A lurch towards political repression
The violent arrest on Saturday’s Palestine demonstration of Stop the War chief steward Chris Nineham and dozens of other peaceful protestors represents a frightening lurch towards political repression in Britain.
Statements from the Metropolitan Police, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper portraying what occurred as protecting the right of Jews to worship against a mob that “broke through police lines” are both dishonest and totally untrue.
The statement signed by more than a thousand Jewish people when the police first reneged on its agreement that Saturday’s protest would assemble at BBC’s Langham Place HQ was emphatic: there has been an orchestrated attempt to portray the marches as a threat to those attending synagogues. The synagogue in question is half a mile distant, down a back street away from the BBC. No evidence of any antisemitic behaviour towards its congregation has been produced following the previous marches which have started at the BBC. The Rabbi of the synagogue is an outspoken supporter of the actions against Gaza by the current Israeli government. We see the ultimate aim of this partisan clamour to be the banning of the protests completely. As Jews we are shocked at this brazen attempt to interfere with hard-won political freedoms by conjuring up an imaginary threat to Jewish freedom of worship. It is beyond time for police and politicians to start listening to Jews who support justice for Palestinians and not only to those who back Israel’s far-right government.
From the moment demonstrators began arriving in the pre-arranged Whitehall assembly area before noon, police imposed what appeared to be deliberately provocative conditions that shifted from minute to minute. Arrival routes were blocked and then randomly opened, some protestors were allowed through, others were challenged and directed down sidestreets, including on occasions into the area reserved for a small crowd of abusive, right-wing pro-Israel counter-demonstrators. Members of the Jewish Bloc, including elderly and infirm, Holocaust survivors and descendants, were ordered to move away from the pre-advertised assembly point or face arrest, but then allowed to remain.
At the rally near Downing Street a diverse crowd of tens of thousands listened to speeches celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire bringing hope of some respite from 15 months of slaughter and devastation for the people of Gaza, but also demanding a permanent end to decades of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and calling for a halt to the arms trade with Israel. Speakers condemned the active complicity of the political and media establishment, including the BBC, in the genocide.
As the rally concluded, according to a statement from PSC, a delegation of organisers and rally speakers, including an 87 year old Jewish Holocaust survivor, prominent cultural figures and politicians including MPs, set off in the direction of the BBC, halting once they came up against police lines. An announcement from the platform made quite clear that the delegation intended to leave flowers and children’s toys at the feet of the police who had set up a cordon at the top of Whitehall.
The Jewish Bloc found that the police had removed their vans blocking the top of Whitehall and removed lines of police lower down across Whitehall, signalling to us that we were being allowed to proceed.
An account of the arrest of Chris Nineham and others appears in the PSC statement already referred to. Further arrests occurred as police plunged into a crowd of protestors who had gathered at St Martins in the Fields before dispersing. Walking down Northumberland Avenue on our way to the tube, members of the Jewish Bloc witnessed tens of arrested people being marshalled into a large police coach on standby for the operation.
What occurred on Saturday was a shocking departure from policing policy. On the many previous demonstrations for Palestine, negotiations between the demonstration organisers and the police had always ended with a recognition of the right to march. Saturday’s bully-boy tactics signal a government-sanctioned shift from previous, relatively light-touch, policing marred by occasional arrests of protestors carrying placards considered offensive by pro-Israel lobbyists. Instead we now have the deliberately repressive use of public order legislation to prevent and criminalise pro-Palestinian protest.
This should be a warning to environmental campaigners and all who value our hard-won civil liberties. Political dissent is now under threat in the UK.
Weird after so many London demos supporting Palestinians that the police changed tactics on Saturday. What prompted that?
I remember during the poll tax demonstration that the police behaved in a similar provocative fashion.
I thought then that the police meant to disrupt and aggravate the marchers.
As to the statement by Yvette Cooper, she is blatantly dishonest in her statement.
All Labour MPs should be called out to condemn her specifically and the Starmer government.
Perhaps next demonstration should have the Labour Party Headquarters as it’s destination next time.
The BBC has just posted this online article about Corbyn & McDonnell having to face police questions under caution. So your democratic rights are limited even if you are an MP.
The BBC refused mention Chris Nineham represent Stop the War movement – listing him as a steward. So the Stop the War movement, goes the same as genocide and anti-genocide marches (rebranded as simply pro-Palestinian) in being unexisted by the BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clykrvp1g83o
The Manchester Evening News here more thorough than the BBC, reports “Stop the War Coalition founder Christopher Nineham was among ten people charged by police” also features rebutals from Corbyn & McDonnell.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-john-mcdonnell-face-30816252
Starmer’s real job is to serve the security & surveillance state which he has done faithfuly throughout his career.
Fossil fuel companies, the arms industry and the Zionist lobby have demanded a crack down on peaceful protest and our one party system is happy to oblige.
Of course we are now living in a police state. Look what happened Nov 27 th to the Kurds. Night time raids on KCC , arrests, We arm Israel. We arm Turkey’genocide as we arm
Israel’s. Media silent. Our judiciary no longer independent. ( see how stop
Oil / fossil fuel protestors. Not allowed to tell jury why they protested).
Today at P21 Genocide Memorial Day Event more info on what we are up against. Including position taken by AoC Welby and the House of Bishops. Refusing to
Recognise this genocide. Details of the targeting and destruction of the health care system graphically described by a doctor who had been working there. Harrowing pictures.
View this meeting on line. Whilst there learnt that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell who gave such terrific speeches are now to be interrogated by the police. What sort of country have we become? .
