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Eyewitness report: British state unleashes repression against Palestine movement

Eyewitness report: British state unleashes repression against Palestine movement

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On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police launched a massive crackdown on the national Palestine demonstration, with 77 arrested. These measures are a sign of weakness, not strength. The burning anger against western imperialism has not gone away.

On Saturday 18 January, the Metropolitan Police launched their largest crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain, in a calculated affront to clear this movement off the streets using force and intimidation.

The Met stated 77 were arrested. At the time of writing, 48 remain in custody whilst 24 have been let out on bail. This is by far the most arrests to have taken place in all the national demonstrations for Palestine since the October 7 attacks.

What happened?

Tens of thousands of protesters came out for the 24th national demonstration for Palestine. We assembled at Whitehall in central London to protest against Britain’s continued support for the Israeli government’s brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

In the run-up to the demonstration, there was a lot of confusion. Would there be a march, or not?

Initially, a planned march was supposed to head to BBC headquarters in Portland Place to protest the BBC’s biased coverage and outright lies about the genocide in Gaza.

The Met Police initially agreed to the route in November. But they then rejected it on the grounds that there would be “disruption” to a nearby synagogue for their morning service.

This is despite their service finishing at 1:00pm – two hours before the march would have reached Portland Place – and the synagogue not even being on the march route!

The Met was also deliberately trying to smear the whole protest as antisemitic and violent, when every single national demonstration for Palestine has overwhelmingly been peaceful, and have included large Jewish blocs and Jewish holocaust survivors in attendance.

Further spurious demands were made by the Met, from changing the day of the protest to any other day but Saturday, to claiming the protest would affect car-parking spaces for local residents! Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) further explained:

“During the meeting, the police confirmed that they are seeking to impose an effective ban on protests in support of Palestinian rights at the BBC on any Saturday. Disgracefully, they explicitly conceded that this proscription would not apply to those protesting for other causes including pro-Israel demonstrations.”

Further hypocrisy came days before the protest as news of the ceasefire deal emerged. Both Keir Starmer and David Lammy praised the deal, despite backing Israel’s genocide from start to finish, and smearing those who support Palestinian liberation as antisemitic.

Day of the protest

Protesters assembled at the agreed starting point at Whitehall. Police were out in disproportionately large numbers in intimidating riot gear. This created an atmosphere of unease among many protesters, who were understandably concerned that the police were looking for any reason to arrest attendees or use physical force.

At the same time, there was also palpable anger towards the government and Metropolitan Police because of their attempts to clamp down on the protest.

The Met formed a line in an attempt to prevent attendees joining the protest coming via Westminster and by Trafalgar Square, with rows of police vans blocking the street in a clear attempt to ensure a march did not occur.

Matt, an NEU member on the march commented that “it felt like the police were kettling us. But despite this, people were still getting through the cordon.”

This blockade was clearly not in the interest of public safety, as Whitehall became increasingly overcrowded as more and more protesters arrived. You could feel the tension in the air building.

Then, leading figures of PSC, including Jeremy Corbyn MP, attempted a peaceful march to Trafalgar Square to commemorate the deaths of Palestinian children. This was when events took a particularly ugly turn.

They would be allowed to pass the initial groups of police, only to be confronted by another layer.

Armoured policemen then aggressively started arresting many protesters, including a pregnant woman and several elderly people. The level of arrests and intimidation was far higher than those of any of the previous marches.

One of those violently arrested – bundled to the floor by heavily armed police – was Chris Nineham, chief steward from the Stop the War campaign group, who was released yesterday.

The Met police outright lied on their social media claiming protesters had forced their way through police lines.

A video clearly shows the lead policeman shouting “filter!” and the police at the front calmly said to protesters “please make your way through”, as if they were leading lambs to slaughter.

Those peacefully walking through included prominent left-wing MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, who now face interviews under police caution.

Intentional provocation

Today, Benjamin Jamal, director of PSC, is the latest to be charged by the Met for failing to comply with the spurious police set protest conditions.

Taken together, this protest marks a turning point.

The violent arrest of chief steward Chris Nineham, the constant attempts to stifle previously agreed protest routes, mass arrests, the wholesale blocking off of some of the country’s most famous hotspots: all of these illustrate that this was an intentional provocation on behalf of the British state, to strike a significant blow at the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain.

After 24 national demonstrations over 15 months, the state has consciously decided to attack the leadership of this movement and its most militant layers of supporters. They want to send a clear message to Palestine protesters: “you’ve had your fun, now go home”.

This is a tactic seen in many mass movements, from the year-long miners’ strike, to the 2010 student protests.

Where propaganda, smears, and outright lies fail, the state utilises its most essential line of defence: its ‘armed bodies of men’, as Engels remarked.

A tenuous ceasefire now reigns in the Middle East, and Netanyahu has not succeeded in his war aims to destroy Hamas, or the Palestinian people. The circumstances which led to war remain – primarily that Palestinians are denied a state and a homeland.

Therefore the anger towards the crimes of western imperialism, which has brought millions out onto the streets since October 7, won’t go away. Further down the line, this will explode to the surface once again, in one way or another.

The ruling class knows that intensified struggle is on the agenda in the coming period. These authoritarian measures, therefore, highlight the weakness of the ruling class – not its strength.

These events in particular draw resonance to the chant “in our thousands in our millions, we are all Palestinian”. Our struggle is their struggle. Our fight here in Britain is primarily against our own ruling class.

  • Release all 77 arrested with all charges dropped!
  • No trust in the Metropolitan Police!
  • Fight state terror with class struggle!
  • Fight imperialism! Fight for revolution!

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