I’m a great believer in human rights and when the topic comes up, I make it clear to my students that you either buy into human rights wholeheartedly or you don’t buy into it at all. There is no halfway house.  You cannot pick and choose which bits you like, or decide that there is a time limited offer, a bit like a sale, on one month but not the next, and then on again. Nor can you decide that such rights only apply to some and not others (Home Office take note regarding refugees and asylum seekers).  But the more I think about human rights the more I question how rights can work on an individual level without impacting on others’ rights.

A good example is the protests over the last year or so, particularly during ‘lockdown’. I ought to hasten to add before someone protests vociferously, that this blog is not about the validity of the subject matter being protested about. The blog is simply about how the exercise of rights that we hold so dear, can and do impact on other’s rights.

The government and its agents have a duty to ensure that human rights are facilitated as best as possible. Whilst there are some caveats, this duty extends to taking positive steps to ensure that we have a right to protest, a right to associate with whom we like, a right to express what we want to express and I would suggest above all else a right to life.  I have prioritised the right to life but, in the arguments about the rights to protest, few if any question the impact that such protests have on that one fundamental right.  

And I can hear the arguments now, what the people are protesting about is far bigger, too important not to be allowed to protest.  The argument can even be extended to the fact that the protests are about the right to life, a valid argument.  So, it is ironic that protesting about the right to life impacts on others’ right to life.  If you don’t agree then please tell me what the purpose of ‘lockdown’ was if it wasn’t at least in part to save lives.  The problem with protests, peaceful or not is that they do not suddenly happen in one place, people are not just beamed in.  Would be protesters have to get to the venue thereby creating multiple opportunities for the spread of Covid.  But even when we are not in ‘lockdown’, many protests have a detrimental impact on the rights of other members of the public through the disruption caused.  In exercising fundamental rights, we trample on the rights of others.  Whilst we may agree with the sentiments of the protests, it is and should not always be the case.  Protests are not always about what we hold or ought to hold dear, in fact sometimes the opposite.#

I cannot say I am in favour of the new proposals to regulate protests, but I do understand the rationale, at least in part.  I also understand the concern and the possible impact on our freedoms. But I find it somewhat bemusing that so many are quick to criticise and yet so few offer solutions. One day, when I am particularly annoyed about something and decide to join a protest, I wonder whether I will think about other people and the rights I am depriving them of?