About 300 people have been arrested at the largest demonstration yet opposing the proscription of Palestine Action.
Defend Our Juries, who organised the demonstrations, said there were 1,500 sign-holders in Parliament Square on Saturday at a fresh protest in London against the ban. At the previous major demonstration last month, 532 people were arrested for taking part. Participants gathered in Parliament Square by 1pm, many holding signs that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
At 7.48pm, the Metropolitan police said it had made about 300 arrests “for a range of offences, including assault on a police officer and expressing support for a proscribed organisation.”
Earlier, the force claimed there had “been a coordinated effort to prevent officers carrying out their duties”, and said officers had “been subjected to an exceptional level of abuse including punches, kicks, spitting and objects being thrown, in addition to verbal abuse”.
Defend Our Juries responded to the police’s claim, saying officers “violently [assaulted] peaceful protesters including the elderly, in order to try and arrest over 1,000 people for holding cardboard signs” and shared a video of officers shoving people to the ground.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said: “Despite Mark Rowley insisting the police could and would arrest everyone who opposed the ban, it would take them another 36 hours to arrest everyone at this rate. Yvette Cooper launched the biggest attack on our civil liberties in living memory, and it has backfired spectacularly. Now Yvette Cooper is no longer home secretary, the ban must go with her.
“This shows the new home secretary on her first day in office that the Palestine Action ban is impossible to enforce and a preposterous waste of resources. The terrorism laws were not designed to be wielded against a domestic protest group, or to arrest thousands across civil society for holding cardboard signs.”
The demonstration remained largely peaceful, though there were frantic scenes on the outskirts of the square throughout the afternoon. Officers drew their batons during clashes and forced their way through crowds carrying arrested protesters. One protester was seen with blood streaming down his face, while several others were knocked to the ground in a crush.
Police began making arrests shortly after the demonstration began. Officers faced chants of “shame on you” when taking two elderly people using mobility scooters into police vans.
Steve Masters, 55, was among those taking part. “I’m here because I oppose genocide and I also oppose the government’s overreach in proscribing Palestine Action,” he said. “They’ve lowered the bar of what terrorism is and almost made it meaningless.”
He served in the RAF as an aircraft technician for 19 years and took part in the protest while wearing his four service medals. “As somebody who was in the air force, attacking an air force jet is not something that I would do,” he said. “While unpleasant, destruction of property to most people is not terrorism. They’re not going out to explicitly harm people. It’s a travesty of justice.”
Protesters who signed up for Saturday’s demonstration were instructed to withhold their details from officers to force en-masse processing at police stations, which organisers said would make it “practically impossible” to arrest everyone.
Masters said he planned to withhold his details, meaning he would need to be transported and processed in a police station to complete his arrest. He said officers were in a “difficult position and I don’t envy them, but I also don’t have any sympathy for them either. They could stand there and say no. It takes moral courage because they may lose their jobs, but where is the red line?”
Judith Gradwell, 80, who also held a sign that read, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”, is unafraid of being arrested. “It doesn’t matter, I’ve got my sandwiches in my backpack,” she said.
Gradwell also plans on withholding her details from officers. She called the government’s decision to ban Palestine Action “ridiculous”, adding: “You would think after the Iraq war that they’d listen a bit more to what people on the streets were saying.”
In the 1970s, she protested against the Vietnam war outside the US embassy in London. “I thought the world would be a better place by now but it isn’t,” she said. “It’s a much worse place.”
Anne Karpf was in Parliament Square to support those taking part. “I think it’s very moving and, if I didn’t have caring responsibilities, I’d be in there holding a sign myself,” she said, standing under a banner that said “Holocaust survivor descendants against Gaza genocide”.
Karpf said her mother was a survivor of Auschwitz and her father was a survivor of Russian labour camps. “What they would be thinking, seeing what is happening now and being done in their name. I feel pretty certain that they would be horrified,” she said.
She called the proscription of the group “wrong on every single front” and an “outrageous curtailment of civil liberties”.
Amnesty International said the arrests showed that “something is going very wrong here in the UK”.
Kerry Moscogiuri, director of campaigns for the organisation, said: “Let’s be clear, it is disproportionate to the point of absurdity to treat people sitting peacefully in a group holding signs in support of Palestine Action as ‘terrorists’. Any restriction on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly must be lawful, necessary and proportionate to achieving a legitimate aim.
“Criminalising speech in this context is only permitted when it incites violence or advocates hatred. Expressing support for Palestine Action does not, in itself, meet this threshold.”
Mike Higgins, 62, a blind man who uses a wheelchair, whose arrest was seen by millions on social media, also returned. He was arrested at the demonstration last month, which he said “starkly highlights what an absolute waste of time” the proscription of Palestine Action was for the state, taxpayers, police resources and, “most importantly, [for] Palestine and defending the people of Palestine, because that’s actually what this is really about”.
Saturday’s demonstration has been the busiest by far. Hundreds of supporters gathered in Parliament Square and the anti-abortion group March for Life, set up a stage nearby with a sound system that occasionally blasted out music.
Near the start of the demonstration, several people fell over in a crush while water was thrown at officers, with the most frantic scenes unfolding on the western side of the park.
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