Demand that the National Police Chiefs Council adopts a new, eleven-point Charter

provided by: Netpol
published: April/May 2021

The government’s new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is an unprecedented attack on the freedom to protest. We have to fight against this Bill. But we need more than opposition – that’s why we’re launching a new Charter For Freedom of Assembly Rights. Please sign the petition here >

For the last decade, successive governments have been increasingly hostile towards protests. This has been matched by the way the police have interpreted “peaceful” protest so that even minor breaches of the law are treated as invalidating the collective legitimacy of protesters’ demands, justifying even more aggressive tactics and more surveillance.

20 March 202115 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Celia Stubbs, partner of Blair Peach, to appear at Undercover Inquiry

source: Big Issue North
published: 15 March 2021

Celia Stubbs, whose partner Blair Peach was killed by police 42 years ago, hopes her appearance at the Undercover Policing Inquiry will help her discover why she was spied on for decades.

Stubbs, 81, and still active politically by supporting refugees and asylum seekers, is among thousands of political activists that members of the London Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) highlighted for attention from 1968 onwards. Targets included women, with whom officers sometimes had relationships and children.

3 March 202115 December 2022 4WardEverUK

Widow of Pat Finucane to issue fresh proceedings over inquiry refusal

source: Scottish Legal News
published: 1 March 2021

The widow of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane has issued fresh proceedings in the High Court in Belfast three months after the UK government refused to order a fresh public inquiry into the 1998 killing.

The UK Supreme Court ruled in February 2019 that the state had failed to deliver an Article 2 compliant investigation into the death of Mr Finucane, who was shot and killed by loyalist paramilitaries in collusion with UK security forces.

The government did not respond until December 2020, when it said it would not establish a public inquiry and highlighted an ongoing “review process” within the PSNI and investigations by the Police Ombudsman.