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A series of Home Office proposals could ban protests during the London 2012 Olympic games. In reaction to the longevity and scale of recent Occupy London takeovers of public and private space at St Paul’s Cathedral, Finsbury Square and a former UBS bank, ministers are reported to be drafting legislation loosely based on part 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 – paying particular note to restricting tents and “sleeping equipment” for up to 90 days around exclusion zones. Police and “authorised officers” will be allowed to disperse protests quickly. Presumably with “reasonable force”.

Don’t be too shocked or too quick to compare this to Beijing 2008. Then, the Beijing Organising Committee banned all foreign visitors and non-Beijing-resident Chinese from attending, watching or applying for the right to demonstrate in authorised protest zones. Athens had protest zones in 2004. So did the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002.

The reasoning behind these restrictions is always to “preserve the festivity” of the Olympic experience. And security. Always security. In London’s case, security means Britain apparently waives its own rights and customs to allow America to oversee its own security operations, laying on 21,000 private security contractors and enforcing the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006.

That allows police and “enforcement officers” the right of entry to private buildings suspected of contravening legislation on Olympic advertising. This includes: “advertising of a non-commercial nature” and “announcements or notices of any kind” paying particular attention to “the distribution or provision of documents or articles, the display or projection of words, images, lights or sounds, and things done with or in relation to material which has or may have purposes or uses other than as an advertisement”. In other words, protest.

Artist Peter Kennard, noted for overtly political art in a public context says: “The Secretary of State has regulations banning ‘advertising in the vicinity of the Olympics’. How big is a vicinity? Words fail me and because I make public art in the ‘vicinity’ of the Olympics it might be safer for me if both words and images continue to fail me until after the Olympics”.

A London swamped with police, security officers and spy drones might just dampen all the fun. Providing you sing along with the hymn sheet laid on by the Games’ sponsors and ignore the £9.3 billion price tag, you’ll be fine. But if you argue that a corporate agenda and exploitation is being sold under the auspices of uniting the world under sport and “generating jobs”, you might be in trouble.

The proposed legislation and the laws already in place only serve to secure the profits made by those with heavy financial stakes in the Olympic Games. These corporations read like an anti-capitalist wet dream: McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Dow, G4S, BP…. They may bring jobs to an area, but totally undermine the community-building that encourages grass roots businesses and the local relationships and interactions that stem from that.

It’s interesting to note that the Home Office sees protest as a threat. They’re not only worried about homegrown “domestic extremists” with a grudge against capitalism but international groups seeking to use the Olympics as a platform to air their grievances about authoritarian regimes around the world. Syria, China and Bahrain spring quickly to mind. So instead of giving an example of a functioning democracy where everyone gets a voice and can practise free speech, Britain hides dissent in an attic like it’s an invalid child.

The idea that ministers are considering bans on protest off the back of a global Occupy movement further legitimises the idea that these restrictions are directed at those who oppose one of the greatest and most murderous regimes of the world…capitalism.

So here we go. I hate the Olympics. Arrest me.

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Politburo-like transport privileges are not the only corporate gifts to be found in what is now the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006. Section 19 of the Act provides a legal basis for the executive regulation of advertising ‘in the vicinity of London Olympic events’. Of particular concern to some, the Act provides that the regulations ‘may apply in respect of advertising of any kind’, including non-commercial advertising and ‘announcements or notices of any kind’.

‘Advertising’ may include ‘the distribution or provision of documents or articles’, ‘the display or projection of words, images, lights or sounds’, and ‘things done with or in relation to material which has or may have purposes or uses other than as an advertisement’. The executive is empowered by the Act to impose obligations on the owners and occupiers of properties, and breach of the regulations will be an offence punishable by an unlimited fine. Further, the police will be entitled forcibly to enter property to ‘remove, destroy, conceal or erase’ anything deemed inconsistent with the advertising regulations.

The Act’s provisions on advertising are objectionable because they cede to the executive the power to make draconian rules, rather than risking parliamentary vote on the content of those rules. The threat of ‘ambush marketing’ (as at the 1996 Atlanta Games, when Nike swamped the area around the Olympic sites with advertising to the chagrin of Adidas, an official sponsor) may well justify some restrictions. Indeed so dependent is the International Olympic Committee on sponsorship (worth around £200 million a year in 2005) that it imposes stiff requirements on host nations to deal with this threat. London has already secured all the billboards around the Olympic sites for official sponsors. But the Olympic Act would provide a legal basis for the criminalisation of those wearing Pepsi Cola T-shirts or Burger King baseball caps (Coca-Cola and McDonald’s being official sponsors). This is objectionable enough. But the extension of ‘advertising’ to include non-commercial advertising and ‘announcements or notices of any kind’ is worse again, covering as it would the display of a notice protesting against sponsors’ labour practices, or their contributions to global warming or the epidemic of obesity. Further, advertising restrictions may apply well beyond Olympic arenas to, for example, the front windows of private homes in the vicinity of the games. The prospect of heavy-handed coppers breaking down front doors to remove offending posters in the bay windows of private homes is perhaps alarmist. It is, however, within the contemplation of the Olympic Act.

The Olympic Act carries obvious implications for freedom of speech. Any regulations passed under it will be subject to the European Convention on Human Rights, given effect to in the UK by the Human Rights Act 1998, and in particular to Article 10 thereof. That article, which protects the right to freedom of expression, allows restrictions that are ‘necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of [amongst others] national security, territorial integrity or public safety … [and] the protection of the reputation or the rights of others’. It is doubtful whether the protection of corporate sponsors against competition in the form of the occasional T-shirt or baseball hat, or the gagging of their critics, falls within the permissible limits on free speech. It is a matter for regret, however, that the Olympic Act has created the scope for regulations which will exercise an extraordinary chilling effect on freedom of expression, subject to eventual Human Rights Act challenge to them by individuals sufficiently robust and resourceful to tolerate the prospect of criminal conviction.

Aileen McColgan is a professor of law at King’s College, London

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