Why Defending The Right To Protest Matters

The Article 11 Trust was set up because we knew there were major threats to protest rights on the horizon. But none of us could have predicted this past year and the situation we are now facing.

We know that the shrinking space for protest often falls hardest on groups that face discrimination. We saw this in the heavy-handed policing of the Black Lives Matter demos in July, as well as the vigil for Sarah Everard in Clapham earlier this month.

The policy changes proposed by the Home Office have huge implications for protest rights. They seek to lower the threshold for shutting down demos and undertaking mass arrests, and codify more covert surveillance and monitoring of activists.

Protest rights are human rights & we must defend them. On Thursday April 8th we will be joined by Adam Elliott-Cooper, Lyndsay Burtonshaw and Kevin Blowe to discuss why defending the right to protest matters.

Speakers

Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper is an academic at the University of Greenwhich. He has previously worked as a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at UCL, as a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and as a research associate in the Department of Geography at King's College London. He sits on the board of The Monitoring Group, an anti-racist organisation challenging state racisms and racial violence, and on the board of Black Lives Matter UK. Adam wrote the report Britain is Not Innocent - an analysis of the heavy-handed policing of the UK Black Lives Matter movement in summer 2020, which was published in partnership with Netpol & the Article 11 Trust.

Lyndsay Burtonshaw is a facilitator-activist. After growing up with zero political awareness in a working class household, Lyndsay has spent the last decade involved in direct action movements resisting white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, including Occupy against privatisations at Sussex Uni. In 2017, they and 14 others blocked a racist Home Office deportation flight at Stansted airport. Lyndsay works with Turning The Tide (Quaker Peace and Social Witness), Navigate and Beautiful Trouble UK, specialising in sustainable resistance/recovering from burnout, anti-oppression, and creative resistance.

Audrey Cherryl Mogan is a criminal defence and public law barrister at Garden Court Chambers. She is a specialist in criminal defence, with experience in defending individuals charged with serious violence, the supply and production of drugs and firearms offences. She has particular expertise in cases involving victims of trafficking and in the area of protest law, having acted for Stonehenge, Extinction Rebellion and Heathrow Pause protesters to name a few. Audrey has in-depth knowledge of European and international human rights law gained through ten years in the NGO sector, and is a Director of the Black Protest Legal Support group which was formed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Audrey has successfully run a campaign to challenge the nationality requirement in criminal courts, and was recently appointed as a Griffins-Barrow Cadbury Trust Fellow, in joint partnership with Cambridge University, where she will be undertaking research on trafficking and modern day slavery.

Kevin Blowe is the coordinator of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol). For 25 years he was a campaigner for the Newham Monitoring Project, an east London police monitoring group. Extensive experience in charity management includes leading the Community Involvement Unit in Newham, which provided capacity building for local community groups. He is also a trustee of the Inquest Charitable Trust and the Buwan Kothi International Trust.

The Article 11 Trust

The Article 11 Trust is an entirely volunteer-run charitable organisation that exists to defend and advance rights to freedom of assembly and association under Article 11 of the ECHR.

Together with our partners and allies in the movement, The Article 11 Trust works to drive forward priority research and education projects, support grassroots groups to secure much-needed funding, and raise public awareness around protest rights issues. We help legal support groups to ensure people at protests know their rights.

Since setting up in early 2020, we have worked with a number of grassroots groups working for protest rights, including with our partner Netpol to produce ‘Britain is Not Innocent’, a report on the policing of last summer’s Black Lives Matter protest, and their recent Charter of Assembly rights, and with Green & Black Cross to expand and improve their modular Know Your Rights trainings for activists and adapt them for an accessible online format.

Please note that if you choose to make a donation, your contribution will be used in support of grassroots groups providing valuable research and education around these issues.

Access

We will provide captioning for the event. Please contact us at contactus@article11trust.org.uk if you have any other access requirements