My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (23.12.25), repeating the point – political prisoners yet to be found guilty of anything and on hunger strike for over two months, remanded in squalid prison conditions way past the maximum time legally allowed to be held on remand, are being left to die – in Britain 2025, under a Labour Government. Worth repeating. Write to your MP. Please.

We Must Defend the Right to Protest!

There is a Christmas meme doing the rounds. It is a picture of a couple with baby born in a shed fit only for animals. The reference is simple and effective. According to the Bible, Jesus was a man of colour, born as a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem, his family chased by a totalitarian State militia.

This online imagery is not religious blasphemy but a reminder both of the horror being perpetrated today against Palestinians, and a call-out against the abuse of Christianity by the racist Islamophobic far-right. You don’t have to have Faith to understand the injustices being called-out.

But there is a very real ideological assault against such so-called “left-wing” demands for Peace with Social Justice.

Speaking-out against murder and genocide should be respected. Actively challenging the production of weapons to be used against civilians, trapped and unable to flee any assault, should be a duty. Standing-up against unaccountable authority is a basic requirement of citizenship.

Yet there are concerted attempts by those in power to shut-down reference to the genocide in Palestine, and severely curb protests generally. It is, indeed, as if we are returning to the totalitarian rule of Ancient Rome of two-thousand years ago that Joseph and Mary were fleeing with their baby, resulting finally, as the story goes, Jesus crucified for his opposition.

Starmer’s is an authoritarian government using anti-terror laws against peaceful protestors as an emotive scare-tactic to enforce general compliance. It is likely that a young woman on hunger strike in a UK prison will die this week. Queser Zuhrah has been on remand for over 20 months despite denying charges relating to a break-in and criminal damage – not terrorism. She has been 49 days without food and punished through lack of due attention and care.

The Labour Government is implementing restrictions on protest and harsh penalties against protesters. Undoubtedly right now the government’s main target is the national marches for Palestinian rights, but new laws will impact on a wider range of causes. New police powers will effectively ban protests based on their ‘cumulative impact’, neutralising their purpose on course towards making mass protest for any social or political change illegal.

A future government could use these powers to effectively stamp out protests of any kind.

The political misuse of remanding into custody – breaking the rules governing time on remand – is one of the core reasons for the Hunger strikes, but represents a much broader political offensive against citizen’s rights. The Government no longer considers it should be held to account.

Put together with the new restrictions on rights to trial by jury we are experiencing many of the political restrictions rightly condemned when identified in Russia or China. Include the proposal for compulsory digital identity cards and democracy as we have known it is finished.

The right to protest is fundamental to democracy. Indeed protest is generally how social change and improvement happens: the right of workers to vote won by mass action of the Chartists; women’s vote won by direct action of the Suffragettes; the fight for workers rights, the working day and collective pay deals won by mass strikes; British fascist movements repeatedly defeated by mass working class action on the streets; the National Health Service and council housing won by the threat of mass working class revolt as the troops returned from the Second World War; the mass movements for civil rights for Black people and for Gay Rights through the 1960’s and beyond. The mass protests against war across generations.

We must defend the right to protest against injustice, and oppose this fast-developing political dictatorship.

Tony Staunton, President, Plymouth Trades Union Council