The Guardian is reporting:

Police are to demand new powers to arrest protesters for causing offence through the words they chant and the slogans on their placards and even the headbands they wear.

The country's biggest force, the Metropolitan police, is to lobby the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, because officers believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light.

Full story here

Comment

Are our political leaders now seeking to deny freedom of expression to those they disagree with through forcible means? Have they become so afraid of their own "politicised' people, that the only way they can control them, is to create a society where anyone can be arrested for the slightest unlicensed expression of dissent?

Of course the arguments for such proposals will be crafted in such a way, that they appear to be directed at restricting the freedom of those people who express views that the majority of decent people find repugnant.

Indeed it would not be surprising, if the weeks and months ahead managed to produce a number of high-profile examples of these kinds of views being aired, (to great annoyance and discomfort) in public places.

This will ensure that the widest possible chorus of consent can be obtained for what is essentially a law that would censor the public voice still further. However, having placed such a power upon the statute books, there are strong precedents to indicate that these same powers will end up being used in a far more expansive and sinister way at a future date.

We are heading ever nearer the perilous rocks of dictatorship and totalitarianism in this country. Only the fact that so many of us are asleep at our watch enables this suicidal course to continue unchecked and unopposed.