Hundreds were arrested as more than 1,000 people gathered in Westminster to defy a ban on Palestine Action
Hundreds Arrested At Palestine Action Ban Protest
I made a point of walking down a Circle line carriage on Saturday morning, looking at all the faces in their autumn years. “Which one of you is about to be arrested for the first time in your life?” I thought. The crime: Holding up a sign in support of Palestine Action. The punishment: Up to 14 years in prison.
As Saturday morning melted into the afternoon on Parliament Square, so the selfies, tour guides, and Spanish school trips were slowly replaced by vicars, teachers, and swathes of police. Behind the dark tinted windows of waiting vans, still more cop-shaped figures readied themselves for the inevitable heat and bile.
“I read yesterday the police are really uncomfortable, because they do not want to arrest people,” says a woman holding a mirror that says ‘Gaza is your mirror’. I read that too: Novara Media reporting comments from rank and file officers who thought they signed up to catch thieves and killers. Instead, here they are: arresting pensioners.
Empty sheets of paper are pulled from A2 art folders at 12:58. At 12:59 the crowd draw their pens. ‘I OPPOSED GENOCIDE. I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION’ they write. Some write it twice to thicken the black and white message. “You have a spelling error,” a man tells the woman next to him. She supports ‘PALASTINE ACTION’. “That might make that legal,” he laughs.
Big Ben strikes one and the crowd goes quiet. A woman hollers ‘Free Palestine’. The man I am trying to interview tells me: “I’m sorry I’ve been told to be silent.” Police respect the silence. Then the arrests start.
During one of the biggest mass arrests in British protest history, I am sat next to arrestee number one when a Geordie officer reads him his rights. The approach is gentle. The language hesitant. “I’m gonna have to arrest you alright, under Section 13 of the Terrorist Act, because you are displaying, uh, Palestine Action, which is, uh, basically, uh, a proscribed terrorism group.”
The sign-holder says nothing.
“Are you willing to come up and walk with us? Because I don’t want to carry ya.”
Sign-holder’s head shakes ever so slightly.
“I don’t wanna carry ya, or do any force with ya.”
Nothing.
“Will you walk with us… please?”
Organisers Defend Our Juries told protesters to ‘go limp’ and refuse street bail in an attempt to overwhelm the UK’s largest police force. Sign-holder Number 1 follows the request, becoming the first of hundreds to be carried off to chorus of vitriol. The anger here is electric. Obstinate-looking policemen grimace.
“Is this what your mother wanted you to be when they raised you?” one particularly splenetic man screams towards a sea of yellow high-vis, “Arresting grandmas? Shame on you.”
‘People have been suspended from work’
“I’m not going to lose my job, I’ve got nothing to lose,” John tells me, a 69-year-old retired nurse who spent four decades caring for adults and children around the world, “I’m not going to embarrass myself, or my hospital. The only person I’m going to embarrass is my wife.
“From a professional point of view, the nurses and doctors who come back are going to be devastated, because they will be feeling I couldn’t do enough, I couldn’t save that person or this person. It will destroy their lives, even though they are working heroically to save their lives.
“We need to stop selling arms to Israel full stop. It’s as simple as that. Stop messing around in Parliament Square, wasting police time. Let’s just stop selling arms to Israel.”
Angela, a nonagenarian and former probation officer, also seems sanguine about the prospect of wearing handcuffs for the first time in her life. “I’m 90 and if I’m arrested, I’m arrested. I will just go through with it,” she says.
“I’ve been support Palestine and a peaceful settlement for Palestinians and Israelis since 1963 when I first visited Palestine. And I’ve visited Gaza and the West Bank four times since. I’ve seen what the IDF and others are doing to Palestinians in the West Bank and it is quite shocking.”
Claudia, a 27-year-old legal support worker from Brighton, is the youngest person I speak to. Despite the obvious risk to her career prospects, she says she cannot be a ‘bystander to genocide’. “Do you still think you’re going to have [your job] next week?” I ask her.
“I’m really lucky that I will have it, but I know other people won’t,” she says, “I know other people who have been suspended from their jobs.
“They knew that was a risk, and they have taken it anyway because, and not to minimise this, because I think everyone here is quite brave, but were are conscious of the tens-of-thousands of people being murdered in Gaza right now, and the least that we can do is fight for them here.”
‘Shame on you’
Violence is not the order of the day for more than 1,000 people protesting for peace and an end to starvation, but I see the seeds of agitation early on. Police officers are typically coarse with some bystanders, pushing and shoving people out the way as they get too close. ‘Get back’ and ‘Give officers space to work’ come with firm hands. “Don’t f**king touch me,” some retort.
While 99 per cent in attendance have their face on show for the world’s press, a few wear balaclavas. Others in football shirts and keffiyehs smack the side of police vans every time they go past, goading the drivers. For the most part, the officers maintain their wall of apathy, but a few begin to crack under the load of verbal abuse and it shows on their face.
“Shame on you” the crowd shouts every single time there is an arrest. There are signs everywhere saying things like “We were just following orders” and “Other jobs are available”. I watch one young woman reeling off a list of fascist dictators.
By the end of the night, the Met says some 25 people were for arrested for assaults on police officers and other public order offences. A photo taken by one news agency shows a young man with blood streaming down his face. Defend Our Juries disputes that the violence came from anyone holding a sign and that it was ‘a picture of a peaceful protest’.
From what I saw, the organised element of the protest, those who signed up to be arrested, were, as Defend Our Juries say, peaceful and non-violent. The less organised elements, those people standing on the fringes of Parliament Square waiting for another pensioner to be carried off, were more obviously the source of any unruly behaviour.
That behaviour will surely be used as a stick to beat the wider movement to have ban on Palestine Action lifted. Whether that stops people risking their liberty, careers, and summer holidays, is another question.
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