HEAVY-HANDED: Cops arrest a peaceful protester at Parliament Square last weekendThe Met Police arrested a staggering 890 people, many elderly, disabled, and even blind in a single demonstration — all to back up the government’s unhinged campaign against non-violent civil disobedience at the behest of Israel, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE
THE iron fist of the British state is slamming down on those who dare to oppose genocide. In the whole year ending March 31 2025, according to the Home Office website, British police made a total of 232 arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000, a 12 per cent increase on the previous 12 months. The all-time record, according to the same page, for such arrests was 450 in 2018.
Last Saturday, the Metropolitan Police and other forces supporting them arrested at least 890 people at a single demonstration, on top of more than 500 a few weeks earlier. This is the largest mass arrest event by the Metropolitan Police in a decade.
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For supporting a group committed to direct action against British arms manufacturers supplying Israel, ordinary citizens now risk up to 14 years in prison. In the stroke of a pen, the right to protest was obliterated and peaceful dissenters branded as criminals.
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Today, British civil liberties are in the grip of a manufactured crisis. Peaceful citizens — ordinary people, including Jewish anti-genocide activists, pensioners, and scholars — have been redefined as terrorists. Even people in their 80s and 90s joined the civil resistance, proving the heart of popular opposition beats strong as ever. The state’s war is not just on Palestine — it’s on dissent, on assembly, on freedom itself.
It is my view that the real risk is not to national security, but to democracy. Step by step, the British Establishment is dismantling rights won through struggle and sacrifice. This is the opposite of democracy; this is naked authoritarianism. Silence is their weapon. The mass arrests, the legal bans, the kettling of peaceful protest — each tactic designed to intimidate, to silence, to fracture the solidarity needed to confront genocide and imperial complicity.
History is on the side of the people. From the anti-apartheid movement to the miners’ strike and beyond, popular resistance and dissent have always been met with repression — but never defeated.
Claudia Webbe was previously the member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and x.com/claudiawebbe.
1500 word article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/governments-terrorism-act-falsehoods-and-naked-authoritarianism
