Kill The Bill Protest Birmingham 8th December 2021

A quick post about this protest which I attended at short notice. This protest took place because the government are continuing to push the draconian Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill which will severely restrict the right to protest. This goes along with all the other authoritarian police state things that they are pushing or have pushed, such as the Coronavirus Act, mandatory masks, vaccine passports and the persecution of Julian Assange.

I have expressed some reservations about the Kill the Bill movement before, primarily the fact that they ignore the Official Covid Narrative as a justification for tyranny.

Unfortunately, they are at it again. The group People's Assembly (which I know nothing about and have no dealings with) refused to protest at the Kill the Bill event in London because some 'anti-vaxxers' were going to be there. (Screenshot courtesy Ian Jenkins - they later deleted this after they got called out).

Presumably this was because some groups like Stand Up X and Save Our Rights, who are anti-lockdown, were advertising the event and encouraging people to turn up. Of course, this is beyond pathetic - looking a gift horse of additional support in the mouth. Despite the fact that the left has mocked and smeared people supportive of Stand Up X and Save Our Rights for months, they backed the protest because stopping the bill was more important than disagreement. Obviously this 'People's Assembly' lot don't represent the whole left but there are a significant proportion who like to mock people who don't follow every restriction out of Boris Johnson's mouth and don't trust Big Pharma.

Anyway, I went to this protest despite reservations because this bill is terrible. Apart from being a lot darker (it was at 5pm) and a lot colder, not a lot has changed in terms of the kinds of things they are talking about (and still no acknowledgement of the evils of the Coronavirus Act or vaccine passports). The usual leftist groups were around including Stop the War coalition, the Workers Party of Britain and trade union groups. The speeches were the usual kind of left leaning stuff that you get at these kind of events with the themes of the 'climate emergency', imperialism, migrants etc. (The speaker from Stop the War even had a go at the Workers' Party of Britain for being too anti-migration, so we couldn't get through the event without a left wing spat.)

There was also a lot of Extinction Rebellion people around as well, giving out badges and leaflets, and they also brought the drums along. There was a period of 10-15 minutes where they just did some drumming. (I'm a bit cynical about the 'climate emergency' narrative at this point given that it seems to be the next narrative after Covid to be used to drive in the authoritarian police state. There was quite a lot of plugging of this narrative at this event with another protest on another date being mentioned for climate change.)

After a few more speakers there was a bit of chanting that was a bit half-assed. Though for a Wednesday 5 o'clock protest, the turnout was decent. Maybe 100-150 or so people (difficult to see in the dark).