At a time when inflation is over 10% and energy companies and supermarket chains are recording record profits while the rest of us are seeing our incomes diminishing in a cost of living crisis and our public services on the brink of collapse, the government, instead of looking for ways to improve our lives and share the country’s wealth more equitably, is intent only on imposing restrictions on our rights to protest about its failures.

Many of you will be aware of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, which will allow the government to make future strike action ineffective by determining the minimum “safe” level of service that must be maintained during a strike in essential public services. Apart from the irony that some of these services are so under-resourced that they are unable to provide safe levels of service even in normal times, when no one’s on strike, this legislation will effectively allow the government to set minimum service levels at such a high level as to undermine any strike action. 

Maybe, if your travel has been disrupted recently or your child’s school has been closed or your operation has been cancelled because of strikes you are not too disappointed to hear about this bill. However, strike action is already a last resort for public sector workers who are overseeing the deterioration of the services they provide due to systematic underfunding and are themselves struggling to make ends meet due to years of real terms pay cuts. The withdrawal of their labour and the sacrifice of their pay is the only leverage workers have over their employers when their concerns go unheard and to take that right away is not only an affront to human rights but will lead to further deterioration in pay, conditions and public services.

Alongside the Strikes Bill, the government is currently sneaking its Public Order Bill through the House of Lords with hardly any publicity. This bill, if it becomes legislation, could criminalise anyone who takes to the streets for causes they believe in. It will expand suspicionless stop and search powers, criminalise “locking on” (linking arms), going equipped (carrying a bike lock in your backpack) and “serious disruption” (which is defined as disruption and obstruction that police officers consider “more than minor”) and introduce new protest banning orders. It will impose restrictions on picket lines, on public protests on the cost of living crisis, on demonstrations about the climate crisis and on people standing up for racial justice. 

Many of our rights and working conditions have been won through protest and strike action and if we want to protect these rights we now need to call out these bills for what they are and let our politicians know we will not be silenced.