Vilified, arrested, held incommunicado: that's the price of protest in Britain today | George Monbiot

It seems to me that whatever the charges facing the activists at the Quaker meeting house raid, their fundamental crime is dissent

The faces are different, but it's the same authoritarianism. Keir Starmer's team might not look or sound like Donald Trump's, but its policies on protest and dissent are chillingly similar. So is the reason: coordinated global lobbying by the rich and powerful, fronted by rightwing junktanks.

Last week, six young women were having tea and biscuits in the Quaker meeting house in Westminster. Twenty police officers forced open the door and arrested them on conspiracy charges. Had the police discovered a plot to blow up parliament or to poison the water supply? No. It was an openly advertised, routine meeting of a protest group called Youth Demand, discussing climate breakdown and the assault on Gaza.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism, by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison, was published in paperback last week

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