Last week, I received a great stamp of approval from our class enemies, when I was arrested for speaking up for Palestine. I will frame my arrest papers alongside my university degree, as one of my life achievements. No cause could be greater than fighting this corrupt establishment and their system.
Last Thursday, I took part in a protest against UCL’s ties to arms companies, and its complicity in Israel’s genocide. UCL has refused to cut these ties, and naturally called the police onto campus to intimidate us, even before the protest had begun.
In my speech, I called for student and worker control over universities, for a mass movement against imperialism like the one we saw in Italy last year, and to kick capitalism off campus.
The police surrounded me, saying that the university – my own university! – had asked them to arrest me. They have since banned me from campus and suspended me from my degree. And then, UCL has the audacity to claim in a statement about my arrest that “freedom of speech and academic freedom are vital to university life” – what a joke!
The arrest dragged on for an hour. Undoubtedly, they hoped the protest would dissipate. But they were wrong; it only became bolder. The nature of the state was laid bare with the police’s provocations. The chants went from being directed at UCL management, to attacking the Metropolitan Police.
A battalion of officers blockaded the entrance to campus, seized me, and marched me to a van under close guard. Surrounding me were at least 30 police officers – all there to push me inside a police van, even though I was not resisting at all.
At the police station, they seized and examined all of my possessions, which I protested. They also took DNA samples, fingerprints, and photographs of me, before locking me in a cell for the next twelve hours.
In my time at the station, I heard one officer joking about arresting everyone at the protest, as they had “plenty of empty cells”. Clearly, some of these officers are raring to play the role of hired thugs.
Confirming what anyone could guess, one policeman told me that these clampdowns on protests are ordered from “high above”. Whether that means Starmer and Mahmood’s government, or the Met Police chief – or both – is open to interpretation.
The next day, I learnt that a former officer of the same station that I was being held at was found guilty of gross misconduct for joking about rape and racism with an undercover reporter. Seven of his colleagues had already met the same fate.
My main impression of the Met was their staggering bureaucratic inefficiency and incompetence. For example, they apparently forgot to arrest me on one count – relating to support for terrorism! – due to computer problems. They then bizarrely re-arrested me on that count, five minutes before I was released.
Ordinarily, this slow, bureaucratic process might serve to pile pressure on those arrested. But it takes more than a few hours of confinement to grind down a revolutionary!
When questioned, my interrogator let slip about the RCP protest outside of the police station, demanding my release. Afterwards, I stood on my bed and, pressing my ear against the window, caught a faint echo of megaphone speeches and cheers.
My bail was delayed needlessly until 3am, so it is from these pages that I must send my heartfelt thanks to my comrades who came to support me: you reached through their walls of concrete, and I felt the warmth of your solidarity in my cell.
They thought that they could intimidate us, but instead we turned the tables on them. I will not be content merely with an end to investigation when that comes.
My arrest exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the ruling parasites and their lackeys. And I urge you, if you are reading this: do not shy away, now is the time to fight back!
A few hours after I was released, we heard the news that the government was found to have broken the law by proscribing Palestine Action. They are already on the back foot.
The conditions are ripe for a mass struggle against Starmer, who is facing scandals, crises, and disaster everywhere he turns.
We – the Palestine movement, the student movement, and, crucially, the workers’ movement – need to use this moment of weakness to go on the offensive against Starmer and his system.
They try to intimidate us, but – with clarity of purpose – this can only strengthen our resolve. It has certainly strengthened mine!
RCP mobilises to defend Jamie: An injury to one is an injury to all!
Revolutionary Communist Party
Last Thursday evening, over 100 Communists gathered outside Charing Cross Police Station, Central London, to call for the release of our comrade Jamie Bradshaw.
Jamie is a leading Communist student at University College London (UCL), who was scandalously arrested earlier in the day for a pro-Palestine speech.
We are pleased to announce that, after much dither and delay from the police, Jamie was released at 3am in the morning, and is in high spirits.
Jamie has been released without charge, pending investigation. Clearly, as we all knew, the police don’t have a leg to stand on – this arrest was baseless intimidation.
Meanwhile, in the subsequent hours since Jamie’s release, the High Court ruled that Starmer’s outrageous proscription of Palestine Action was “unlawful” – something we could have told them months ago! We will cover this reversal in a separate article tomorrow. Stay tuned.
What happened?
The UCL protest was held as part of a national student day of action, and was led by UCL Coalition for Palestine.
The student protestors simply wanted to peacefully voice their anger about the university’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, through their ties with arms companies like BAE Systems, whose profits are soaked in Palestinian blood.
UCL management, however, had other ideas. Even before the protest had taken place, the university bosses had called in the Metropolitan Police. After a few speeches, a swarm of 20 to 30 police arrested Jamie.
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What was his ‘crime’? A political speech calling out UCL’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza, and pointing towards the inspirational example set by the Italian workers, who organised a general strike to ‘block everything for Palestine’ late last year.
And yet, following complaints to the police from a Zionist provocateur, the police did not hesitate to arrest our comrade – alleging ‘racial incitement’ – and then proceed to kettle the remaining protestors. These were clear provocations, which served no other purpose than to intimidate the students that had gather
Judith, a UCL student who attended the protest, recalled Jamie’s arrest:
“It was an absolutely horrifying thing to witness. One minute Jamie was speaking, and in the next he was being shuffled away. And then an entire battalion of officers arrived to arrest this singular person. It’s so sad, and a shame that the police don’t have anything better to do than harass and intimidate students.”
After being carted into a police van, Jamie was taken to Charing Cross Police Station and detained for twelve hours. Immediately, RCP branches across the capital and beyond sprang into action to defend our comrade.