We didn’t go this time because I sensed a change in Policing from the confusion they were sewing, by withdrawing permission for the route, at the very last minute, on rather dubious grounds. My husband is disabled and although all the Gaza marches to date have been peaceful, the growing rhetoric from messrs Cooper MP et al, and the strange behaviour of the police rang alarm bells for me: we didn’t go into London, but I watched the chatter on social media with growing dismay! All of those thousands of peace-loving people from every age, gender, race, religion and creed, packed together in harmony… and then the premeditated, aggressive grabbing of Chris Nineham, a life-long man of peace; the snatch squads rounding up over 70 random others..
I felt sick, traumatised, angry…. I saw the appeals go out for pickets at several London police stations… I watched the hours tick by…until, after more than 24 hours, slowly … these dazed, exhausted victims of police harassment staggered out of the police stations. to the calls of support from the pickets.
I am left with a sense of overwhelming despair and rage. What has become of British tolerance? of our civil liberties? our right to Peaceful Protest?
I came to live in the UK in 1969, from a very oppressed Apartheid South Africa. As part of the Johannesburg Jewish Left, my family faced a degree of silencing and threat. As soon as I finished school I came to the country that was renowned for freedom of speech. I have marched, picketed and campaigned for over 50 years and have not felt this sense of foreboding since Thatcher decided to break the Miners.
What malevolence is brewing in Number 10 this time
I was there on Saturday. Yvette Cooper was not. I testify that the gathering was entirely peaceful. I witnessed the police forming a cordon immediately in front of the Jewish bloc in Whitehall, preventing it joining the rest of protesters. Bizarrely, they only cordoned off half of the road, so we could peacefully circumvent…only to meet with aggressive threats of arrest in Trafalgar Sq. Only offence ‘being in an undesignated space’.
I just hope that this was anticipated by the PSC etc. and they have already obtained legal opinion on what would appear to be an abuse of power by the Met. In the fullness of time the counter legal action will knock them back. That does of course need our full support from below or they will by inches take away our hard won rights.
Yes totally agree with your statement- it was a nightmare. Contradictory policing and arrests for no reason other than being on the street in London. Thank you for stating the truth.
Is this the creepiest administration ever?
I have been on most of the Gaza demonstrations to witness for peace and join in the call for ceasefire.
Never have I witnessed any intimidation of anyone especially any Jewish people around the demonstrations or indeed taking part. It is especially moving to see the many Jewish people demonstrating. I have spoken with a Nazi holocaust survivor and the som of a survivor who were demonstrating- a short emotional exchange- I thanked them for their acts of bravery. They no doubt would not lay claim to such but I count it such.
Policing of the demonstration on Saturday brings to mind other polititizations of the police, the miners’ strike and in Northern Ireland.
Are members of parliament going to sit on their hands and allow this to happen?
Very grateful for this account of your experiences. We must stay strong and keep going .
I am dismayed at the charge to the right from Starmer’s Govt and the clear evidence of interference of with policing decisions. I am also frightened of the continued conflation of all Jews with israeli state actions. This is dangerous!
What a day of shame and intimidation by a worse than useless government and muppets in the Metropolitan Police (that already had a low reputation).
Oh and also lots of false impressions and untruthfulness by the higher-ups.
It is interesting to read that the rabbi of the synagogue is another of us who is opposed to the terrorising and genocide of the indigenous inhabitants.
We should all be very grateful to those who were near the Chief Steward, Chris Nineham, when he was assaulted and abducted. They behaved with great restraint in response to the smirking police officers.
The majority of Jews in Britain are actually against what the Israeli government is doing. According to research carried out by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research 74% of Jewish Britons are opposed to Israel’s actions. Weaponisation of antisemitism, the most sinister form of antisemitism. https://www.jpr.org.uk/reports/what-do-jews-uk-think-about-israel-and-its-leaders-and-how-has-changed-october-7?fbclid=IwY2xjawH8UexleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWZ_PihmNDmxrL88W004h22jLdI-rcrD52atXXw2uHPCx_xR1TcS3b1B2A_aem_mzxModFx74RVu1sDMLs1KQ
It’s an attack on democracy the police should be ashamed
“The Police” is an executive institution, instructed by (local and national) executive politicians, that in their turn are supposed to act according to the law(makers).
The actions unleashed by the police on peaceful demonstrators against the (UK assisted : politically as well as materially) atrocities by a Jew-supremacist settler colonial sect – both active in occupied Palestine and elsewhere in “the diaspora” – (atrocities) perpetrated with the classic instruments of dehumanization, terror and genocide, must have been orchestrated by the government of the day. Which government in its turn will defend its repressive actions against the protestors with a formal referral to the parliamentary majority in the legislative.
In reality the UK is – and has been for the last hundred plus years – behaving like a vassal state, acting exclusively in favour of the Zionist settler colonials and their Christian Zionist backers in Palestine, whether the UK government is led by the Tories or by Labour.
In earlier statements on the subject of political Zionism and its imperial behaviour in the ME, I did mention the fact, that the ambition of founding a mono-ethnic state on other people’s territory, necessarily will imply the total cleansing of occupied Palestine from its autochthonous People.
So are under no illusion, that Zionism somehow will stop short from expelling ALL the Palestinians, after they have systematically eradicated during this last year and a half, the entire livelihood of the Palestinians in Gaza (and still underway in the Westbank), just as they have been doing during the First Nakba in 1947-48 and during the Second Nakba in 1967.
The Jewish and Christian Zionists will not be satisfied until they will have conquered all the land from the North in Lebanon and Syria, until the Euphrates in the East and the Brook of the Nile in the South.