Sophie Johnson

Sophie Johnson

Taking Liberties: Palestine Solidarity And The Right To Protest

Reading Time: 6 minutes

The ceasefire deal, however tenuous, brings a host of new strategic considerations for the Palestine Solidarity movement. But the gross attack on the leadership of the London demonstrations, including the violent arrest of the Chief Steward, means that the defence of this movement must be at the top of the list for us all.

Last Saturday, on the eve of the ceasefire deal, Palestine Solidarity demonstrators were due to hold a march from Whitehall to the BBC headquarters. In the run up to the demonstration, under clear political pressure, the police decided to impose a ban on the march. Despite the demonstration having used this route twice before, its overwhelming record of peaceful protest, and the demonstration including a strong Jewish contingent which has been active in the Palestine movement from the start, the police cited the state broadcaster building as too close to a synagogue, which was not on the route of the march.

In response, the organisations involved announced plans for a rally, a protest against the ban and rightly refused to accept the police narrative’s ideological attack. Next, less than twenty- four hours ahead of the rally’s start time, the police announced a series of complex restrictions preventing people from assembling at various parts of WhiteHall at particular times in the day. 

From the beginning, demonstrators were met with a massive and hostile police presence. With the Met’s X account flying off the wall threatening detention if a placard was seen “to cross the line from political speech into criminality“, dozens of protesters were arrested for apparently breaching police conditions by standing at the wrong part of the assembly area. Yet, immediately after the main rally, in a surprising act of goodwill, the police granted requests by the organisers to allow a delegation of the march -which included an 87 year old Holocaust Survivor, key speakers, politicians and several celebrities- to move past a police line to lay wreaths in memory of the lives of Palestinian children. It was after police had waived part of this delegation through that Chief Steward Chris Nineham of Stop the War Coalition, was jumped upon by some ten police officers and dragged out to be arrested in front of the crowd. Including Nineham, some 76 others were arrested, mostly for breaching arbitrary and last minute restrictions on the immediate area around the rally. 

The next day, Nineham was released after 19 hours in police custody. In the hours that followed former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and recently suspended Labour backbencher John McDonnell were brought in for questioning under caution. Since then, Ben Jamal, Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, has been charged for allegedly breaching the Public Order Act, the same charges alleged against Nineham. As it stands, both men and many other protesters are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court next month.

The significance of this attack can hardly be overstated. In our times, never before has the state attempted to take out the leadership of such a large and popular movement. These decisions, including the obstruction of a march outside Britain’s state broadcaster, including the police investigation into the former leader of Starmer’s own party for his attendance at a peaceful protest, could only have been made at a government level. Yvette Cooper’s subsequent endorsement of the heavy-handed police operation to defend a synagogue nowhere near the demonstration – confirms just as much. 

It is true to say that at the moment of ceasefire, Starmer was leveraging the machinery of the state in an effort to decapitate the Palestine Solidarity movement and permanently put it to rest. In the process, his deeply unpopular government will be seeking to substantially circumscribe future popular descent. As a result, every single future challenge to British policy, foreign or domestic, is under threat. In short, we are at a very dangerous crossroads.   

The erosion of democratic rights is not unique to Britain but reflects a broader trend among centrist governments in the West struggling to maintain a grip on their waning popularity. Macron’s France, Trudeau’s Canada, and Scholz’s Germany have all resorted to increasingly authoritarian measures to counter popular challenges.

Nor, clearly, is the shrinking of the boundaries of democratic rights tied solely to Starmer’s government, or the Palestine solidarity movement. Recent Conservative administrations came for workers rights in the form of the Ballot Threshold Act and the Minimum Service Levels Bill and it was the outgoing government’s introduction of the Public Order Act in 2023 which is now being used as the primary instrument against the Palestine solidarity movement.

But since October 7th, we have seen an escalation of political repression in real time. The government has laid into the freedom of the press, detaining several high profile journalists including Richard Medhust, Asa Winstanley and Sarah Wilkinson under the Terrorist Act, gutlessly confiscating their equipment to prevent reports on the crimes in which the British Government are implicated.

