“Quelling Palestine protest was an unrealistic task says Met” – The Times newspaper of August 11th 2025
“Scotland Yard has said it faced entirely unrealistic challenges in policing a protest in support of Palestine Action at which more than 530 people were arrested.” – The Times
This Sunday morning an LBC presenter asked a caller why protesters defying the recent law in supporting Palestine Action and thereby risk arrest don’t fight for Palestinians in some other way by, for example, supporting some other ‘legal’ organisation whose objective is human rights for Palestinians.
On the face of it they would have achieved the same goal without being arrested. And being arrested by British police is no laughing matter to be taken lightly. These are brave people. Disclaimer: I don’t support Palestine Action for the sake of clarity.
He couldn’t understand why the 532 protestors placed themselves under the threat of arrest yesterday in Parliament Square by carrying banners which clearly made their activities illegal under the law. In fact all were arrested over many exhausting hours. It was the highest number arrested in a single event in one day in the history of the Met police as I understand it.
Well, the caller didn’t answer the question but I believe I can.
The 532 people arrested – who are probably as I type this in some grotty jail at a police station (a relatively small number) or have been sent home with the criminal court process ahead of them (the rest) – were protesting against 2 things:
- The injustice and madness in their eyes of proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation on a par with Hamas for example and;
- The unjustified curbing of freedom of speech in the UK – one of the world’s most democratic countries – as evidenced by the proscribing of Palestine Act as a terrorist organisation. For this second objective they had to support Palestine Action in clearly declared banners.
Their entirely passive and non-aggressive protest at Parliament Square was a statement and a push-back against this labelling of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. They were told by the organisers not to engage in conversation with anyone and told to remain passive in the style, I believe, of Mahatma Ghandi whose statue graces the square.
They were defying the law for the time they were protesting which for some amounted to several hours.
In short it was a double-barrelled protest and it worked. They had hoped for success on a grand scale namely the inability of the police to arrest them all to establish that the law is an ass and unworkable.
No doubt the Home Secretary gave orders that all of them needed to be arrested as a means of defeating the protestors’ aims. It was an incredibly long day for the police and protestors.
I am convinced that the majority of British citizens disagree with the government on this and they see, as I do, a dramatic and worrying, underming of democracy in the UK in the curbing of free speech primarily on social media.
J.D. Vance is one of those who sees the same worrying trend and he has been vocal on this.
I was at the Parliament Square protest. It got rough at times not from the protestors but by the police.
Mr Porritt is a very intelligent and sensible person. Say no more. This government has got this all wrong and it is another very poor decision.
Most of those arrested have been bailed on the spot to appear before a magistrates court in the future with bail conditions including no more protests! Some where taken to police stations are are being held on remand in the cells because they refused to provide personal details.
Some of those bailed and released returned to the protest but I suspect without the offending banner.
More protests are being organised but not as I understand it under the support Palestine Action MO. There will be protests about freedom of speech in the UK which for millions of citizens has been curbed unreasonably in the UK.
It feels like the country is going to the dogs. Really. It feels like a mess. This Labour government don’t have the ability to manage the country. They are making far too many mistakes.
And they are lying to the people. Remember the Chagos deal in which we gave the Chagos Islands to the Mauritian people and leased it back. Well It is now claimed that the cost to the British taxpayer over 100 years will be ten times the amount as stated by the Prime Minister, Starmer at £30 billion. He claimed it would cost in the order of £3 billion.
More disasters by this government. A failing government in my view.
