff, how is the revolution going to be engendered exactly? Whats he going to do? Perhaps he should go to the meeting and tell his fantastic ( in the old sense of the word probably) plan to everyone so we can roll it out, save the world and go home in time for tea.
Garibaldi anyone?

s smith