The Police Attack on the Palestine Demonstration in Whitehall Shows That We are Moving To an Authoritarian State - We Have to Adapt Accordingly

The Decision to Assemble in Whitehall Was a Crass and Cowardly Mistake - It Was An Open Invitation to the Police to Kettle Us - It Is the BBC or Nothing

John Rees Speech After the Release of Chris Nineham Who the Met Violently Assaulted

The Police have been building up for some time to the attack we saw on January 18th on the Palestine demonstration in Whitehall. Of course protection of Jews was their excuse. It always is.

This is the same institutionally racist Metropolitan Police that 88 years ago tried to force thousands of members of Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists and National Socialists through the Jewish East End.

Fortunately on October 4 1936 200,000 Jewish and non-Jewish workers put paid to the attempts of Home Secretary Sir John Simon and Met Police Commissioner Sir Philip Game to foist thousands of fascists and anti-Semites on Jews.

The difference today is that Jews are the favourite moral alibi for our ruling class. Instead of forming the backbone of the Communist Party and other left-wing groups, Jews today have moved upwards and right-wards as Zionism and racism has taken hold amongst large sections.

Then the Met was riddled with fascist supporters. Today it is still riddled with racists and fascists but their targets are now people of a different colour.

What happened yesterday was predictable. Suella Braverman was too quickly out of the blocks. It took a year of campaigning by Zionist organisations around the theme of Jewish fear of ‘hate marches’ and the advent of that faithful servant of the security state, Keir Starmer, before the Police decided to act.

The idea that Jewish worshippers were fearful of the marches was without any evidential foundation. It was, as the Met conceded, based on ‘feelings’. Of course supporters of genocide probably don’t welcome being reminded of what they are supporting but that’s tough luck. Free speech includes the right to offend racists.

Faced with the Met’s ludicrous justification of its decision what did Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and others do? They decided to meet in Whitehall instead. An utterly crass and stupid decision. Whitehall is ideal for kettling and bottling up demonstrators. The BBC HQ north of Oxford Street is an entirely different matter. To have effected a Police blockade there would have paralysed Oxford Street and the heart of the West End.

PSC has always striven to avoid confrontation with the State and StWC is not much better. The next demonstration, when Israel breaks the ceasefire and resumes the Genocide must be at the BBC HQ NOT Whitehall or any other venue.

We must say loud and clear that the Right to Protest and the Right of Free Assembly are not dependent upon the whims of the unelected Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Starmer or any of his genocidal flunkeys.

Today we are witnessing a wholesale attack on freedom of speech and the right to demonstrate. I am being prosecuted under the notorious s.12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for having the audacity to support Palestinian resistance. So are other Palestine solidarity activists like Sarah Wilkinson, Natalie Strecker and Richard Medhurst. PSC has given us no support whatsoever.

Rabbi Lerer of the Central Synagogue Who Supports Murder of Palestinian Kids

The time has come for Palestine solidarity activists to make it clear to Ben Jamal and Palestine Solidarity Campaign that we won’t accept Police Bans on Opposition to Genocide.

And if the fascist Rabbi Barry Lerer doesn’t like it tough. It’s called free speech and the right to protest. Rights that don’t exist in the Jewish Supremacist State of Israel that the rabbi loves so much.

We have the right to demonstrate outside the BBC and we will do so, Metropolitan Police notwithstanding.