Mark Field, whose suspension as a Foreign Office minister was precipitated by the emergence of video footage showing him manhandling a Greenpeace protester who was trying to peacefully draw attention to the climate crisis, has often walked a fine line between seeking to protect the right to protest and to curb its effectiveness.
In a Westminster Hall debate last month, he lauded the work of the Foreign Office in seeking to protect the rights of female activists across the world and detailed some of the many means used to silence them.
When the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations were bringing parts of London to a standstill this year, Field similarly stood up for the right to protest peacefully.
When it came to the actual demonstrations taking place, however, Field was more conflicted and went as far as to write to the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, demanding that she “take a much firmer grip” on those “protesting in this anti-social way”.
The demonstrations, he said, had gone “well beyond a good-natured exercise in free speech”. Field added that the “detrimental effect these protests are having on ordinary citizens and local business is much too great for the protesters, however well intention, to be allowed to carry on in such an flagrant way”.
It is a theme that has been repeated in other comments he has made in similar situations.
In an interview with Channel 4 News in 2011, during the Occupy London demonstrations outside St Paul’s Cathedral, he said he was “very proud that we have a tradition in this country of open protest. It is very much an important part of democracy.” The early Occupy demonstrations were, he said, “valid”.
Asked whether the protest was not, therefore, still valid, he said: “There is making a protest and there is having a semi-permanent encampment … There are many rights that Londoners have and tourists have to be able to get into the cathedral and to be able to walk in what is the open highway.”
Field, who has been a member of parliament since 2001 and a junior minister since 2017, has been described in glowing terms by both political allies and opponents, including Labour’s Liz McInnes, who has shadowed him.
While she denounced his actions at Mansion House, she said she has “always found him to be unfailingly polite”. Field has often walked a fine line. Now he stands accused of crossing it.
