Police officers watch as people take part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
22 general secretaries sign joint statement demanding charges be dropped against Alex Kenny, Sophie Bolt, Ben Jamal and Chris Nineham over peaceful Palestine demo in January
TWENTY-TWO union general secretaries raised “deep concern about the erosion of the right to peaceful protest” in an open letter today, urging the Metropolitan Police to drop charges against four Palestine march leaders.
Paul Nowak of the TUC, Christina McAnea of Unison, Sharon Graham of Unite and the National Education Union (NEU’s) Daniel Kebede were among those who said that the charges against former union members who took part in peaceful protest on January 18 mark “an attack on our right to protest.”
The signatories together represent the vast majority of British trade union members.
The former NEU executive member Alex Kenny and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament general secretary Sophie Bolt were arrested alongside more than 70 other people including director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ben Jamal and Chris Nineham, the vice-chair of the Stop the War coalition.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and ex-shadow chancellor John McDonnell were also voluntarily interviewed under caution in relation to the march.
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Police arrest Palestine Action activist during a solidarity protest outside Royal Courts of Justice as co-founder of Palestine Action Huda Ammori takes Home Secretary to High Court over proscription of the group in London, United Kingdom on July 4, 2025. [Tayfun Salci – Anadolu Agency]
Scores of protesters were arrested in London on Saturday after a ban on the group Palestine Action officially came into effect, Anadolu reports.
The UK government will, for the first time, legally redefine a non-violent protest group, Palestine Action, as a terrorist organization after a last-minute legal challenge to suspend the group’s ban under anti-terrorism laws failed at a high court on Friday.
As of this Saturday, membership in, or showing support for, Palestine Action will become a criminal offense in Britain.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed on Saturday afternoon that officers were responding to a demonstration in Parliament Square and had begun making arrests.
“The group is now proscribed, and expressing support for them is a criminal offense,” the force said in a statement. “Arrests are being made.”
Officers have arrested more than 20 people on suspicion of offenses under the Terrorism Act 2000.
It added: “There are a number of events taking place in London this weekend and anyone attending should be aware that officers policing these will act where criminal offenses, including those related to support of proscribed groups or organizations, are committed.”
MPs overwhelmingly voted in favor of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe the group under the Terrorism Act 2000 on Wednesday. The House of Lords has also approved the move.
UN experts, civil liberties organizations, cultural figures, and hundreds of lawyers have condemned the ban as “draconian.”
They argue that it sets a dangerous precedent by conflating protest with terrorism.
Palestine Action said it is seeking an “urgent appeal to prevent a dystopian nightmare, which criminalizes thousands of people overnight.”
Another court hearing is scheduled for July 21, when Palestine Action will apply for permission to launch a judicial review in an effort to overturn the order.
Unless the review is successful, being a member of or inviting support for the group that protests Israeli genocide in Gaza will carry a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestine activists disrupted the London Pride parade by covering a float in red paint.
Four protesters from the group Youth Demand targeted a truck belonging to US-based company CISCO, accusing the firm of “genocide” and claiming it has “no place” at the event.
The incident comes less than 24 hours after the protest group Palestine Action was officially banned and designated a terrorist organization.
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Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.The original Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
DOSSIER: The lawyers hand in the evidence to New Scotland Yard
POLICE are assessing evidence that 10 British nationals committed war crimes in Gaza including sniping down children and aid workers.
Lawyers handed evidence accusing the group of the murder and torture of civilians while on active service with the Israeli military to the Metropolitan Police’s war crimes unit yesterday.
Speaking outside New Scotland Yard, they said their 240-page dossier is “just the tip of the iceberg,” with reports of more than 100 Britons having served with Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) since October 2023.
Nearly 100 legal and human rights experts have signed a letter urging the War Crimes Team to investigate the dossier by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) and the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC).
PILC legal director and founder Paul Heron said that the report is based on six months of extensive evidence-gathering using open-source evidence and witness testimony.
It shows 10 Britons “committed war crimes and crimes against humanity while serving for the Israeli military on active service in Gaza,” he said.
SINCE the Netanyahu government engineered the collapse of the ceasefire, Israel’s crimes in Gaza have escalated horrifically, killing 400 people in one night and more than 100 children a day on average since last month.
Israel has been exposed executing paramedics and rescue workers and hiding their bodies and vehicles and has killed more journalists during the genocide than died during the US civil war, both world wars, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Russia combined.
