A Symposium organised by the Political Studies Association: Political and Social Movements Group, Brunel Human Geography: Space, Place and Society Research Group, The Centre for Global Lives and The Urban Salon.
Last academic year, John Roberts, co-convenor of the Political Studies Association: Political and Social Movements Group and member of the Brunel Human Geography: Space, Place and Society Research Group, and Monica Degen, who is also a member of the Brunel Human Geography: Space, Place and Society Research Group, got together to organise a symposium on public spaces of free speech, dissent and protest from the past and present.
There has been increasing concern from various public bodies that there is currently a crisis in the right to free expression. Indeed, more than 5.6 billion people in the world have seen a decline in their freedom of expression over the last decade (Article 19, 2025). While freedom of expression encompasses a range of indicators, such as media censorship, internet regulation, academic freedom, government monitoring, and the degree to which civil society organisations contribute towards public discussions, one notable and visible area nevertheless lies with the right to protest in public spaces in cities. Problematically, this often taken-for-granted right has increasingly been subject to more restrictions in different countries.
Perhaps surprisingly for some, this is also the case in liberal democracies. The UK stands as an illustration. Recently, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has controversially given the police more powers to govern, order and zone democratic assemblies, free speech and protests (see Liberty 2022). The Act is notable for not only strengthening the governance of physical places to protest, but also in granting police greater legal powers to restrict what they judge to be more ‘sensual’ protest tactics, such as ‘noise’ and ‘intimidation’. But the 2022 Act is just one of a number passed by UK governments, which govern and restrict protests in British public spaces. Pioneering surveillance mechanisms – facial recognition and digital profiling – similarly empower the authorities to not only arrest protestors in public space, but also to pre-empt their activism and stop it before it even occurs.
Of course, ordering and governing public spaces of dissent and protest has a rich historical legacy in modern British history. Zoning public spaces to regulate and govern public protest was a police tactic during the nineteenth century for example, while the authorities have always adopted the surveillance mechanisms of the time to monitor activists in city space. More affectual and sensual modes of regulating public spaces of dissent – using ‘noise’ for example as a reason to shut down protests – are evident in the past too. Crucially, activists and protestors have in turn sought throughout modern history to extend their democratic rights to the city through novel methods of protest and free expression that overcome restrictions on their movement through public space.
While John and Monica are both located in Sociology and Communications at Brunel, they are also interdisciplinary scholars and so wanted to ensure the symposium reflected this element. This would also make the event unique. Indeed, there has not been an event that brings together the past and the present on these important topics. We therefore thought it would be a great opportunity to bring together a number of experts across disciplinary perspectives, which included history, geography, sociology, political science, and critical socio-legal studies, to explore these issues through specific case studies and through critical geographical theory. We wanted to present a range of examples from the past and the present in order to highlight some themes for future research on public spaces of dissent and protest.
The symposium was held on Wednesday 20th May at the London School of Economics.
Five speakers came to present their research around these topics.
The first was Katrina Navickas, a professor of social history at the University Herefordshire. Her talk was entitled, ‘Resistance to the ongoing enclosure of public space: protest as practices of commoning’. Drawing from her new book, Contested Commons: a History of Protest and Public Space in England, Katrina examined how we conceptualise the actions of protestors and social movements in the defence of public space. Rethinking understandings of enclosure and landowning from Karl Polanyi to Doreen Massey, Katrina argued that protestors navigate multiscalar layers of place, enacting communal activities and resistance against the ongoing enclosure of public space.
Following Katrina’s excellent talk, Jasbinder Nijjar from Goldsmiths University’s Sociology Department spoke about the moment that anti-racist activist, Blair Peach, was killed by police in Southall, West London, in April 1979, while he was demonstrating against a fascist National Front election meeting in Southall Town Hall. Through his own ethnographic research, Jasbinder connected the history of Peach’s activism to Southall Resists 40 (SR40), a local community project set up in 2018 to mark the fortieth anniversary of Peach’s death, and to remember Southall’s broader history of racial violence and anti-racist community resistance. Jasbinder skilfully weaved the past and present together through this hugely significant case study, and demonstrated how a community activist group – SR40 – can remember and bring to the present a past racist event, the police’s involvement it, and how this history can be used to combat similar issues today.
Matthew Hughes, a professor in Military History at Brunel University, followed Jasbinder’s talk by exploring how local dissent and protest was regulated in Mandate Palestine, 1920-1948. Through fascinating empirical detail, Matthew unpacked how the British used both brute military force to subjugate Palestinians for the British colonial state. For example, colonial emergency law-administration and not military force was the bedrock of Britain’s pacification of Palestine, in times of peace and revolt. One concrete example from Matthew to illustrate this policy was the 1929 edition of the Manual of Military Law. This instructed soldiers that ‘no one is allowed to use more force than is necessary’ and when ‘called to the aid of the civil power soldiers in no way differ in the eyes of the law from other citizens’ but it clearly stated that where coercion was required or terrorism checked collective punishment and reprisals, which will ‘inflict suffering upon innocent individuals,’ were ‘indispensable as a last resource.’ ‘The existence of an armed insurrection would justify the use of any degree of force necessary effectually to meet and cope with the insurrection.’ These rules applied in British colonies in ways that they never did in the UK.
Anneleen Kenis who is a Lecturer in Geographies of Political Ecology and Environmental Justice at Brunel University gave a talk on, ‘A Race Against the Clock? On the Paradoxes of Acting ‘Now’ in the Climate Struggle’. Anneleen discussed climate change protests and how new climate movements try to break with the ‘empty time’ of climate change discourses to focus on the present ‘now’ to gather awareness. She showed us how new climate change activists are questioning gradual and homogeneous conceptions of time, as for instance present in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios, with their moveable deadlines and reliance on future promises. Pointing at the catastrophe looming on the horizon, new climate movements question understandings of history as progress and instead as the public to ‘act now’. Drawing on a range of case studies of climate change protest in public spaces and beyond, she showed the important temporal dimensions that underpin different climate change discourses and movements in the public realm and their contradictions.
Finally, John Roberts, Professor of Sociology at Brunel, spoke on, ‘The Neoliberalisation of the Marble Arch Landscape for Free Speech’. John showed how the iconic Marble Arch monument next to Hyde Park, London, embodies a contradictory identity. Since it’s relocation in 1851 from being an entrance to Buckingham Palace to its present spot, Marble Arch is both a symbol for royal, military and imperialist history and a place for people assemble for demonstrations and to engage in free speech. Through detailed historical and social analysis John described how this unique history emerged and then, how from the 1990s onwards there have been successive attempts to commercialise this landscape through different redesign schemes. His talk uncovered how this has impacted upon free speech in the landscape.
Throughout the day, a lively and rich discussion was had by everyone who attended. This carried on into the evening over drinks and dinner. The event was also an occasion for networking and developing contacts, while promoting the work of Brunel’s research excellence. We are also grateful to the Political Studies Association and the Centre for Global Lives for sponsoring the event.