Is Labour introducing Socpa-lite?

We can take more banners like to protests now – but some parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act could live on
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The summer holidays provide the government with plenty of good days to bury bad news. Folks head off on holiday and journos head into the silly season, making it a perfect time to quietly lift the sluice gates of the pools of political sewage. This year is no exception. The government announced its proposed changes to the laws controlling protest around parliament, commonly known as the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 or Socpa.

There is little public support and considerable antipathy towards this totemic law seen by many as a symbol of Labour's contempt of liberty, but I am running ahead of myself, so let us recap.

The first clue as to this law's nature is that it was introduced by David Blunkett with the specific aim of removing the peace protester Brian Haw from his vigil in Parliament Square. Blunkett went on record as saying it was a "sledgehammer to crack a nut and this is a tough nut" It is not often that a law introduced to punish one individual serves any great purpose and so it was for Socpa.

The act makes it illegal for a protest in a designated area of up to a 1km radius of parliament without seeking written authorisation from the police six days in advance. As there is no strict legal definition of what constitutes a demonstration it means that one person wearing a stop the war badge and standing by Westminster tube station could be arrested for demonstrating without authorisation. "Ah," you may cry, "this is merely legalistic supposition." Not so, a friend of mine was threatened with arrest for having a picnic in Parliament Square, her offence was the pink icing on her cake which spelt the word "peace". This was the same law that saw Maya Evans and Milan Rai arrested and convicted for reading the names of the British and Iraqi war dead by the Cenotaph.

The law enables the police to place conditions on a demonstration in the area, restricting how many people attend the demonstration, where it can be held, how long it can be held for and "the number and size of banners used". As if police have not got better things to do than count the banners on a demo to see if there is one too many.

After campaigns that defied and ridiculed the law Jack Straw announced it would be repealed. News of Jacqui Smith's intentions to scrap it were leaked to the Observer in 2008 and the draft constitutional renewal bill even announced its demise. Despite the government dragging its feet, hopes were cautiously optimistic when the joint committee on human rights published their report Demonstrating respect for human rights? (pdf) in March 2009.

The report recommended the Socpa laws "be repealed, principally because they have proved too heavy-handed in practice, are difficult to police, and lack widespread acceptance by the public." And indeed the constitutional reform and governance bill, released this July, does repeal section 132-138 (the bad bits) of Socpa! Hurrah! So have the government belatedly done the right thing?

We have long ago given up hope of that happening and once again we would be proven right. Socpa is to be replaced by a new provision in the Public Order Act. "What are these powers?" you may ask and the simple answer is that no one knows, they are to be introduced with a statutory instrument, which is a bit of law written by the relevant minister after the law is passed. So parliament will approve a law that has yet to be written with no chance of amending it.

What we do know is that whatever laws are passed apply to a radius of 250 metres from parliament, which reduces the area the law covers but will still include Downing St, the back end of the MoD, parts of the embankment by St Thomas' hospital, bits of the Thames, Westminster Tube station, BERR, Defra, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the QE2 Centre, Westminster Abbey and, significantly, Brian Haw's peace vigil in Parliament Square which given he was the intended target of this law has ironically survived.

We also know that the law will enable the police to impose conditions "as to the place at which the assembly may be (or continue to be) held, its maximum duration and the maximum number of persons who may constitute it." But as to the exact nature of the law we know nothing, as this too will be covered with law written after it is passed. On the upside it looks like we can have as many banners at a demo as we want now.

Given Labour's track record on civil liberties and the timing of its release we can only assume that far from repealing Socpa they have replaced it with Socpa lite.

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