The unnecessarily violent police intervention at a Quaker place of worship is a PR disaster and will only serve to deepen the chasm between them and the public. SYMON HILL reports
THE police raid on a Quaker place of worship last week was not about preventing crime or arresting criminals. It was an attempt to intimidate peaceful protesters. It will not succeed.
At about 7.15pm on Thursday March 27, at least 20 police officers broke down the door of Westminster Quaker Meeting House in St Martin’s Lane in London. They could have just rung the doorbell.
The police, some armed with tasers, charged into a room where the non-violent protest group Youth Demand were holding a welcome talk. Women in their late teens and early twenties were grabbed and handcuffed behind their backs.
They swarmed through the rest of the building, entering every room, including one that had been hired by a life drawing class and even a room where a private counselling session was taking place.
This horrific incident was made possible by the draconian anti-protest laws introduced by the previous Tory government and maintained by their Labour successors. The police reportedly used the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act as they arrested six women. The youngest was 18.
When the Act was passed in 2022, we were told that the police would use it only in extreme situations. That promise is now as broken as Westminster Meeting House’s door.
In their media statement, the Metropolitan Police said that Youth Demand are planning civil disobedience in London. In recent years there has been a noticeable increase in campaigners being arrested for things they are only talking about doing. Even so, this went further.
This Youth Demand gathering was a welcome talk. It was a public event, open to people who had never even considered engaging in civil disobedience before. The police arrested other Youth Demand members in London and Exeter on the same day.
The police’s thuggery seems designed to intimidate Youth Demand from going ahead with their plans for April. The police may hope that the publicity around the raid will deter others from joining in.
Typically, the police have seriously underestimated the determination of people whose rights are denied.
The Labour government has been making it increasingly difficult to organise the National Palestine marches, now they are using the draconian Public Order Act in an attempt to intimidate us.
It’s a truism to say governments don’t like protest, and after 18 months of Palestine demonstrations ours is making its distaste for mass mobilisation abundantly clear. It’s using the Met police as its enforcer and the BBC as its propaganda tool.
Smearing protesters as anti-semitic hate marchers failed to have any impact on the size or frequency of the demonstrations, so the government has resorted to the using the Public Order Act against the march organisers and is placing ever more restrictive exclusion orders on the protests.
Negotiations between organisers and the police have become increasingly arduous as time after time conditions are changed at late notice, restrictions are imposed for no justifiable reason other than to deter and confuse protesters and make organising more difficult. And now the police have charged and questioned under caution various members of the movement’s leadership, alongside some of its high profile supporters.
In this Orwellian world, 87 year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, was called in for questioning by the Met. Refusing to be cowed Kapos made clear that it is vital for us all to continue to protest for Palestine and speak out against our own government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Khalid Abdalla, actor and activist, was also called in by the Met for questioning. In a statement made as he approached Charring Cross police station in central London he said he was both ‘incredibly sad’ but also ‘proud’ to attend his police interview. Sad because of what it says about the British state’s intension to subjugate the movement, proud to be on the right side of history.
Alex Kenny, Chair of StW, Lindsey German, StW Convenor, Andrew Murray, StW Deputy President and Sophie Bolt, General Secretary of CND, were all interviewed under caution this week.
Chris Nineham (StW) and Ben Jamal, Director of PSC have been charged under the Public Order Act and are awaiting trial.
The police hope that through a duel process of intimidating the movement’s leaders and imposing large restriction zones London marches will become confined to ever smaller areas and routes, especially on Saturdays, when it is becoming almost impossible to march through the centre of the city.
Heavily lobbied by Israeli zionists, including the Chief Rabbi, organisers have been told that protesters cannot march in the vicinity of a synagogue on Saturdays, regardless than there has been no reported incidents of intimidation at synagogues or indeed of Jewish people on the marches, and regardless that thousands of marchers themselves are Jewish. When the march organisers requested to also meet with Mark Rowley, the head of the Met Police, they were met with silence.
The police have even suggested we stop marching altogether, saying the marches have been going on too long. No acknowledgement that it’s the war on Gaza that has been going on for too long, or that it’s time for the genocide to stop.
Democratic governments are expected to facilitate demonstrations, whether they like it or not. Demonstrating is how our rights are won, and in this country we have a long and proud history of demonstrations. The right to protest is a fundamental part of living in a democracy. When opposition to government policy is significant, protest poses a challenge to the ruling elite, and the bigger the protest the bigger that challenge.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
Police officers watch as people take part in a national march for Palestine on Whitehall in central London, January 18, 2025
