PROTEST matters. Protest works. That is the key lesson to draw from the events of the last week. 

The unnecessary force used to break up a vigil for Sarah Everard was followed by the rushed vote to pass a Bill making that type of policing the norm.  

However, widespread public revulsion, continued protests outside Parliament and an opposition opposing, doing its job, have forced a rethink, despite the Bill passing by a large majority. We now hear it is “delayed” and may not return until after Easter.

There is no suggestion that this government has had a change of heart — it is simply retreating under pressure. That is why it is vital to maintain the pressure.

There can be no doubt that this legislation is draconian. It is so misjudged and disproportionate that critics have not hesitated to point out that it provides for greater penalties for damaging a statue than it does for sexual assault.

Others have rightly highlighted the powers given to police to prevent peaceful protest and arrest the protesters, simply because they cause annoyance or disturbance.  

No doubt Extinction Rebellion is disruptive and certainly annoys the fossil fuel producers.  

Similarly, Black Lives Matter demonstrations have sometimes been large enough to force traffic diversions and they certainly annoy racists.  

Naturally, pickets are supposed to be disruptive in persuading people not to cross them, and they undoubtedly annoy employers when there is a dispute.

Yet all of these are overwhelmingly peaceful. And there could hardly have been a more peaceful gathering than the vigil, which was broken up even before the latest legislation undermining our rights has been passed.

This government does not believe that we have rights as such. If the right to protest is conditional — to be withdrawn if a police officer believes someone is annoyed — then it is not a right as such. 

Similarly, if the cry “freedom of speech” only applies to reactionaries and racists, it is not a general right. 

For decades successive governments have not been fans of the right to organise at work either, and attempt to block trade unions. 

The right to a family life has long been breached by deportations, even of the daughters or sons of British citizens.

The latest police Bill, now widely known as the “police crackdown Bill,” is not even the most draconian piece of legislation in this parliamentary session.  

It was preceded by both the Overseas Operations Bill and the Covert Human Intelligence Bill, widely known as the Spycops Bill.  

These are both more pernicious and more sweeping than the latest, delayed, Bill.  

They grant the right to members of the armed forces and police officers to commit the most serious crimes, including rape, torture and murder with legal impunity. 

Once again, if we are all potentially victims of such heinous crimes and the perpetrators are protected by law, then human rights do not apply either in this country or overseas where military operations are taking place.  

The complaints from this government and these ministers about alleged human rights abuses elsewhere reek of hypocrisy.

The age-old cry of autocratic governments everywhere that “ordinary innocent members of the public have nothing to fear” will ring hollow in the ears of all the women who were duped into sex with an undercover police officer, or trade unionists barred from work for their political views, or the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday, and many more besides.

To be scrupulously fair to the government, ministers do not even make the claim that any of this will make us safer.  

In fact, many senior former military personnel are worried the legislation would actually leave servicing officers open to charges of war crimes.

There is nothing in any of this legislation to tackle the acute crises of policing, the courts and the criminal justice system.  

All those who suffer from injustice include women, black and Asian communities and of course ordinary people without resources.

Nowhere is this more glaringly obvious than in the abysmal record on rape convictions. 

The reported incidence of rape is soaring and almost touched 60,000 last year. 

But barely more than 2,000 resulted in prosecutions. We learn just now from the Office for National Statistics that fewer than one in six cases of rape or serious sexual assault are even reported to the police.  

The victims’ commissioner has spoken of the effective decriminalisation of rape in this country. 

The new Bill has nothing to say about this huge injustice. There are also low and falling conviction rates for a number of serious crimes. 

These amount to a crisis of policing, the courts and the criminal justice system. Yet this government does not even bother to pay lip service to these problems. 

For them, policing Bills are not simply an attempt to court favourable tabloid headlines.  

They get those almost whatever they do. Instead, draconian legislation of this type serves two broader aims.

The first is the widening of “culture wars” where the main enemy is those who pull down a statue rather than those who are still engaged in modern slavery. 

This fits with the increasing mistreatment of asylum-seekers, increasing random stop and search, ploughing on the with failed Prevent programme and police officers manhandling women attending a vigil.

The second purpose of these sweeping powers is practical, not simply to strike poses and demonise opponents.  

This is the worst government of my lifetime — and that is not a status easily won.  

It is a government that has presided over 130,000 deaths, one of worst in the world on a per capita basis, and one of the worst economic crises as a result. Unemployment has risen by 1.4 million, and pay has been slashed.  

The government will continue all this with official forecasts of further deaths, rising unemployment and its public-sector pay freeze. It has deepened inequalities in every conceivable way.

No wonder then that the government wants to clamp down on protest. Draconian legislation is needed only when the government feels threatened. 

This is not the fear of terrorism, or the everyday fears of the victims of crime.

This government fears peaceful, popular protest. Which tells you a lot about them, and a lot about what we need to do in the period ahead.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. She served as shadow home secretary from 2016 to 2020. This column appears fortnightly.