Protests aren't an affront to democracy – they're liberty rampant | Simon Jenkins

The greatest risk is not that a statue may be toppled, but that the authorities might overreact with curbs on civil liberty

Two widely reported acts of civil disobedience took place in Britain this past month. One was on the streets of Bristol and led to the toppling of a slave-trader’s statue. The other was on the Dorset coast at Bournemouth and Durdle Door, where thousands flagrantly breached the government’s social distancing law and, in the government’s words, “risked lives”. In both cases, t...