Are protest injunctions out of order?
When injunctions are deployed against protesters, they can make actions ‘doubly illegal’. Protesters who, for example, block a road, find themselves falling foul of two laws: the criminal law (because blocking a road is illegal) and the civil law (because National Highways Ltd has taken out an injunction to stop people blocking roads). If you break an injunction, you break a court order, which puts you in contempt of court and you can face up to two years in prison and unlimited fines.
I wrote about this for Prospect magazine, interviewing lawyers and activists about the phenomenon. My piece opens with a description of activists Tez Burns and Callum Goode glued to the gates of the Royal Courts of Justice in a protest against the justice system itself and what they see as the scandal of injunctions. You can watch a video of their protest here.