THE very first protest march I went on as an idealistic, spotty teenager was to the Chinese Embassy, demonstrating against human rights abuses in Tibet.
It is a cause I have supported ever since, recently landing me on the Chinese government’s sanctions list.
That march was peaceful. We waved Tibetan flags, stuck to the route guided by police officers, made our point and no one was hurt.
We did not feel the need to glue ourselves to Tube trains or clamber on to aircraft to try to bring the entire transport network to its knees and disrupt the working lives of an entire city.
Less still did we besiege police stations or Parliament, attack police horses, set fire to police vehicles, chant “all police are bs” and wave placards demanding to “defund the police”.
Peaceful demonstrations and the freedom to make your point, however odious, is a long-cherished lynchpin of British democracy.
Yet one of the things that undermines those freedoms is the arrogance of the small minority who hijack democracy to wage anarchy.
The same people who bypass the inconvenience of the ballot box that is the guarantee of liberties in our democracy because they can shout loudest and intimidate longest.
And in the case of Extinction Rebellion these “defenders of free expression” ironically tried to blockade our free Press recently as well.
Strange that we never see them demonstrating against the Chinese regime that causes 26 per cent of the world’s pollution, even if standing up against abuse of human rights doesn’t float their boat.
Too often it is the police who bear the brunt. We don’t expect any other profession to put up with such abuse when they are just doing their job.
We should not expect the law-abiding British taxpayer to pay for the privileges of a violent few.
Frankly, my constituents are fed up with it. They want to see their money spent on more police on the streets catching criminals and investing in smarter technology to keep us safe from terrorists and fraudsters, not wasted on policing over-indulged anarchists who hate everything Britain stands for.
That is why the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently before Parliament is so important.
The Bill contains welcome measures to prevent protest that intends to cause “serious disruption to the life of the community”.
It would not stifle the thousands coming together on the streets responsibly to voice passionately held views over everything from the Iraq War to the Countryside Alliance.
The Bill contains many other long-called-for proposals to toughen measures against child killers and dangerous drivers, scrap early release for terrorist prisoners and clampdown on the unlawful encampments that trash playgrounds and village greens.
Remarkably, Labour has opposed the whole Bill. They complain it is too rushed, or it is too long at 296 pages or just too popular.
In Labour’s Goldilocks world, protecting law-abiding citizens and victims of crime will never be good enough to get on their to-do list.
Enough is enough. It’s time that the law-abiding, freedom-loving majority fought back and this Bill is a great start.
