Jo Maugham, Director of the Good Law Project, posted on X: “What a brave, democratic, free speech loving, nation we have become under the so-called Conservative Party.”
The most pertinent part for me. The Tories have legalised suppression.
Tbh her being arrested just helps raise awareness. If the police hadn’t arrested her and just some nobodies instead, it wouldn’t be in the news.
Without a doubt the intent. It is how she has won her fame.
So what do you think is the plod’s angle? Is it a blunder? A flex? Or are they deliberately trying to lose this one?
They are under government instructions. The Tories do not care about court costs for their actions.
I mean, that’s part of the point of the protests. You protest, you get arrested, you bring both attention and legal scrutiny to the issue. The kid went in knowing it was very likely. If a protest issue disruptive enough to get you arrested, it isn’t a protest, it’s a circle jerk
Edit: Too many responses with the same basic gist to make individual replies useful.
The point I was making is that a good protest plans for arrests. It’s part of the point going in. It isn’t a matter of whether or not someone should be arrested or not. It’s the fact that the arrest itself is a chance for both media and legal attention to the protested thing.
You want to get arrested because it means you’re directly threatening the status quo. It means she was successful.
Now, whether or not her right to protest was violated by the arrest is a separate issue. But, again, that gives her and her legal team a chance to challenge that very thing. It highlights the problem in the public eye as well. Again, it makes the protest successful.
A protest where everyone protesting finishes up and goes home feeling all warm and fuzzy isn’t a fucking protest, it’s a party. It means nobody that matters paid any attention at all. Might as well just stay at fucking home. You don’t even have to be arrested for protesting, it can be for obstructing traffic, or noise ordinances, or littering. This still gives the chance to effect change on some scale that simply is not there without disruption and arrest.
Do people really not remember the civil rights movement and how they used the combination of peaceful protest and legal activity? It’s one of the most successful strategies for change in human history. It fucking worked.
So, this kid being the face of the protest is definitely on purpose, and I guarantee that the arrest was predicted, if not hoped for. I strongly suspect that it was actually a goal of the protest.
Again, a protest that doesn’t disrupt isn’t a protest, it’s a fucking circlejerk. And nothing shows significant disruption like cops trying to break it up.
You should not be arrested for protesting. This is a direct contravention of article 11 of the human rights act.
Thunberg and other protestors blocked entrances at the hotel, trying to prevent delegates from entering.
I think it’s that blocking that might’ve caused the arrest, not protesting itself. As the link says
Are there any restrictions to this right?
There are some situations where a public authority can restrict your rights to freedom of assembly and association.
This is only the case where the authority can show that its action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:
protect national security or public safety
prevent disorder or crime
protect health or morals, or
protect the rights and freedoms of other people.
Probably falls under the last point
It is loose and contentious. I have no doubt that Thunberg will use funds to take the UK court to the ECHR. She should have taken advice beforehand. I would be very surprised if she didn’t.
Pretty much everywhere that would be called civil disobedience, yes it’s illegal but it shouldn’t be so you take the arrest and essentially argue it’s morality.
If she was arrested for preventing entry its probably “okay”. Otherwise morons would be blocking access to abortion clinics and they would not be able to be arrested/dispersed. Its complicated even from moral point of view for me. I like to protest and complain but i also would like places being accessible with the current “trend” of evangelical extremisim spilling over to here… Wuats next blocking access to libraries becsuse they have a book that talks about abortion?
Well that’s the way to test it out
FYI she’s 20 now, no longer a minor. I know some people will still call a person a “kid” at that age, hell I probably would refer to a random 20-year-old as a kid. But, I call this out since some people insist on infantalizing her so they can more easily ignore her- and her message. I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing, but depending on the message you intend to send you might choose a different way to describe her in the future.
Yeah, once you start looking 50 in the old brown eye, anyone under thirty is a kid
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Hell I’m pretty sure you can be arrested at this point for just being near a protest and looking at it, the Tories are desperate to turn this country into a dictatorship. I have no idea why they can’t just calm the fuck down.
They looked at Vladimir Putin in Russia and went oh, that’s great idea.
Reminder that Labour has not said they’d remove any of the anti protest stuff, instead they’ll focus on other things if they win the next GE
Why would anyone be outraged? She’s a far left activist, I don’t know why anyone would expect her NOT to be there.
What the fuck does far left mean to you
Progressive
I think I maybe mistook the tone of your comment.
I think Greta is in a position to make a difference and amazingly in a non violent way. So when you said you far left activitist etc… It came across as the typical brain washed drivel you get from people who have been taken over and are being driven by snake oil salesmen that appear to have taken over general public discourse globally.
You’re response, saying you think far left as progressive makes me think I was harsh in thinking this as I do think Greta is progressive, which I think is idionatically correct, however I don’t think Greta’s stance or activism is far anything so that is where my confusion came from.
I see. For the record I don’t like progressivism, but it’s not supposed to be a dig at her, just saying that she’s at a protest that is aligned with her ideology, and it makes no sense to be mad at her for attending a protest or rally that’s for a cause that she supports. Seems like a dumb thing to complain about to me.
They’re outraged because she was arrested, not because she was there.
Ah,that makes a lot more sense.
I don’t think anyone is mad at her, people are looking at this and seeing naked corrupt authoritarianism.
So to explain my confusion, not wanting things to progress is something I don’t understand, so when you said progressive I then thought you were saying Greta is doing good.
Fundementally, being against progression means you are regressive. I think being static isn’t something well defined, because it doesn’t seem feasible, it would required being entirely insular, i.e. solipsistic, which is mad.
If you don’t mind me asking, why do you want things to regress? In recent times ( bar the rise of the far right ideologies causing a fair bit of war and death), it’s statistically been one of the most peaceful periods in history, bar some notable regions, really Europe’s stopped brutally annihilating each other. Arguably, this has been due to global cooperation on an economic and cultural level, it could be nuclear weapons as well, but cooperation is good, so I would personally roll with it.
Would you prefer to go back to a time when countries where more insular and thus more likely to end up in war with each other? Or what other benefits do you see in being regressive?
First of all, I think it’s a bit faulty to say that progress is good by default, as it is only good if it leaves society in a better state than it was before.
I’d actually argue that progressivism is, in general, pretty regressive, rather that leading to progress, and has led to things like sexism and racism coming back into favor, rather than falling out of favor. This has given us a society where there is now a fair bit of progress needed to get back to where MLK wanted us to be, with people being judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin (or their genetalia). There are other things too, such as a return to science, the presumption of innocence before being proven guilty in the eyes of the general public, and more that need to be strived for, but progressivism attempts to take us backwards in regards to those things, rather than taking us forward.
This is an interesting take, and I hadn’t thought of it like this before.
I guess the things you’ve noted a regressions would be seen as progressions by some other person, and it depends on what a person’s perspective of a “better” state, presumably for all involved, is.
In either case, it’s given me a new perspective I hadn’t thought of before.
