Police at the Palestine protest in London on 18 January (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The police attack on the Palestine solidarity demonstration in London on 18 January represents a sharp upward twist in the level of repression.
We were stopped from marching, 77 people were arrested, and serious charges were laid against two leading figures—chief steward Chris Nineham and Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal.
Why is it happening now, 16 months after the mass solidarity demonstrations began? The Metropolitan Police have admitted that they were under pressure from various Zionist organisations to stop the march.
But such groups have been demanding this since October 2023, with no success until now. It’s generally a mistake to place too much importance on Zionist pressure, as opposed to the interests of British imperialism.
First of all, the political context has changed. Suella Braverman, Tory home secretary at the time of the outbreak of the Gaza war, denounced the solidarity demos as “hate marches”. But she was unable to persuade the Met to stop them.
The Met resisted Braverman’s pressure to stop the marches partly for practical reasons. The demos were simply too big. Attacking them might have provoked serious rioting.
Braverman was an isolated and unpopular member of a widely hated Tory government staggering towards electoral wipeout.
Keir Starmer and his Labour government may be tanking in the polls. But they have a huge parliamentary majority and don’t have to face a general election till August 2029.
Not only is the present government much more secure than Rishi Sunak’s, but it’s deeply committed to supporting Israel. Witness foreign secretary David Lammy’s pathetic defence of Israel’s destruction of Syria’s military capabilities after the fall of Bashar al-Assad saying that there are “legitimate security concerns” behind Israel’s attack.
More generally, with a few exceptions, Western ruling classes have doubled down on their backing for Israel in the past few months. This stance has been prompted in part by Israel’s success in weakening Hezbollah and Iran, and partly by Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
This is out of line with what the rest of the world and much of the population of Western countries think—just another sign of the weakening of what passes for democracy. Home secretary Yvette Cooper tweeted in support of the Met, repeating the lie that the Palestine solidarity march was a threat to Jews worshipping in their synagogues.
The Met will no doubt have picked up on these political cues. It’s very significant that they questioned under caution Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, the two left MPs who effectively led the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. I don’t believe this would have happened without the green light from Starmer and Cooper.
The Palestine solidarity movement remains huge and has sunk deep roots in British society. But the London protests have declined in size. This makes it easier for the cops to mount the kind of operation they did on 18 January.
The police were given much more repressive powers by the last Tory government, and Labour has retained these.
Climate and Palestine protesters are facing serious prison sentences. The Palestine marches represent a challenge to the cops’ control of the streets. So the Met are now trying to repress them.
They would like to return to a situation like what prevailed in Britain under the National Government in the 1930s. The country remained a liberal democracy, but the police ferociously attacked the hunger marches organised by the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) and protests against Oswald Mosley’s fascists. NUWM leaders Wal Hannington and Sid Elias were sentenced to respectively three months and two years in prison.
We can’t allow this to happen. Liberals wail about the threat to democracy represented by Trump but ignore what’s happening under their own noses here in Britain.
The Palestine solidarity movement must draw in a wider campaign to defend the right to protest and to stop the trials of its leaders. All our freedoms were won through mass struggles, and they will be maintained by the same means.
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