“Met Police, shame shame!”
With barely a moment’s notice, local branches managed to mobilise over 100 activists, who descended on Central London to voice their outrage, and demand Jamie’s immediate release.
Georgina Ryan, London RCP organiser, began by rallying the crowd with cries of “Met Police, shame shame, all the crimes in your name!”, “Over 100,000 dead, and you’re arresting us instead!” – all interspersed with a rallying cry of “release our comrade!”.
Megaphone speeches, siren sounds, claps, and chants echoed down the Strand, and were audible enough to disrupt the police station, with the noise reverberating inside the building.
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As Ravi Mistry, an RCP London activist, pointed out, the hypocrisy of this entire charade was sickening. In October last year, a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the rampant sexism, racism, and use of excessive force within the Charing Cross Police Station custody team.
Multiple officers were recorded bragging about assaulting people in custody, calling for immigrants to be shot, and dismissing rape claims. These disgusting details all came to light three years after the team had allegedly been cleared out, after being placed under special measures for the same reasons in 2022!
As Jack Tye Wilson, editor of communist.red, called out on the megaphone:
“We will take no lectures in morality and what is considered ‘offensive’ from a government carrying out social murder at home, genocide abroad, and which turns a blind eye to Epstein’s pedophile networks; nor will we take any lectures in morality from the murderers of Chris Kaba, Mark Duggan, and Sarah Everard. The Met Police is rotten from top to bottom. There is no reforming this.”
UCL hypocrisy
The rank hypocrisy did not end there. A UCL spokesperson defended their Orwellian actions in Jewish News:
“Our ongoing priority is to keep all of our staff and students safe on campus and we are urgently investigating this incident, and will take any action, as necessary. Peaceful protest is protected and supported at UCL, but protest that involves violent or discriminatory language will not be tolerated.”
UCL alumnus and RCP activist Olive Ruadh rebuked the UCL bosses to the crowd, “UCL sees our comrade as more of a threat than the weapons companies – BAE Systems, Airbus – that they invite onto their campus. These companies murder innocent Palestinian women and children!”
So there you have it: soldiers from an army proven to be committing genocide are welcome on campus, but not their own students who peacefully highlight their crimes! So much for keeping “all our staff and students safe on campus”.
“We will not give up”
The protest included many students from across London. AB, a young student from Kingston University shared:
“This is not the time to be playing, you know? Our comrade is inside the police station right now for exercising his right to free speech. Eventually it’s going to get to all of us… I think we need to show the police that we will not give up without putting up a fight.”
Many passers-by – on their way home, or to a dance class, or to get some food – decided to stop to join the protest impromptu, after hearing why we were there.
We spoke with a young woman who’d visited the station because her phone had been stolen. After learning about why the protest was held, she spoke exasperatingly:
“You know, I’m just fed up with all this lot – Epstein, Andrew – like, there is so much proof and no one doing anything about it! And your friend’s in there for giving a speech about Palestine.”
Communist artist Nico Baldion spoke with an elderly Chinese man who was also fighting for justice, after he was beaten up by the police. He joined our protest in solidarity.
Nico – whose work has been included in a recent exhibition on the Spy Cops scandal – also spoke with a black woman called Mary, whose family had been spied on by the Met Police. She was furious with this arrest and sympathised greatly with Jamie.
The mood we found on the street matches the general trend of public opinion towards the police: following scandal after scandal, and the reprehensible role they have played repressing the Palestine movement, the police are more hated and distrusted than ever before.
Comrade Jamie released
Jamie was interviewed at around 8pm, but scandalously he wasn’t released until 3am, long after most of the tubes and buses had stopped running.
It’s not a stretch to presume that the police deliberately and spitefully prolonged his detention, due to the support he had outside.
But despite the pouring rain, a high-spirited crowd of comrades remained to the end, determined to greet Jamie with cheers and hugs on his release.
Update: started to rain. IV still taking place. But spirits of comrades very high and angry. They appear very determined to release our comrade. pic.twitter.com/MUimCFNrsP
— Ravi Mistry (@RaVz94) February 12, 2026
Jamie, who is studying for a PhD in mathematics, told us that he kept himself occupied in his cell by doing maths problems.
He told us he was greatly encouraged by the support he received from all across the country. Marxist Societies at Cardiff, Lancaster, Bradford, and elsewhere shared solidarity statements.
And, in less than 24 hours, we raised £885 from RCP members, supporters, and the public. These funds will help us cover any potential legal and campaigning costs, as well as financing the party’s struggle against the imperialist British establishment. If you want to support our struggle, help us reach our target of £1,000!
It is a damning indictment that Jamie has spent more time behind bars than Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Peter Mandelson, or any of the war criminals in Westminster, who have militarily, financially and diplomatically supported Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
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Jamie’s arrest – as with the rest of the attacks on the Palestine movement – reveals not the strength, but the weakness of the British state.
As Fiona Lali, RCP campaigns coordinator, explained in her fiery speech outside of the Police Station:
“Every single attack that the government has made against the Palestine movement has backfired.
“It has backfired because – in every single arrest, in every single attack – they are exposing in the minds of millions of people exactly who they work for, exactly what their role is: to prop up whatever British imperialism needs.
“But the most important thing is that this repression does not work.”
We say to the British establishment: You cannot stop an idea whose time has come! Arrests, proscriptions, and clampdowns will only add fuel to the fire of mass anger against the system.
And we – the Revolutionary Communists – will not be cowed. This arrest will only energise our efforts to bring down this rotten, corrupt system. We call on all of those who are outraged by Starmer’s repression: join us in the struggle today!
