*/
By Paul Harris
CRUX PUBLISHING (MARCH 2022)
PAPERBACK, 358 PAGES
Paul Harris is a very brave man. He burnished the banner of freedom in Hong Kong where he was Chair of the Hong Kong Bar Association until January 2022. In March 2022 he was bundled to a meeting with national security police. He then wisely left for England where he is a member of Doughty Street Chambers.
Harris would not comment as to the reason for his being summoned but we know that he was representing two former assembly members in the so-called ‘47 democrats’ case. He had also said that the new national security legislation insisted on by the Chinese government was inconsistent with the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. Harris had received repeated serious threats of arrest from official sources if he did not resign and leave before the end of his term, and was determined to avoid doing so. It is thus appropriate that Harris’ book is called Freedom’s Banner. Its subtitle is How peaceful demonstrations have changed the world.
The book relates in around 350 pages the history of peaceful demonstrations, riots, rebellions and revolutions across the world. He dates the peaceful political march or assembly to the end of the 18th century from when it proved to be ‘startingly successful’. For example, without the demonstrations of the ‘days of May’ in 1832, England would not have become a democracy when it did. It was also in that decade when the word ‘demonstrations’ entered the vocabulary.
This may be contrasted with the demonstrations with which the book ends, the mass protests in China. I had not realised that the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 garnered no fewer than 1.2 million protestors. These were spontaneous, unlike the demonstrations during the Cultural Revolution which Harris tells us ‘were Mao’s way of preserving himself in power after the catastrophe of the “Great Leap Forward”’.
He considers with care the tension between those marches which want to stay within the law and those where demonstrators deliberately set out to break it. He also considers demonstrations organised through social media networking sites, in particular in the Arab Spring and police tactics such as kettling.
There is nothing dry about this book. It proceeds at pace from the London Corresponding Society, Peterloo to the Suffragettes, by way of Gandhi with valuable chapters on the law of demonstrations and what makes a successful demonstration. Many such campaigns did not succeed at first but only after long periods.
For those who want to protest, Freedom’s Banner is a stirring and necessary read.
John Bowers KC is Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. He is an employment barrister and associate tenant at Littleton Chambers, and sits as a Deputy High Court Judge and a Recorder. With Jeremy Lewis, Martin Fodder and Jack Mitchell, John is a co-author of Whistleblowing: Law and Practice (OUP: 3rd edition 2022).
CRUX PUBLISHING (MARCH 2022)
PAPERBACK, 358 PAGES
Paul Harris is a very brave man. He burnished the banner of freedom in Hong Kong where he was Chair of the Hong Kong Bar Association until January 2022. In March 2022 he was bundled to a meeting with national security police. He then wisely left for England where he is a member of Doughty Street Chambers.
Harris would not comment as to the reason for his being summoned but we know that he was representing two former assembly members in the so-called ‘47 democrats’ case. He had also said that the new national security legislation insisted on by the Chinese government was inconsistent with the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. Harris had received repeated serious threats of arrest from official sources if he did not resign and leave before the end of his term, and was determined to avoid doing so. It is thus appropriate that Harris’ book is called Freedom’s Banner. Its subtitle is How peaceful demonstrations have changed the world.
The book relates in around 350 pages the history of peaceful demonstrations, riots, rebellions and revolutions across the world. He dates the peaceful political march or assembly to the end of the 18th century from when it proved to be ‘startingly successful’. For example, without the demonstrations of the ‘days of May’ in 1832, England would not have become a democracy when it did. It was also in that decade when the word ‘demonstrations’ entered the vocabulary.
This may be contrasted with the demonstrations with which the book ends, the mass protests in China. I had not realised that the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 garnered no fewer than 1.2 million protestors. These were spontaneous, unlike the demonstrations during the Cultural Revolution which Harris tells us ‘were Mao’s way of preserving himself in power after the catastrophe of the “Great Leap Forward”’.
He considers with care the tension between those marches which want to stay within the law and those where demonstrators deliberately set out to break it. He also considers demonstrations organised through social media networking sites, in particular in the Arab Spring and police tactics such as kettling.
There is nothing dry about this book. It proceeds at pace from the London Corresponding Society, Peterloo to the Suffragettes, by way of Gandhi with valuable chapters on the law of demonstrations and what makes a successful demonstration. Many such campaigns did not succeed at first but only after long periods.
For those who want to protest, Freedom’s Banner is a stirring and necessary read.
By Paul Harris
Far-ranging month for the Chair of the Bar
Endometriosis Awareness North, a charity raising awareness of endometriosis and supporting those affected across the North of England, has received a £500 boost from AlphaBiolabs via the company’s Giving Back initiative
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs, examines the most recent data on alcohol misuse in the UK, and the implications for alcohol testing in family proceedings
Clement Cowley, Partner at The Penny Group, explains how tailored financial planning can help barristers take control of their finances and plan with confidence
Marie Law, Director of Toxicology at AlphaBiolabs
A £500 donation from AlphaBiolabs has been made to the leading UK charity tackling international parental child abduction and the movement of children across international borders
Seeing the full picture – Baljit Ubhey OBE outlines the CPS action plan to tackle violence against women and girls, offering insights directly relevant to courtroom practice
Heritage as an anchor and a compass, finding our common humanity and embracing the power of the outsider – Melina Antoniadis’s lessons learnt
Is the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office process fit for purpose? Women barristers’ experiences of bullying are not being reported or, if they are, they are not making it through the system, says Tana Adkin KC
Review by Daniel Barnett
Chair of the Bar reports back
