Our rights have never been handed to us by kings and queens, they’ve been fought for and won through protest. In their new book Charged: How the Police Try to Suppress Protest criminal defence lawyer Matt Foot and documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist Morag Livingstone uncover the lengths to which the police in the UK have gone to suppress those protests.
Through eye-witness account and previously unseen documents, they reveal organised police violence against miners at Orgreave, print workers at Warrington, anti–Poll Tax campaigners, student protesters, and Black Lives Matter activists.
But, they tell Laura Kelly and Sophie Dimitrijevic on this week’s BetterPod, protestors will not be silenced. They have useful advice for activists on how to continue making their voices heard, in the face of new restrictions brought in by the 2022 Policing Act.
BetterPod is brought to you by The Big Issue’s Future Generations team. Through the Future Generations team, we offer a platform for exciting young journalists from underrepresented backgrounds to address the biggest issues facing us today.
This is episode nine of BetterPod. Listen to any episodes you’ve missed here.