It is a disgrace that the Al-Quds day march on Sunday has been banned by the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. The implications for the fundamental right to peaceful protest, already facing the most serious assault in decades, are extremely serious.
The home secretary’s justifications include that the march would lead to serious public disorder, even though it has been a peaceful demonstration for the past 40 years, “due to the scale of the protest and counter protests in the context of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East”.
It is not necessary to agree with all the politics of Al-Quds day to know that this is an attack on Palestine and the anti-war movement. The Met police citing “high numbers of protestors and counter protestors coming together and the extreme tensions between different factions” could potentially be used to ban any number of demonstrations where there are strongly opposing views.
Citing the “volatile situation in the Middle East, with the Iranian regime attacking British allies and military bases overseas” in order to justify the ban is undoubtedly a further example of political policing by the Met.
We note that the Met allowed UKIP to march with banners calling for “mass deportations” of Muslim “invaders” and that last September, supporters of Tommy Robinson violently assaulted anti-racists and the police but he is being allowed to organise another march in May.
Coming as it does in the middle of the criminal trial of two leaders of the Palestine movement, it’s impossible not to see this ban as part of a mounting campaign against those who stand against war and for a free Palestine.
We call on the police to step back from these growing and unprecedented restrictions on our right to protest.