People take part in a national demonstration for Gaza from Russell Square to Whitehall in London, June 8, 2024
MORE police power to block demonstrations and jail organisers have nothing to do with protecting worshippers and everything to do with suppressing protest rights.
Government amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill will see individuals who breach police conditions imposed on protests fined up to £2,500 and demo organisers facing jail sentences.
This shores up repressive measures already deployed by the police to shut down Britain’s huge Palestine solidarity movement. The Met cited the existence of synagogues “near” planned protest routes to deny them permission on January 18, and again on March 15.
In neither case were the synagogues on the route. In the latter the two cited were over 10 minutes’ walk away. In the centre of London or other cities, such sweeping effective exclusion zones could be used to ban almost any proposed route.
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This is rather a political move intended to shield Israel and its ally, the British state, from criticism over occupation, war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. It is cheered on by highly partisan bodies such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claims the protests cause “serious and unacceptable disruption to our communal life,” without specifying how.
The fact that marches may upset people who support or identify with the state of Israel is not intimidation. It is a disgraceful sleight of hand, and a serious threat to the right to free speech and assembly, to pretend it is.
The Starmer government decided in January to crush the mass protest movement where the Tories had tried and failed.
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Unions and many MPs have begun to revolt at the government’s anti-working-class economic agenda. That needs to be extended to its assault on democratic rights.
As for the Palestine marches: Israel’s renewed war on Gaza makes them as important as ever, and it is their size which has so far prevented their suppression. We stay on the streets.
In response to Just Stop Oil’s announcement this morning Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said:
“The history of democracies is built by groups of people like the Suffragettes, trade unionists, gay rights campaigners and anti-fracking activists who were brave enough to make themselves unpopular for a cause they believed in. With the benefit of hindsight we can see the debt we owe each of them for giving us rights and liberties, and protecting the things we care about.
“Whether you want to stand up for our planet against polluting profiteers, or save your local library from council spending cuts, the freedom to make your voice heard is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy. Just Stop Oil paid a heavy price for raising their voices at a time when politicians and corporations are trying to silence peaceful protesters – in the streets and in the courts. We must not allow our hard-won right to protest to be stripped away, because it is the right that all other rights depend upon. Greenpeace and many others will continue to defend this proud tradition of taking action on issues that matter to make change possible.”
A Just Stop Oil participant getting arrested at Kingsbury oil terminal. A JSO / Vladamir Morozov image.Orcas are pleased that Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields are blocked and say that the killer apes need to just stop oil.
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
The Palestine Coalition condemns the decision of the Metropolitan Police to issue letters ordering a range of activists, including Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor, to attend formal interviews over their alleged roles in the Palestine solidarity protest on January 18th, 2025.
Letters have also been issued to prominent actor Khalid Abdalla, Stop the War Coalition officers Lindsey German, Alex Kenny and Andrew Murray, CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt, Friends of Al-Aqsa Chair, Ismail Patel, and probably will be to others.
The police claim in the letters sent to these activists, that they breached conditions imposed by the police to limit the right to protest against the genocide in Gaza.
These restrictions almost certainly came as a result of political pressure from supporters of Israel’s pro-genocide policies.
The protest’s chief steward Chris Nineham and Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal have already been charged with offences arising from the same protest, along with many others. Chris Nineham was violently arrested on the day.
MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have also been interviewed under caution by the police.
This apparently co-ordinated attack against the Palestine solidarity movement is endeavouring to halt public protest on the issue, through harassment of those involved in the movement, and through increasingly draconian restrictions on demonstrations.
That a Holocaust survivor is called in by the police for the alleged offence of carrying a bunch of flowers into Trafalgar Square, underlines the unjustifiable extremes to which the Metropolitan Police are prepared to go, to restrict the right to public protest and silence the Palestine solidarity movement.
What is claimed by the police as justification for this massive overreach of their powers is a complete misrepresentation of what took place, not just on the day but beforehand.
Our cause is to mobilise support for the Palestinian people suffering a genocidal onslaught by the Israeli state, backed by the British government. To pursue this just cause, we must also defend the right to protest – alongside many others who face similar restrictions.
We will not be cowed by these attacks on our rights.
We demand that the Metropolitan Police halt any prosecutions or proceedings against those involved in this entirely peaceful protest.
We further insist that the Metropolitan Police respects the right to protest and that it ceases to take instruction from those who are determined to back Israel’s genocidal actions, to maintain British state support for them, and to drive our movement off the streets.
Those who seek to do so will not succeed under any circumstances. We urge all those committed to preserving long-established freedoms to join us in protesting against this mounting campaign of state harassment.
Keir Starmer confirms that his government is cnutier than Suella Braverman on killing the right to protest.UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Trade union youth bloc during protest against austerity and cuts. Source: MPLP-GVHV/Facebook
A mass protest filled the streets of Brussels, rejecting the Arizona coalition’s plans to attack social and labor rights
100,000 people, led by trade unions, took to the streets of Brussels on Thursday, February 13, to protest the anti-worker policies of the newly appointed Arizona coalition government. The demonstrators demanded respect for labor rights, including pension policies that ensure dignified lives, as well as the protection of the right to protest. They called for a society built on solidarity, peace, and social progress, rejecting the “every-man-for-himself” mentality promoted by the government.
Workers who joined the protest expressed their fears of losing their livelihoods under the new administration but also spoke of the inspiration they felt in standing together. “It’s incredible to see so many people—firefighters, soldiers, childcare workers, warehouse workers,” an Industeel worker told the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA) during the protest. “I even ran into one of my old teachers who is now retired. I hadn’t seen him in years.”
If implemented, the government’s program is expected to deal serious blows to the working class. Planned changes to the pension system would force many to work longer, including in physically demanding sectors like construction and healthcare, where exhaustion takes an early toll. At the same time, protections in the workplace would be reduced, including through the liberalization of night work and overtime, while social services crucial to workers’ well-being would face severe cuts.
According to a brief published by Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV), healthcare services are projected to suffer half a billion euros in losses compared to earlier plans—and approximately 1.5 billion euros less than what is actually needed. This is despite claims from the governing majority that healthcare funding will remain stable or increase. The cuts will undoubtedly impact both workers and patients. Healthcare staff, already stretched to their limits, will face further strain, while patients will experience declining service quality and accessibility. Similar repercussions are expected across other sectors, while the wealthiest will remain unaffected.
Another major shift outlined by the Arizona government targets trade unions. Under the pretense of ensuring accountability for trade union actions—framed as preventing “economic damage” by the administration—the government seeks to weaken organized labor. “The aim is for trade unions to be held liable for any economic impact arising from their actions, forcing them into costly and time-consuming legal battles,” the PTB-PVDA stated in its analysis. “This way, unions will have less money and time to engage with workers.”
These attacks on labor rights come as no surprise, given the widespread opposition workers across Belgium have already voiced against Bart De Wever’s cabinet. The protests have been supported by collectives of health and education workers, international solidarity groups, civil society organizations, and youth networks—all of whom expect to bear the burden of the reforms. The administration is also planning to limit public dissent. “To push through its plan for social destruction, the Arizona government is launching an unprecedented attack on democratic rights in Belgium,” PTB-PVDA warned. “The objective is clear: to weaken and silence any opposition.”
However, social movements are ready to fight back. Following this week’s protest, they have already announced new actions, including mobilizations on March 8, International Working Women’s Day, and a general strike on March 31.
