MPs Urged To Treat "Extreme" Protest Across The Political Spectrum As A Threat To Democracy

The government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption Lord John Walney has urged the political establishment to "wake up" and regard "extreme protest movements" as a threat to democracy.

Walney, a former Labour MP, authored a 240-page report which has recommended a range of measures to the Government, including amending section 13 of the Public Order Act to give the police greater powers to recommend refusal of repeat protests when they are causing "high levels of cumulative negative impact" in a particular area, creating a mechanism to place restrictions on the activities of organisations which break the law to "coerce the public", and banning of the use of face masks to disguise identity during a protest.

It also argued for the intimidation of candidates and campaigners to be specifically criminalised before the next election, and for intelligence services and relevant Government departments should be given more resources to identify disinformation online.

He stated it would be for a future home secretary to determine which organisations fit those criteria, but noted that the "extensive ways in which Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action and other splinter groups deployed criminal disruption was sabotage in this regard". Walney made it clear he hoped the recommendations would not only be accepted by the current Conservative government, but also by a potential future Labour government.

Claiming he wanted the report to be a "wake up call" to the political establishment, he said "those of us on the centre and left of politics, who tend to have been brought up in an environment an environment of lively protest ourselves" needed to learn more about the risks associated with far-left political movements. He said