Motion no: 24
Conference is concerned at the draconian use of COVID legislation as a repressive mechanism against citizens who attempted to exercise their democratic right to protest.
The Reclaim the Streets protesters in Belfast, the Sarah Everard protests in London, the Black Lives Matter demonstrations across Northern Ireland, and the Debenhams pickets in the Republic of Ireland, to name just a few, all came under the heavy hand of the state. It is clear that the state used the COVID legalisation as an excuse to intimidate and harass people who decided to exercise their democratic rights.
It is notable that the public reaction forced a reversal of the threatened action against some of these protesters but the deplorable use of COVID legalisation to undermine the right to protest has served to add grist to the mill of the conspiracy theorists. More importantly, however, it also undermined the hard work carried out by health professionals and trade union health and safety reps in the workplace who did a tremendous job protecting the population.
Conference believes that we must learn from this and other similar experiences and calls on the NI Committee to campaign against the untrammelled powers of the state and to work to ensure that power of the state is never again used to repress citizens from exercising their democratic right to protest.
