Police say they arrested 365 people in Westminster today. These included a blind man in a wheelchair, former NHS nurses and Quakers, all for holding up signs saying ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’. But no one at the demo from a group of Croydon residents had their collars felt
Peaceful protest: more than a thousand people joined the sit-down, silent protest in Parliament Square at lunchtime, most of them carrying placards with the same message: ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’
Hundreds of people were arrested in Parliament Square today just for holding up placards with a message which the Labour government has proscribed in the latest massive demonstration not only in support of Palestine, but also for the much-valued British right of freedom of speech.
People power: Croydon pensioner David White with his placard at today’s demo
And while there was a significant number of protestors from Croydon at the demonstration, none from the group of people who travelled up to Westminster from this part of south London were taken away by the Met Police. “There were just too many of us for them to arrest us all,” said one Croydon protester once safely back home.
Defend Our Juries was the civil rights group who organised the latest Saturday protest outside the Houses of Parliament.
The demonstration was in response to Labour’s Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, deciding to proscribe the group Palestine Action, and using anti-terror legislation to ban peaceful protest against the war on Gaza and Britain’s part in arming Israel.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, membership of Palestine Action, or even expressing support for the group, has been rendered a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. In recent weeks, police have arrested retired teachers, ex-nurses and a man who held up a placard with a cartoon from Private Eye.
Police show of force: today the Met arrested an elderly woman and a blind man in a wheelchair
Among the arrestees today was former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, as well as NHS workers, Quakers and a blind man in a wheelchair. By 6pm, the Met had upped its estimate of arrests to 365.
At an agreed time, hundreds of people who had gathered in Parliament Square simultaneously unveiled handwritten signs stating: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.
With the protest still going on into the afternoon, the Metropolitan Police said anyone who held a placard expressing support for the group “was either arrested or is in the process of being arrested”.
By 3.40pm, the Met posted on social media that it had arrested 200 people for supporting a proscribed organisation “with more to follow”. A further four arrests had been made for assaults on police officers.
Defend Our Juries claimed that more than 1,000 people had taken part in a silent, sit-down protest with hand-written cardboard signs with the same message.
Despite calling in support from other police forces, some from as far away as Wales, the Met made only 50 arrests during the hour-long protest. Others had their collars felt after the protest ended.
The arrests went ahead despite Amnesty International’s warning to Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley that any arrests would be in breach of international human rights law.
The government and police’s responses have been taking on a sinister, almost totalitarian edge.
This week, online meetings, held by Defend Our Juries to help organise today’s protest, were shutdown by counter-terrorism police, while a web-hosting company shut down the Defend Our Juries website.
Bus stop activism: Greenpeace displayed posters opposing the proscription of Palestine Action at bus stops around London
“We suspect that was also as a result of pressure from the Met Police”, the group said today.
Defend Our Juries says that they will “refer these gross violations of our democratic rights and freedoms to the High Court”.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said: “The fact that unprecedented numbers came out today risking arrest and possible imprisonment shows how repulsed and ashamed people are about our government’s ongoing complicity in a livestreamed genocide, and the lengths people are prepared to go to defend this country’s ancient liberties.
“Palestine Action and people holding cardboard signs present no danger to the public at large, whereas the people who have lobbied for this ban – the arms companies and Israel lobbies – have the blood of 60,000 Palestinians on their hands.
“The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing ‘terrorism’ offences, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home.
“This is a major embarrassment to Yvette Cooper, further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government’s own crimes.”
Plans are already being made for further protests in September, around the time that Cooper’s ban’s legality will be tested by a Judicial Review to be held at the High Court.
Defend Our Juries has received legal advice that if the order was ruled unlawful, it would open up the possibility that all those arrested and detained will later be awarded compensation payments for unlawful arrest.
Civil society support for lifting the ban continues to grow.
This week, Greenpeace coordinated a poster campaign on London bus stops with the unambiguous message: “Protesting genocide is not terrorism.”
Group solidarity: some of the protestors from Croydon at the demonstration in Westminster today. At the time of publication, none had been arrested
On Tuesday, a delegation handed a letter to Downing Street signed by more than 300 Jewish people – including film director Mike Leigh, children’s author Michael Rosen and Keir Starmer’s former legal instructor Geoffrey Bindman KC. The letter to Prime Minister Starmer condemns the ban calling it “illegitimate” and “unethical”.
“The government should stop deflecting attention from genocide by linking non-violent protest to terrorism,” the letter said.
“Instead, we call on your government to use its influence to help to end genocide and bring about justice for the Palestinian people.”
Croydon pensioner David White, who attended today’s protest, told Inside Croydon: “I’m appalled by what Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war and shoots people queuing for food aid.
“But our government continues to supply arms to Israel and give Israel military support. When people protest about this peacefully, they are criminalised.”
White is a retired solicitor and a former Labour member of the GLC. He said: “The proscription of Palestine Action is an infringement of basic civil liberties. It is outrageous to class Palestine Action in the same category as Al Qaeda.
“I am hoping that today’s protest will lead to the lifting of the proscription of Palestine Action, and also add to the groundswell of opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
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Palestine Action is a proscribed organisation, so what did you expect? Police were quite right to arrest them!
Get off your high horse, stop voting yourself up and look at why Palestinian Action was “proscribed”.
It was declared a terrorist organisation simply to silence dissent and prevent peaceful protest about Israel’s genocide in Palestine and Britain’s involvement in it.
Putting Palestinian Action in the same category as organisations like the IRA that bomb, shoot and kill people is an insult to our intelligence.
Talking of bombing, shooting and killing people, the Metropolitan Police are ignoring a dossier of evidence submitted in April that shows ten British passport holders committed war crimes and crimes against humanity while serving in the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza.
Two-tier policing, innit
The State of Israel was founded after terrorists, notably Irgun led by Menachem Begun, began attacking British government and Army personnel in what was then Mandatory Palestine. The biggest single loss of life occurred in 1946 when Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, killing 91 people. The following year they kidnapped and hanged two British Army sergeants and booby-trapped their bodies. This prompted the British government to effectively give in to terrorism and withdraw. This gave Irgun free to up their game. In 1948 they attacked the village of Deir Yassin, killing over 107 Palestinians. That same year, the UN voted for a two-state solution, one Jewish, the other Arab.
Begin was a founder member of the Likud party, became its first Prime Minister and later came to the UK on a state visit. Apparently Thatcher couldn;t stand him
Israel has expanded its borders at the expense of Palestinians, who are being forced out of their homeland, subjected to pass laws, enclosed in ghettos and routinely attacked by the Israel Defense Forces.
Nearly 80 years later after the King David Hotel bombing, we have the British government politically and militarily supporting Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of Likud, in committing genocide in Gaza. People are being bombed while seeking shelter, shot while queuing for food and water and starved because Israel refuses to allow aid trucks in.
We recently learned that Tony Blair’s Institute for Change had conspired with Donald Trump to redevelop Gaza to create a “Riviera” and a Musk manufacturing zone. The project was led, not by Palestinians, but Israelis.
Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper are determined to stop people criticising Israel’s war crimes and the British government’s part in them. The entire Labour Party is complicit in this. As Labour’s Nye Bevin said of the Conservatives, so far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin