Editor’s note: On February 4th, 2026, the House of Lords voted against Baroness Bennett’s fatal motion to reject the draft of Public Order Act 2023 (Interference With Use or Operation of Key National Infrastructure) Regulations 2025, and voted in favour of the amendment. The proposed statutory instrument has so far resisted all attempts to quash it.
Animal rights activism has never been shy of controversy. The movement’s extensive history of pushing uncomfortable ideas and questioning the boundaries of societally acceptable conduct has frequently wavered on the line of transgressing from civil protest into militant criminal activity. The extremist group the Animal Liberation Front has employed tactics including trespassing, arson attacks and bombing, though they attempt to exonerate their actions by claiming that those operating the targeted slaughterhouses or animal testing facilities are culpable for the organisation’s actions.
Although this extremism remains a tiny subsection of the movement, the image of animal rights activists as controversial and even reprehensible has been further solidified by charities such as PETA, whose anti-fur campaigns have featured contentious depictions of naked women, alongside the distribution of animal-slaughter graphics to children, captioned ‘your mommy kills animals’. The role of vegan public figures like Morrissey, who has compared animal slaughter to the Holocaust on numerous occasions, has certainly served to further solidify the view of both animal rights activists and those practicing vegan diets as existing in a militant fringe of society.
While the extremist factions of the animal rights movement have always been dealt with by appropriate legal measures, the legal – albeit controversial – activism which has pushed the boundaries of free speech has generally been given a wide berth by the authorities. Protests have been allowed to take place, no matter how unpleasant, due to the rights to protest enshrined in the ECHR and the precedents of freedom of speech and assembly that have been long upheld in the United Kingdom.
Recent developments in the United Kingdom, however, have set a worrying precedent for the future of the freedom to protest. Fears of encroaching censorship are reflected in the rising sentiment which appears to be uniting citizens across the political spectrum, that the country is creeping towards a state of authoritarian governmental overreach – a fear no doubt substantiated by the sheer number of arrests for speech-related offences in the UK. Yet contrary to popular belief, the expansion in employment of state apparatus to supress free speech and protest is not limited to just one side of the political spectrum. Protestors, activists and content creators across the political divide, including those who campaign on issues unrelated to the traditional political system, are facing increased censorship and the ever-present threat of arrest.
This is particularly exemplified in recent suppressions of peaceful animal rights protesting. A statutory instrument (SI) which makes an amendment to the Public Order Act 2023, put forward by Minister of State for Policing and Crime Sarah Jones, proposes to endow police with new powers to suppress protests at ‘life sciences’ sites, including animal-testing centres and animal-breeding facilities. Prosecution as a consequence of such protesting may result in hefty fines and prison sentences, and the amendment passed a vote in the House of Commons on the 14th of January with a majority of 191 votes.
The government justifies these new measures which focus on targeting those disrupting ‘key national infrastructure’ with the claim that animal testing is apparently crucial to development of vaccines and other essential medical interventions, despite its own commitment to phasing out the use of animal testing with alternative, more ethical procedures available. While there is reference made to the economic risks behind such protests, such as the offending companies relocating to different countries, the government’s commitment to phasing out animal testing demonstrates an acknowledgement of the ethical concerns held by these protestors. In light of this, we must recall that the police already has sufficient power to deal with criminal offences committed during protest; the amendment simply seeks to stamp out any dissent, including peaceful protest, and places the interests of large corporations over both the government’s own commitments to its citizens and their civil liberties.
While there is undoubtedly hypocrisy from the Labour Party in its creation of this statutory instrument, support for it is not unanimous. The SI did not pass without strong reaction both within the Labour Party and externally, though the extent of its criticism in parliament was limited as its proposition as an SI means it did not receive proper debate. Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan, commenting on the amendment, argues:
Shielding the powerful from dissent only strengthens our opponents. By curtailing the right to protest, we risk laying the foundations for a more authoritarian and less democratic state. That’s not the job of the Labour Party.
Further to this, Baroness Bennett of the Green Party has also put forward a motion to reject the regulations, accusing them of “legislative overreach” and arguing that “they represent a further restriction on the democratic right to peaceful protest.”
Remarkably, whether due to ideological conflicts or perhaps simple ignorance as a result of the enormous number of groundbreaking news articles dominating the popular zeitgeist on social media, free speech campaigning groups have drawn little to no attention to this instance of the government’s authoritarian overreach; responsibility has fallen to animal rights activists and sympathetic politicians to highlight the issue. Duncan-Jordan addresses the crux of the issue, in arguing that any attack on a rightful use of free speech is an attack on all uses of free speech. For the sake of defending the principles that are integral to societal functioning, we must combat all attacks on freedom of speech and protest wherever they appear, irrespective of our own individual opinions on the speech in question.
It is paramount for free speech campaigners to stand alongside animal rights campaigners, regardless of their own personal opinions on animal testing, in order to create a united front against all attacks on freedom of speech such that the message begins to resonate with those in power – there is, as the old adage goes, ‘strength in numbers’. It is reasonable to believe that this unification, in the name of a greater good, will have a much larger impact than disparate causes at varying times making free speech-related demands to the government which it can easily brush aside. With the vote already having passed in the Commons, it now falls upon the House of Lords to safeguard the freedom to protest, and the ramifications of their vote will not just impact animal rights activism but the state of freedom of speech in the United Kingdom. In reflection, I urge all to follow the maxim often attributed to Voltaire:
‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’