The right to protest, the right to free speech, and the right to be heard are absolutely essential in any democratic society. That’s why these rights are clearly enshrined in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The history of Britain is itself one of protest, protests that brought about fundamental changes which developed our unique constitution. We’re the only country in the world that has had a continuous form of government for well over a 1,000 years, and it is protests that have signposted huge changes in our constitutional arrangements. Perhaps the most significant were the Peasants’ Revolts of 1381. The English Civil War, in which the forces of the monarchy were decisively defeated, also brought about the fundamental separation of power between the Crown and Parliament, and the right of Parliament to override the King — and this was followed by the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Later, the huge demonstrations against the overwhelming power of the executive against the working-class communities that rose up in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a significant factor in the development of our economy. Notable examples include the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, the uprisings that took place in the coal mining areas in the North East, in the mining communities in Shropshire, and, of course, the many uprisings in South Wales during that same period. They were all driven by people demanding their right to be heard and the right to free speech — and indeed they helped to expedite the Great Reform Act of 1832.

The Chartist demonstrations in the mid-nineteenth century were also an amazing example of the power of popular protest to bring about significant political change. Indeed, all the demands of the Chartists were met within seventy years, barring their request for annual parliamentary elections. The right of protest is therefore now enshrined in law, and the great protests such as those of the suffragettes before the First World War are now revered as iconic examples of the power of people to bring about change.

The leaders of the suffragettes are all now extolled as national heroes. Under the current anti-terror legislations the government is proposing, they would be imprisoned for their actions. I think our home secretary should think for a moment about the history of this country — how women got the right to vote, and how we gained the democratic processes that we have.

A Life of Protest

I’ve been on many protests over the years. There are far too many to mention in a single article such as this, but some protests do stand out. One was in El Salvador in the 1980s. I had travelled there as part of a delegation in solidarity with Salvadorian trade unions on their May Day march. The organisers helpfully got a banner made for our small delegation — ‘Los Britanicos en Solidaridad con el Pueblo de El Salvador’ — and gave it to us to carry. It was a very wide banner, and it occupied the whole of the street. I thought it was a bit over the top, but they insisted. So we took the banner to the back of the march to join in with our support. The organisers then came rushing round and said, ‘No, no, you should be at the front!’ And I protested that we were guests; we were there in solidarity; we were not there to lead the march. And they kept on insisting, saying: ‘The police are here. They’ll probably shoot us, but they probably won’t shoot you. So will you please march at the front?’ So we did.

Since then I’ve been on many protests. Many *Tribune *readers will remember student protests over the years (many of which I’ve been involved in), which have often been about student poverty and, more recently, tuition fees. John McDonnell, myself, and other colleagues in the Socialist Campaign Group in Parliament joined in all those protests well before I became leader of the Labour Party. And as leader of the Labour Party, I also supported protests, particularly the junior doctors’ marches and their dispute with the then-government about their appalling pay and conditions.

Protest Works

I’ve also been involved in many protests in our wonderful community of Islington. Prior to being elected as the mp for Islington North, I was a member of Haringey Council, and at various times had been the chair of Public Works, which is responsible for transport policy and also the planning committee. In those capacities, and as a political activist, I opposed the Archway Road widening in the seventies and eighties. The road would have been widened all through Haringey and thus driven more traffic into Islington. On one occasion, we marched down Holloway Road, and as we marched, we were all asked to carry ropes in the shape of a double-decker bus. Each one of the rope enclosures was to demonstrate the seventy-odd people who could be travelling on the bus, rather than those who were traveling by car. Eventually a public inquiry was held at Archway Central Hall, and the inspector reported in favour of the logical, rational argument that London did not need more motorways; rather, it needed better public transport. It was a magical day in Parliament when the secretary of state confirmed in an answer to me that the Archway Road widening would not go ahead.

On a smaller level, we did a protest on Matias Road in Stoke Newington, where the children crossing into Newington Green School were put at risk by what was then a lot of commuter traffic. We organised a protest by walking across the road in successive waves during the rush hour, in order to make it safe for the children to cross in order to encourage a pedestrian crossing to be installed. One was installed very soon afterwards. We made our point there.

Likewise protests that we organised against the putative closure of the Barking to Gospel Oak line, which took place at the same time as we’d been opposing the Archway Road widening. And that was, again, ultimately successful. The line was kept open. It was then invested in, electrified, and is now an extraordinarily busy and vital rail link in London.

