LABOUR should be defending, not endangering, our basic right of protest and democracy, University and College Union (UCU) general secretary Jo Grady told TUC Congress today, moving a motion calling on the government to end attacks on the right to protest.

Ms Grady told delegates: “In an open and democratic society, citizens can take peaceful direct action against mass atrocity, and they can do so without being bundled off by the police at dawn.

“In an open and democratic society, pensioners and wheelchair-bound disabled people can hold signs saying they oppose genocide without being branded terrorists.

“But, one year into a Labour government, we live in an increasingly closed and authoritarian country.”

Trade union members are among those arrested for “raising their voices against injustice,” she said, adding: “If it hasn’t already directly impacted your members, let me tell you: it will.

“When you criminalise dissent, when you hand sweeping powers to the police, when you silence critics in the name of public order — no-one is safe.

“We’ve seen across the world what happens when government curbs the right to protest. They [then] come for trade unions.”

Ms Grady said the attacks to protest “seriously endanger democracy itself,” saying: “With the far-right narrative currently being normalised, Labour should be defending our basic right of protest and democracy, not endangering it.

“Solidarity is the lifeblood of our movement, and we know an injury to one is an injury to all.”

Seconding the motion, RMT union’s Alex Gordon said that the trade union movement was “born in struggle,” adding: “Defending our members’ rights and freedoms at work and in society defines us, and is written in blood in the history of our country.”