Professor Eric Heinze has published an article in The Conversation about the cost of political protests and how we should fund it.
Photo by Yousef Salhamoud on Unsplash
A recent UK government report has tallied the costs for policing demonstrations about the Gaza war since last October. The first two months alone topped £25 million nationally, and the protests have continued, attended by tens of thousands of marchers.
Eric Heinze is Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of London.
In this opinion piece for The Conversation, he writes, “In a democracy, we expect clarity about public spending, but the costs arising from the scope and frequency of these recent marches have triggered doubts about the price of political protests – under a government that has already cracked down on our rights to demonstrate, and with an already severely stretched police force.
“We have always known that spending in one area reduces the cash available for another, and yet rarely have we heard calls to spend less on health care so we can spend more on free speech.
“In publishing this report, the government is effectively asking the public: how much free speech are you willing to pay for”
He concludes by warning; “If we are not willing to reduce spending in other sectors, or to raise taxes across the board to safeguard people’s rights to demonstrate, the alternative may mean accepting a society where opportunities for public protest become ever more rare.”
Read the full article in The Conversation.