The Metropolitan Police in London arrested 522 people on Saturday for supporting Palestine Action, a group recently banned by the UK government under the Terrorism Act 2000. The arrests, thought to be one of the highest ever recorded at a single protest in the British capital, took place at Parliament Square and nearby Russell Square, where thousands rallied against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Metropolitan Police updated its previous arrest tally of 466, stating that all but one of the 522 arrests occurred at Parliament Square for displaying placards backing Palestine Action. The police also made 10 further arrests on Saturday, including six for assaults on officers, though none were seriously injured.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the government’s decision to ban Palestine Action, insisting that “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority”. She added that “the assessments are very clear – this is not a non-violent organisation”. However, critics argue that the ban infringes on freedom of speech and the right to protest.
Critics, including the United Nations and groups like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, have condemned the government’s proscription as legal overreach and a threat to free speech. Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK, said on Saturday that “if this was happening in another country, the UK government would be voicing grave concerns about freedom of speech and human rights”. She added that the government had “now sunk low enough to turn the Met into thought police, direct action into terrorism”.
The protests were the latest in a series of rallies denouncing the British government’s ban of Palestine Action. The group took responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England that caused an estimated 7 million pounds ($9.4m) of damage to two aircraft. Palestine Action said its activists were responding to the UK’s indirect military support for Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Huda Ammori, cofounder of Palestine Action, said ahead of Saturday’s protests that they would “go down in our country’s history as a momentous act of collective defiance of an unprecedented attack on our fundamental freedoms”. The force said the average age of those arrested on Saturday was 54, with six teenagers, 97 aged in their 70s, and 15 octogenarians. A roughly equal number of men and women were detained.
Police announced this week that the first three people had been charged in the English and Welsh criminal justice system with supporting Palestine Action following their arrests at a July 5 demonstration. The Met revealed a further 26 case files following other arrests on that day are due to be submitted to prosecutors “imminently” and that more would follow related to later protests.
Meanwhile, demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza marched in central London on Sunday. The protesters, who planned to march to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s residence in Downing Street for a rally, include Noga Guttman, a cousin of 24-year-old captive Evyatar David.
The video showed an emaciated David saying he was digging his own grave inside a tunnel in Gaza. “We are united in one clear and urgent demand: the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” Stop the Hate, a coalition of groups organising the march, said in a statement. “Regardless of our diverse political views, this is not a political issue – it is a human one”.