REGARDING the story: ‘Council gets tough on ‘disruptive protesters’

So Bolton Council has agreed tough new measures to help crack down on public protest at Council meetings. Let me please remind them that everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. If the assembly goes beyond this then the council has the right to remove the participants. Why are they not following this line rather than vetting people attending?

However they have chosen to vet people entering the council chamber prior to meetings supposedly to ensure they are favourable or not challenging voicing dissent to their policies.

In Nazi Germany freedom of assembly was prohibited under the decree known as the Reichstag Fire Degree which suspended the provision of the German constitution that protected basis individual rights, including freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. Please note: freedom of assembly. What is Bolton Council afraid of? Do they not want other’s opinions, other’s points of view?

This is our town and our council, and we have the right to attend council meetings without vetting, to wave banners and to shout, perhaps to be told to be quiet but if violence becomes apparent then expulsion from the chamber is justified. But not to be banned outright.

We have the right to sit in all PUBLIC council meetings without being vetted.

Kath Kavanagh

Harwood.