Protests were also mounted against racists in our society, when the National Front managed to buy a house in Avenell Road, opposite the Arsenal stadium, as a way of using it as basis for their distribution of racist leaflets amongst Arsenal supporters in the 1980s. We organised a march all around Highbury, saying, ‘Highbury says no to the National Front.’ And a lot of us joined in that march. Eventually, the house was closed down, and the National Front very soon afterwards disappeared from the political scene in Islington.

There have been many other protests we’ve helped to bring into being. One in particular, in defence of Whittington Hospital, was the magnificent event in 2010 when 5,000 people marched along Holloway Road to Whittington Hospital and demanded that the ae department be kept open. And eventually, after a lot of pressure from most of North London’s mps and local authorities, Andy Burnham, who was then health secretary, finally agreed that he would ensure the ae department was kept open — and it was.

I’ve been involved in peace protests all my life. My first was a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament demonstration in the early 1960s in Trafalgar Square. I got the train from Shropshire as a young school student and was amazed at the demonstration, the conversations, the quality of the speeches, and that wonderful sense of unity — the feeling of everyone being together on a protest. On that occasion, it was for a world free of nuclear weapons — and very early opposition to the Vietnam War.

Perhaps the most extraordinary protest I’ve been involved in was the 2003 national protest against the Iraq War when we had four separate feeder marches going to Hyde Park. It was my pleasure and honour to march with the late Peter Maxwell Davies, whose music I adore and love, to Hyde Park for that rally of well over 1 million people. It’s true that we didn’t stop the war, but it’s also true we did help to educate hundreds of thousands of people about the alternatives to war and the lies that we were being told about Iraq. Those who promoted the war in Iraq have never politically recovered from it. Those of us who opposed the war in Iraq are vibrant, active, and will never give up on the search for peace.

Defend the Right to Protest

I am no stranger to police repression of protest. I have been arrested on some protests, including ones in solidarity with the victims of Bloody Sunday (in London in 1972) and, most famously, the big anti-apartheid demonstration in 1984. I was not actually arrested for ‘obstruction’, but rather under the ‘Diplomatic Immunity Act’, a clause relating to any behaviour deemed ‘offensive’ by a visiting diplomatic mission. They asked me, ‘How do you plead?’ And I said, ‘I’ve come here to be as offensive as possible.’ We were all exonerated from the charges. We were given compensation, and all of it was given to the anti-apartheid movement.

The police had a heavy presence at the poll tax protests too. I was on the plinth in Trafalgar Square getting ready to speak against the poll tax to a vast crowd in Trafalgar Square. And just as we were about to speak, the police came to the platform and demanded, or rather instructed, that we end the rally and close it down at that point, which I thought was very ill-advised. A vast crowd of people had come for the rally. They were all already very well organised and angry about the poll tax — and this, of course, made them angrier. The rally was then broken up by the police, and rioting took place in the streets all around Trafalgar Square afterwards.

This was, to me, an object lesson in how the police should not behave when there is a large group of people present. You need to keep them together, and you need to make sure that their right for their political voice to be heard is safeguarded.

Today, the right to protest is seriously under threat from the government’s use of the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action. When the Act was being introduced, I took part in the parliamentary debates on it. I asked Jack Straw, who was home secretary at the time, for an assurance that the overwhelming powers that the government was giving to itself in the Act would not be used to curtail the right of legitimate protest within our society. He assured me it would not — that it would be a very un-British thing to do, and that as far as he was concerned, there was that right of civil disobedience and protest that would always be in our society and would not be criminalised. Now, twenty-five years later, those assurances are worthless. The Act is being used to proscribe Palestine Action, and to criminalise well over 1,000 people who’ve done nothing more than hold up placards.

This month, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that continuous protests are offensive and should not be allowed, and that, therefore, the police will have powers to prevent demonstrations. Steve Howell gave a very good response to this when he said, ‘Let me make it easy for Shabana Mahmood. The people who find continuous bombing of their families in their homes and the death of their children offensive are those in Gaza.’ We have the right to continue to speak out about it.

Protest matters, protest is important, and protest is an intrinsic part of our political life. I think that whoever our political representatives are, they should be prepared to remember where our democracy came from, why protest is vital, and be prepared to join in. Whether it is a protest to get a pedestrian crossing, a protest against a war, or a protest for clean air and clean water and our environment, they all matter. And they all — in the end — make a difference.