The right to disrupt lives in the name of protest is not sacred

Eco-loons climb onto Rishi Sunak’s home (Image: Getty) In many countries, anti-government protesters who invaded the home of the Prime Minister and scaled its roof would be carried away in wooden boxes. So there is something to be said for the less trigger-happy approach of our own authorities towards displays of dissent. But while refraining from brutality is one thing, being a soft touch to the point where zealots can deploy intimidatory tactics at will is quite another and is equally disrespectful to freedom and democracy. The ease with which a Greenpeace hit squad got into the garden of Rishi Sunak’s constituency home and then onto the roof, from where they draped the building in black fabric, should result in searching questions for those whose responsibility it is to keep the PM and his family safe. Even though the Sunaks were not at home, it was a monstrous intrusion that is bound to leave family members – especially the Sunak children – fearing that they are not wholly safe or secure. And that is unforgivable no matter how important it considers its protest against new North Sea oil and gas licences. The hardline environmentalist group has a long history of taking extreme measures to publicise its various causes. In the mid-1980s a photographer on board its Rainbow Warrior vessel was killed when agents from the French secret service blew it up in Auckland harbour as a reprisal against Greenpeace disrupting nuclear testing in French Polynesia. Greenpeace garnered huge public sympathy. This time it is deservedly cast in the role of the aggressor and politicians of all parties have rightly condemned its latest stunt. Even Sir Chris Bryant, one of the most tribal of Labour MPs, acknowledged: ‘Targeting someone’s family home because you disagree with their politics is completely unacceptable.’ Given the advent of militant environmental protest groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, it may be that Greenpeace feels it needs to escalate its own action in order to sustain its profile. Yet the prospect of an arms race in disruptive protest between groups competing for publicity and the same potential sources of funding should alarm us all. While the right to protest should be sacred in a free society, the right to deliberately disrupt the lives of others most certainly should not. The correct place for Britain’s approach to North Sea oil and gas exploration to be settled, along with all the major issues of the day, is at a general election in which competing parties set out their policies. The winner will have a democratic mandate to implement its manifesto. But rather than support a party, stand for election or try to win a public debate legitimately, groups like Greenpeace and Just Stop Oil aim to simply impose their agenda by hijacking and sabotaging normal life until the rest of us submit. That is profoundly anti-democratic and should not be permitted. It is a wonder that nobody has yet been seriously injured during Just Stop Oil’s many blockades of busy roads in central London. That in itself is a tribute to the patience and moderation of the British public, though in a few cases, motorists have been drawn into ugly spats with protesters through the sheer frustration that comes with being gridlocked. It is telling that opposition parties opposed Government legislation that seeks to curtail serious disruption at public protests, depicting it as an anti-democratic outrage. Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said that the Public Order Bill should be blocked because it would ‘erode historic freedoms of peaceful protest’. When Tory backbencher Julian Lewis challenged her about what Labour would do ‘to defend the right of other people to go about their normal lives’ she dodged the question. Other Left-wing parties, such as the Greens, are even more set against laws which defend the rights of law-abiding people to go about their daily lives unimpeded. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said the new law defining serious disruption as ‘more than minor’ rather than ‘prolonged and significant’ meant peaceful protest would be unfairly restricted. Yet there is nothing fair about allowing fanatics to wreak havoc simply because they consider their own opinions to outrank those of others. There should be no right to mount blockades and no right to invade the private residences of those advancing different opinions either. These acts are bully-boy tactics which amount to negations of our democracy. It is high time we came down on those who perpetrate them like a proverbial ton of bricks.