Imagine a movement arising in this country that seeks to overthrow established power. Imagine that it begins with a series of rebellions, in Scotland and south Wales perhaps, that shut down workplaces, confront police and soldiers (sometimes peaceably, sometimes with crude weapons), set up roadblocks and lay siege to the places where fellow protesters are imprisoned and government officials are meeting.

Imagine that this movement goes on to smash or disable machinery across the country. Imagine that it organises a general strike, nixing much of the UK’s economic activity for three months. Imagine that it keeps protesting in the same places by the same means, gradually eroding the resistance of the state.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government would doubtless do everything in its power not just to stop these individual actions but to prohibit the movement. What am I describing? The origins and development of the Labour party.

The Labour party arose from a long wave of protests by workers against capital, calling for workers’ rights and for sweeping democratic reforms. These protests and their organisers came to be known as the labour movement. Its early actions included the radical war in Scotland, the Merthyr and Newport risings in south Wales, the Swing riots in England and the General Strike of 1842. No such protests would have meant no such movement. No such movement would have meant no such party.

Yet somehow, the party that arose from protest has formed, in terms of our rights to free expression and democratic challenge, the most illiberal government the UK has suffered since the second word war. This Labour government would have banned the labour movement.

Over 40 years, starting with the Public Order Act 1986, our rights to assemble and challenge power have been severely curtailed. That act was followed by the Trade Union Act 1992, the Criminal Justice Act 1994, the Terrorism........

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