Protestor information packs
What to carry, who to call, how to keep evidence safe, and where the real know-your-rights sources are.
Read this first. This page is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for a solicitor. We deliberately do not paraphrase the law of any jurisdiction here: protest law changes, it differs across a border you can cross in twenty minutes, and a confidently worded internet summary is worse than no summary. What this page does is give you the structure of a pack — the contacts, the habits, the evidence rules, and a one-page sheet you can print — and points you at the organisations that publish the authoritative wording for each jurisdiction, updated as it changes.
Two things are true at once. Everyone has the right to peaceful protest, and the practical rules that govern an arrest, a stop and search, or a bail condition are specific to where you are. So build the pack from two halves: the half that is the same everywhere (below), and the half that you take from the jurisdiction's own legal support organisation.
The pack, section by section
1. Before you go
- Write two numbers on your body in marker pen — your group's contact and the protest legal support line for your jurisdiction. Paper gets taken and phones get seized; your forearm does not.
- Carry the phone you can lose. Leave the one with your whole life on it at home, powered off.
- Agree a buddy and agree what happens if you are separated: where you regroup, who calls whom, at what time.
- Take a spare layer, water, any medication you need, and enough cash for transport home. The night gets long.
- Know the legal observer on the day, and know where they are standing. Legal observers are not participants, and they are the people who can tell your group what is happening on the ground.
- Decide before you leave what you will say if you are asked for information about other people. Groups that decide this in advance stay coherent under pressure.
2. If you are stopped, searched or arrested
- Stay calm and stay polite. Nothing about rights works if the situation escalates. You are collecting information and slowing the process down, not arguing the law on the street.
- Ask "what power?" It is the most useful question available: which law is the officer relying on, and why. Note the answer, the officer's number, the time and the place as soon as you can afterwards.
- Take the jurisdiction's advice on what to say, not a generic internet answer. The standard position published by experienced protest-legal organisations is broadly built from: silence as a default, no personal details unless required, no signature, no caution without legal advice, and an experienced solicitor rather than the duty solicitor. The exact wording and the exact exceptions depend on where you are — take them from the sources below, and carry them with you.
- Under eighteen? An appropriate adult should be present. Know the rule for your jurisdiction and insist on it.
- Write down everything while it is fresh: time, place, officers, what was said, what was done, any injuries, any witnesses. This is the raw material of every later complaint or defence.
3. Someone has been arrested — what the group does
- Find out where they have been taken before anyone travels. It usually takes at least an hour from arrest to booking in, so use that hour to prepare.
- Call the jurisdiction's protest legal support line, not the general police station, if one exists where you are. They know which solicitors handle protest cases and they can coordinate with other arrestees from the same action.
- Appoint one person as the group's contact for that arrestee, and note every call and time. Duplicated calls to a custody desk waste the only resource the group has.
- Support continues after release. Court dates, bail conditions, paying for travel, and turning up are the parts that people actually need help with.
- Do not publish the arrestee's name or image without their consent. The support network's job is to protect them, not to publicise them.
4. Evidence safety
- Keep the original file untouched. Copy first, work on the copy. Note who took it, when, where, and on what device — written next to the file, at the time.
- Do not strip metadata from the original. Metadata is frequently the evidence. Strip it only from versions you publish.
- Do not publish identifiable images of anyone who has not agreed, including other protesters, without blurring and without checking what else the frame reveals.
- Get footage to the solicitor early. There are usually deadlines for complaints and for requesting material, and they run from the incident, not from when you get round to it.
- Two copies, one offline, access controlled. A link anyone can open is a publication, not a backup.
- Do not delete anything. If a matter is live, deleting material turns a difficult situation into a criminal one in most jurisdictions. Ask the solicitor first.
5. Bail, money and legal costs
- Bail is jurisdiction-specific. What it is called, who sets it, whether money is required and whether it is returned all vary. Do not assume the process you read about in one country applies in another.
- There is usually no standing national bail fund. Funds are normally raised case by case, by the person's own community. Treat any "bail fund" that you did not hear about through the legal support organisation as unverified — and never send money to a fundraising page because a stranger shared it.
- Ask the solicitor what is actually needed before raising anything: often the real cost is travel, lost wages, childcare and representation, not bail.
- Keep a single, honest ledger if the group raises money, and publish it to the people who gave.
Where the authoritative wording lives
Take the know-your-rights half of your pack from these organisations, print the version applicable to you, and re-check it before each action — this is the part of the pack that goes stale fastest.
Ireland
- Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) — iccl.ie. Publishes rights material and runs reporting for people arrested at peaceful protests: Have you been arrested at a peaceful protest?
- Irish Network of Legal Observers (INLO) — legal observer training material, covering protest rights practice in Ireland and the observer's role on the day. Start from the ICCL site and ask there for the current observer network contact.
- A solicitor with protest and public order experience — ask ICCL or your group's own contact. Use them, not the duty solicitor, and use them before a station interview.
England and Wales
- Green and Black Cross — greenandblackcross.org/guides. Bustcards, key advice, arrest and bail guides, and a police station support guide for the people waiting outside.
- Protest Support Line: 07946 541 511. Manchester: 07761 911121. Write them on your arm — GBC's own advice.
- Activist Court Aid Brigade — courtsupport@protonmail.com.
- Black Protest Legal Support — BlackProtestLegal@protonmail.com.
- Netpol — netpol.org. Publishes the solicitors list for protest cases.
Northern Ireland and elsewhere
- Check jurisdiction, not proximity. GBC's own guides are explicit that they cover the law of England and Wales and point to separate material for other jurisdictions, including Northern Ireland. A pack written for London is not a pack for Belfast.
- If you organise across a border, build one pack per jurisdiction and label them clearly — including which legal support line to call.
- Outside these islands: find the national civil liberties organisation and the protest-legal support collective for that country, and use their wording. Two of the three sections on this page travel; the know-your-rights wording does not.
The printable one-pager
Fill this in for your jurisdiction, print it, fold it in a pocket. Do not put your own name on it.
- Protest legal support line: ______________________
- Solicitor with protest experience: _______________
- Group contact for the day: ____________________
- Regroup point and time: ______________________
- Legal observer on the day:____________________
- What I say if asked about others: nothing, take a number, tell the contact.
- What I say if asked for details: whatever the jurisdiction's own pack says — I have read it.
- At home, powered off: the phone that has everything on it.
Free to copy, adapt and pass on. Corrections, and pointers to better jurisdictional sources, to hello@solidaritytools.com.