I was replying to: "protest is meant to be disruptive".
Speaking in a public place is free speech.
Interrupting a motorcade is not free speech. Pushing people around to get in from of cameras is neither.
By the way, I'm using these two possible behaviours as examples of disruptive actions that do not constitute free speech. I'm not stating that people in London were arrested due to such behaviours.
Depends entirely on the kind of interruption. Remember that a mortorcade is itself already a disruption of the normal use of a public space.
> Pushing people around to get in from of cameras is neither. By the way, I'm using these two possible behaviours as examples of disruptive actions that do not constitute free speech. I'm not stating that people in London were arrested due to such behaviours.
Yes, that's called a strawman. And you are using very imprecise language to boot - pushing people around can describe a number of behaviors from a gentle nudge to ouright assault.
Saying that protests should be allowed to be disruptive does also not mean that any kind of disruption needs to be accepted. Obviously if a protest prevents effectively detains you it is not ok. But having to take a slight detour or hearing people say things you want to ignore, that's something that is effectively required for a protest to have any result at all.
> is effectively required for a protest to have any result at all
I'll say it again: you don't have the right to expect that your protest be successful.
Democracy (and the UK isa democracy) means that the status quo is fine for the majority of the people. If anyone had the right to change things at their whim, that would become a dictatorship.
Protesting is to inform people at large of a problem you feel important, but the solution cannot be up to you alone. And if you can't even convince people to listen to you without coercing them, why do you think your protest should be successful?
Am I not exercising free speech if I talk over you? Why is interrupting a motorcade any different? Motorcades are arguably expressions in and of themselves.
> Am I not exercising free speech if I talk over you?
In civilized places, we do not talk over another. We take turns to speak.
> Why is interrupting a motorcade any different?
It is not different indeed. They are both wrong. Especially if the motorcade is organized by the public authority in a democracy, and the protestor is a small group in search of an audience that could not be bothered to listen to their arguments.