And a critical target has been the national demonstrations in London – the rallying place of the largest Palestine Solidarity marches in the Western World. It is here that the police have most rigorously attempted to ban slogans, arrest protesters for placards and regularly create obstacles for marches – frequently imposing last minute conditions and changes to agreed times and routes.

It is also worth remembering that spurious claims about the safety of the public, MPs and parliamentary staff have been a frequent feature of media and political discourse despite the protests’ overwhelmingly peaceful nature. So too, has a concerted attempt to designate Palestine solidarity as a Muslim issue connected to “hate” and “extremism” under both Sunak and Starmer. Both of which are seemingly oblivious to a growing political challenge from the right which is feeding off these attacks on the movement and the Muslim population. 

The scale of this offensive is partly due to the movement’s ability to forcibly intervene in mainstream British politics. Last February, its effects created turmoil in parliament when the Speaker of the House broke precedent to prevent an SNP-led ceasefire motion undermining the Labour Party. In September, in an unusual attempt to appease the movement, the government reluctantly stopped a portion of weaponry, in effect admitting its ally could use them to commit war crimes. And in July, the Labour Party’s vote share was reduced by tens of thousands of votes, the election of 5 “pro- Gaza” independent MPS each propelled to office on the back of the movement. 

The forcefulness of these attacks are also tied to the movement’s explicit rejection of current British foreign policy. The need to retain this sphere as an area of decision-making exclusive only to political elites has never been more important for Western Governments in a period where shifting geo-political dynamics are throwing up new and unpredictable processes. 

Add to this mix, the instinctively authoritarian figure of Keir Starmer. A man who has ruthlessly purged his party of left, most recently suspending MPs of his own party for voting against the deeply unpopular two child benefit cap. 

Nevertheless, the Palestine Solidarity movement in Britain has thus far managed to achieve some significant victories against the offensive on democratic freedoms which bear repeating here. Its flouting of attempts to ban the words “From the River to the Sea” – defended the use of a slogan that is now proscribed by other Western governments. Its consistency in rejecting false claims that equate Palestine Solidarity with anti-semitism could barely be thought of three years ago in the aftermath of the Corbyn moment. And in November 2022, in the face of a ban, an 800,000 strong demonstration marched in London, forcing the ministerial career of the then Home Secretary Suella Braverman to an embarrassing end. At each of these turns, in the face of ideological and material attacks, the nucleus of the wider Palestine Solidarity movement in the capital has drawn on hard won traditions of democratic dissent.

The intensity of the attacks on the movement has varied over the last fifteen months. But it seems last week, the Government saw the ceasefire deal – possibly imagining a moment of disorientation for the movement-  as an opportunity to make a pitch for its head. On the eve of the ceasefire agreement, as Starmer was in Ukraine pledging a hundred years of unconditional support to Zelensky, with one hand he was endorsing billions of pounds worth of British military aid, with the other, unleashing the Met on the antiwar movement. 

In the coming weeks and months- should the ceasefire hold- with the pause in the main part of the bombing, and more journalists granted access to the region, we may see a flood of new reports emerging from Gaza. Without a doubt, Starmer and co will have been considering this probability. As they seek to avoid accountability, a weak Palestine Solidarity movement would be all to their advantage. It goes without saying that our ability to demand justice from our political leaders for the crimes of the last fifteen months will be all the more important. 

But the government won’t stop there. Every means of repression, every maneuver from mass arrests to dirty police tactics, will be a precedent to be used against future formations of political dissent. If ever there was a need for every political organisation, from peace campaigners to environmental activists, to rally around a campaign, it is this one. 

The Palestine coalition has already launched a major campaign of defence with dozens of lawyers and legal scholars submitting a letter to the home secretary calling for all charges under the public order offence to be dropped. More sections of civic society should follow suit. Not least the trade unions whose existence depends on the ability to organise opposition.

Representatives and organisations of the anti-war movement in each city, town and country in the UK should likewise throw their weight to the campaign- we know from experience that the success or failure of a movement in the capital has ultimate bearing on the position of the movement in the localities.

The truth is, if we can’t demand justice for Gaza now, we won’t be able to demand anything in the future. The future of political life hangs in the balance. 

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