Did we reach a new low or the new norm when the UK Police raided a Quaker meeting house?

Thursday 27th March 2025 was a curious day for UK protest rights

Last Thursday the UK police raided a Quaker meeting house in London. No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory. The Quakers are pacifists. What was so dangerous that more than 20 police officers, some equipped with tasers, thought it necessary to break down the door of the meeting house? Apparently, the threat came from a small group of young activists from Youth Demand who had hired a room there and were holding a publicly announced “welcome meeting”. Six young women were arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Others from the group had their bedrooms raided and searched by police (yes, their bedrooms because most of them still live at home because they are YOUNG). All of them were detained in police cells and questioned before being released with protest related bail conditions.

I met one of them outside Hammersmith Police Station after she had spent 22 hours in custody there. She bounced out of the police station in high spirits wearing her police issued grey track suit and a pink fluffy joke hat with long ears and a button that, when pressed, would make the ears stick up. She seemed blessed with an extraordinary resiliance and was greeted with love and solidarity by a group of her peers who had waited for hours outside in the cold for her. As I stood there on the pavement watching their reunion I could not help but question the world we are living in where someone like her, and as young as her, has ended up cuffed, detained overnight and had her bedroom searched by police officers. She will now have to go through the courts and defend the charge of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, which, given the backlog in our courts, could take years.

The crime of “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” was brought into law in 2022 under the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. If found guilty you can be jailed for up to 10 years. In 2023, Marcus Decker and Morgan Trowland were the first nonviolent activists sentenced under that new law and were given sentences of 3 years and 2 years 7 months respectively. These sentences were eclipsed last summer when 5 activists from Just Stop Oil were sentenced for 4 and 5 years for that offence. Their sentences were recently reduced on appeal to 3 and 4 years. While the judiciary say that each person found guilty for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance will be sentenced according to the context of their particular situation, these multi-year sentences have nevertheless set a very high bar. As was made clear by the judiciary at Trowland and Decker’s appeal on their sentence lengths, the purpose of these long prison sentences is to deter others and they are being driven by political will.

So what drove this young activist to become part of a civil resistance group? I cannot talk to her case in particular as, apart from my chance meeting on the pavement in Hammersmith, I do not know her, but I have spent enough time with other young activists while making the documentary The Line We Crossed to be able to offer up somewhat of an informed answer to this: They’re looking at the world and seeing incredible injustice, particularly in the case of Gaza. They’re looking at the world and seeing an apocalyptic future as the climate crisis worsens. They’re looking at their own futures and seeing that they are f*****. They are not willing to sit back and just watch this happen. They want to shout and scream, “this is not OK!” but they’re not being heard. The only way they feel they can be heard is to take part in direct actions that are going to get press coverage and with it the the wrath of the great British public (what right do they have to inconvenience me and impose their ideologies on me while all I am trying to do is get to work?). It’s only a small number of people who take the step into activism, but I can’t help but feel some admiration for these young people who despite the intimidation, despite the UK’s draconian anti-protest laws, despite the risk of incarceration, are standing up and trying to hold power to account.

On the same day the police paid a visit to the Quaker meeting house, Just Stop Oil announced they were disbanding. One of their spokespeople explained that in the early days Just Stop Oil tried direct actions at oil terminals but it got very little press. What it took for them to be heard was a can of soup being thrown on a famous painting. The painting was protected by glass and the soup did not cause it any damage. Ironically, the police arrests of these young people at the Quaker meeting house may have had a bit of a ‘soup effect’ as it has put Youth Demand in the headlines and they are reporting a take up of new members as a result.

Also on Thursday 27th March the Home Office announced they were looking to give new powers to the police to change the route or timing of protest marches outside places of worship. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is quoted as saying, “The right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy, which must always be protected, but that does not include the right to intimidate or infringe on the fundamental freedoms of others.” The irony of this statement on the day that 20 police officers forced their way into a Quaker meeting house is not to be lost.

The Quakers have a long history of standing up against injustice. In the 1600’s they won an important right for jurors to be able to acquit a defendant on their conscience. This right was first established in 1670 when the Recorder of London tried to compel a jury to convict two Quaker preachers, William Penn and William Mead, for holding an unlawful assembly. The Jury repeatedly refused to do so. To this day, thanks to them, the principle of ‘jury equity’ stands and juries are still allowed to acquit someone on their conscience. Worringly, this right is under threat and movements like Defend Our Juries are working hard to protect it. With the police raid of a Youth Demand meeting at a Quaker meeting house it feels like we’ve come full circle.

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The Line We Crossed will be released in cinemas and in community centres across the UK from 23rd June 2025. If you would like to see it near you, you can petition your local screen.

Manchester and Warrington Quakers are welcoming friends to a special pre-release screening of the documentary The Line We Crossed at the Friends Meeting House in Manchester on Sunday 27th April and Monday 28th April 2025.