Shortly after 7 October 2023, pro-Palestinian protests began in the United Kingdom. The protesters called for peace and an end to the illegal Israeli military occupation of Palestine. They asked for all hostages (Palestinian and Israeli) to be set free.
The United Kingdom prides itself on freedom of expression. A 19th-century judge ruled there is an undoubted right to agitate upon public grievances. On many weekends, tens of thousands of people gather in London to march through Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square. In some cases, they demonstrate outside the Israeli Embassy. London is 10% Muslim, and the demonstrators are well over 10% Muslim. Nevertheless, a clear majority are non-Muslims. There are Jews who are pro-Palestine. Some ultra-Orthodox Jews say that the modern State of Israel is a profanation of Judaism. They say that, according to the Bible, Israel shall only be re-established when the Messiah returns.
One of the organisations behind the movement to free Palestine and end the genocide is Palestine Action (PA). Some members of the PA broke into a Royal Air Force base and damaged a warplane.
In 2025, the Home Secretary signed an order to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. Expressing any support for PA is now a crime. Many have said this is absurd. PA has not killed anyone, nor threatened to do so, nor injured anyone, nor attempted to do so.
How is it that damaging a plane is terrorism, but the murder of 60,000 civilians is not? Holding a sign voicing admiration for PA is terrorism, but genocide is not.
The police regularly arrest hundreds of people who show support for the PA. Some of them are Christian priests and elderly people. It is making the police look ridiculous.
The Metropolitan Police (i.e., London Police) has its work cut out. Shoplifting is at an all-time high. Drug dealing and burglary are fairly common. The police seldom tackle these crimes. It is ludicrous to waste their time arresting a geriatric because she held a sign about PA.
The police say they do not make the law; they only enforce it. It is for politicians to amend the law. The police have discretion about operational decisions. They can choose not to enforce certain laws. They can say they simply do not have enough officers to arrest everyone suspected of showing support for PA.
Recent demonstrations have led to disorder and low-level violence. PA’s standard operating procedure when arrested is to ‘go floppy’. This requires four police officers to carry a person, making it very time-consuming and laborious for the police to arrest people. Sometimes they link arms and legs to make it very hard for the police to drag someone away from a crowd.
In Germany and other countries, police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators is worse. The Germans are very eager to live down the Holocaust. Therefore, they go overboard in being Zionist. There are intelligent Germans who recognise the Holocaust and also say that it is no reason for complicity in a current genocide.
On 4 October, around 500 people were taken into custody by the police in London, UK. A group called Defend Our Juries (DOJ) said 1,000 people participated in a demo in Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. DOJ wants to save jury trials, but also either to get the ban on PA lifted or to get the police to stop enforcing it. The strategy is to keep getting so many people arrested that the Metropolitan Police eventually conclude that the ban is unenforceable. The police will then stop arresting people for showing their endorsement of PA.
The Metropolitan Police (‘the Met’ for short) sent 1,500 officers to Trafalgar Square. There are only 30,000 officers in the Met. At any one time, there are rarely more than 10,000 on duty because some are on night shifts, some are on holiday, some have days off (not necessarily weekends), some are sick, and some are on courses. Therefore, over 15% of the available officers in London were policing a peaceful demo. It has been a bonanza for criminals. Outer London is left almost unpoliced. Robbers are timing their robberies to coincide with demonstrations, knowing that there will be very few police left to deal with them, and police response times will be slower than ever.
A man aged 89 was apprehended on suspicion of showing affiliation to PA. The police used force on some demonstrators. Some demonstrators were violent, but police injuries were minor.
The attack on Manchester Synagogue on 2 October led to the Prime Minister calling upon pro-Palestine demonstrators to show sensitivity. Two Jewish men were slain in the attack. One hundred Gazans are killed every single day, but for some reason, the PM never called on Zionists to end their demonstrations or to show any sensitivity.
Defend Our Juries said they denounce the terrorist act at Manchester Synagogue just as they denounce Israel’s countless acts of terrorism in Palestine. As there is no let-up in Israel’s barbarism against the defenceless people of Palestine, there is no reason to suspend peaceful demonstrations calling on Israel to halt its illegal war of annihilation. DOJ does not want to reward Zionist terrorism by pausing their demonstrations. No cause is more urgent than ending genocide.
The police arresting elderly people is not a good look. PA unveiled a banner on Westminster Bridge opposing genocide. Arrestees often shout ‘shame’ at the police. Some of the policemen and policewomen are plainly distressed and embarrassed to be arresting harmless old folks.
When people are arrested in the United Kingdom, the police must charge or release the person within 24 hours. Even if charged with a crime, the person then has a bail appearance as soon as possible before a magistrate. The police sometimes drop the charges. Even if they had a charge file to the Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS sometimes decides the case is not in the public interest and discontinues it.
There are pro-Palestine demonstrators at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. Labour is the ruling party of the UK. Sir Keir Starmer is a Labour man. His party is less Zionist than the Conservative Party.
Many Labour MPs are feminists. They said that suffragettes who campaigned for votes for women in the 1910s were heroines. Should they have been banned? The Manchester Synagogue attack was able to happen precisely because the police wasted resources harassing peaceful protesters and did not prevent a real terrorist attack. Zionists are keenly exploiting the Manchester terrorist attack to justify even more murders of Palestinian children. Human rights groups have condemned the UK’s backsliding on human rights.