Campaign Against Climate Change says Britons now have to ‘pay to protest’ after police refuse to close roads along route

The right to stage demonstrations in Britain could be threatened following a demand that climate change protesters planning a march next month hire a private firm to oversee it – a role previously carried out by the police.

The Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC) says it is effectively being made to “pay to protest”, after learning that its demonstration in London, which could attract up to 20,000 people, will carry a bill of thousands of pounds.

Following negotiations with the Metropolitan police, the Greater London Authority and Westminster city council, the organisers of the Time to Act march – which is supported by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, the Stop the War Coalition, Global Justice Now, Avaaz and Friends of the Earth – have been told the police will no longer facilitate the temporary closure of roads along the agreed route.

A similar march last September, which was the largest of its kind in history, attended by 40,000 people as part of a global day of action, was policed by the Met. “In previous years, the MPS may have undertaken this role but following a review of what services we provide, we have stopped doing this,” a Met spokeswoman confirmed.

New, more restrictive, interpretations of traffic laws, coupled with constrained policing budgets, lie behind the Met’s decision. A large protest, which will block off roads, requires a temporary traffic regulation order to ensure public safety is maintained and congestion managed. However, Westminster council says it will issue an order only when the organisers of the march have produced a traffic management plan outlining who will steward the event and how.

These bureaucratic obstacles have angered campaigners seeking to push a green agenda before the election.

“Protest is a fundamental right,” said Sam Fairbairn, national secretary of the People’s Assembly. “This will make it virtually impossible to hold a protest unless you have rich backers.”

The organisers asked the Met to provide the traffic management plan, but were refused. “The campaign has organised several marches over the past decade and we’ve always worked with the police and other agencies to ensure they are safe and successful,” said Claire James, of the CACC. “We’ve been told that the police will no longer close roads for protests and we need to hire a private traffic management company, both to draw up a plan for diverting traffic and to provide a team of specialist stewards on the day. Effectively what this means is we have to pay to protest.”

The organisers estimate that they will need to hire scores of stewards at £120 a shift to ensure their protest can go ahead.

The Met spokeswoman said the police’s core responsibilities were “preventing and detecting crime, maintenance of the Queen’s Peace and protecting life and property”. She said that because the proposed demonstration, on 7 March, was expected to be crime-free there was little requirement for it to provide a policing operation.

But James Welch of human rights group Liberty, questioned this: “The police, councils and GLA shouldn’t be impeding protest by imposing conditions that a march organiser can’t comply with, or by bickering over whose responsibility it is to close roads. Protest is an important democratic right. Public authorities should be facilitating peaceful protest, not obstructing it.”

Organiser Lindsay Alderton vowed the march would proceed but was concerned about the consequences for other protests. “We’re a tiny organisation with two part-time staff and a fantastic team of volunteers. To hire a traffic management company is simply beyond our resources. But it’s not just about the money. We feel that in complying we would set a dangerous precedent: that protests on public roads will be limited to those who can afford to pay.”