Limiting the freedom to protest: Legal responses to direct action

This chapter seeks to examine the major efforts used by both government and private business concerns to stop direct action. Direct action against private business and government interests alike is a tactic used by environmental organizations around the world. Environmental campaigning and the use of direct action in the face of government and commercial intransigence have increasingly become important elements of the UK protest movement as concerns about the impact of many aspects of modern life have given rise to a multitude of environmental campaign groups. In the area of the construction of new roads these factors have come together with the result that widespread protest and direct action have been aimed at government projects. Friends of the Earth organized protests and were committed to trying to prevent the government and its contractors from gaining access to the site of the construction work.