‘Your government has taken away your right to peaceful protest,’ the activists say. ‘If you are not outraged by this, you are not paying attention’
ACTIVISTS from Just Stop Oil were arrested during their daily action in Parliament Square today as they marched against the detaining of protesters and fossil fuel projects in Britain.
More than 40 protesters set off from Charing Cross in central London at 8am, but were forced to move their action onto the pavement after being approached by police officers who said they would impose conditions under the Public Order Act (Section 12).
A blanket notice under the Act was issued on all London roads ahead of the action, making protests unlawful.
The protesters returned to the road while marching past Whitehall before being told to get off the road once again.
They returned to the road for a third time at Parliament Square at which point around 12 protesters were arrested.
During the Spanish Civil War, the Republican forces were made up of assorted factions such as communists, socialists, anarchists, and others with differing goals. Yet they were united in their opposition to the Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, who sought a return to pre-Republican Spain based on law, order, and traditional Catholic values.[9]
Guernica, a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country, was seen as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance movement and the center of Basque culture. This added to its significance as a target.[10] Around 4:30 p.m. on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the Nazi GermanyCondor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours.
VICTORY DAY, celebrating the surrender of Nazi Germany, should be an occasion for international unity.
Time zone differences mean a surrender effective from 11.01pm Central European Time on May 8 1945 is celebrated on May 8 in the West and May 9 in the East, but it was the same victory, won by a people’s war in which the “big three,” Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, played the main military role.
Victory over fascism laid the basis of the modern international system. Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and China coined the term United Nations to describe the Allies in 1942, declaring a “common struggle against savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”
To join the UN, a country had to declare war on Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan. International law as we know it flows from the anti-fascist war.
That system is under threat as never before. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has become a proxy war, in which Nato weaponry, equipment, training and actual special forces are engaged.
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On Victory Day, we should strike a light against the gathering dark. Honour the memories of all who fell to defeat fascism. Oppose the rewriting of history, and the march to war.
THE crackdown on protesters against the coronation is a wake-up call to the dystopian reality of Britain’s repressive anti-protest laws.
Leader of the Republic campaign Graham Smith, who was arrested and held for 16 hours, is right to warn that “there is no longer a right to peaceful protest in the UK.”
Police chiefs who demur, saying that some protests went ahead and they had to factor in the “once-in-a-generation” nature of the coronation when assessing whether to shut them down, only underline that our right to protest now exists at their discretion.
Republic campaigners were arrested before their protest had even begun, while unloading Not My King placards from the back of a van.
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Unless we confront the authoritarian and anti-democratic reality of British state power, our liberties will keep being taken from us.
In a statement, it said the arrests took place during “an all-day nonviolence training” workshop that had been “publically advertised”.
In a statement released later on Saturday evening, the Metropolitan Police said it arrested 14 people in East London “on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”.
