2021: A year in review

Just over a year ago, thousands of pro-Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol Building in a bid to overturn the result of the 2020 Presidential Election. An unprecedented chapter in US history, it was made all the more extraordinary by the President’s own role in inciting his fellow Americans to riot. The events in Washington D.C. served as an important reminder, not just for the USA but for democracies across the globe: democracy is not a given.

The threat to our right to protest

On 18 June 1984 – a literary coincidence, perhaps – thousands of striking miners gathered outside Orgreave coking plant. The miners sought to prevent lorries carrying coke from leaving the plant in the hope that it would allow them to pressurise the government into keeping the pits open, and thereby safeguard their jobs and communities. This was their protest.