Mass Arrests Will Only Fuel the Campaign of Defiance Against Genocide and Repression

The scenes that unfolded in Parliament Square on 9 August mark a watershed moment in British politics. 522 people were arrested for holding up cardboard signs in defiance of the prohibition of expressions of ‘support’ for Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000. According to Defend our Juries, this was the largest single batch of arrests that London’s police force has ever made during a single protest, exceeding the 339 during poll tax riots in 1990.  The total is more than double the number of people arrested for terrorism offences in the whole of the previous year.

The circumstances of the arrests are also highly significant. The police hauled away hundreds of people peacefully sitting on the ground holding handwritten placards. Previous mass arrests at protests have often taken place in a context where aggressive and violent policing led to clashes with demonstrators or large-scale damage to property. As an eighteen-year-old university student, I attended my first demonstration. Just months after the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, the Anti-Nazi League organized a march calling for the closure of the British National Party’s bookshop in Welling. As the march filed past , I remember seeing riot police brandishing shields and batons silhouetted along the skyline. They later charged into the crowd, at one point hitting chief steward Julie Waterson on the head as she negotiated with senior police officers. A later generation of students and faculty will remember what it was like to protest against the sudden increase in tuition fees, when, in 2010, police kettled and arrested thousands of demonstrators. Again, riot police lashed out at the crowds, nearly killing Alfie Meadows in a baton charge.

Nothing like this happened on Saturday. Yet the Metropolitan Police once again surpassed themselves in terms of the sheer scale of repression, calling in ‘mutual aid’ from forces as far away as Wales and Humberside to drag off over 500 people for the ‘crime’ of writing on a placard. 

At one level it is clear that the intensification of genocide in Palestine is driving this process, and specifically by the government’s concern over the growing rage among ordinary people who want to stop the flow of arms to Israel. More and more of us are demanding a definitive end to British support for a racist, authoritarian regime committing atrocities on a terrifying scale. It isn’t an accident that campaigns by pro-Israeli groups urging the criminalisation of pro-Palestine protest have reached fever pitch just as starvation deaths are mounting and Israeli tanks roll in to occupy the ruins of Gaza City. Nor is it surprising that Keir Starmer’s government is happy to protect both Britain’s longstanding alliance with Israel and the profits of arms companies such as BAE Systems and Elbit by clamping down on Palestine Action.

But repression and resistance on this scale isn’t only about Palestine. Events on 9 August emerge from the interaction between live-streamed genocide and Britain’s ‘slide into authoritarianism’, as UCU general secretary Jo Grady put it in a statement issued on 9 July.

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It was this denunciation of the proscription of Palestine Action that I had in mind when I sat down in Parliament Square on Saturday afternoon. On one placard I wrote ‘UCU opposes genocide and condemns the proscription of Palestine Action’ at just before 1pm. My other placard said ‘Stop arming Israel. I support Palestine Action’s campaign against proscription.’

Less than an hour later, I was sitting in a police van on the side of the square, under arrest for an alleged breach of the Terrorism Act by apparently showing ‘support’ for a proscribed organisation. In fact, I was showing support for my own trade union’s national policy, and for efforts by a proscribed organisation to reverse proscription.

Thousands of people articulated the same views in online letters, including the ‘Protest is not Terrorism’ statement (now signed by more than 1600 individuals and a growing number of trade union branches and national executive committees). I am also a signatory to the statement by a group of international scholars posted on the Verso blog on 6 August, which warned of the threat to fundamental freedoms posed by proscription.

Having been told by the police that my placards met the criteria for arrest under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, I was released on ‘street bail’ and ordered to reappear at a police station in late October. 

My arrest illustrates very well the dangers that the proscription of Palestine Action poses to our fundamental freedoms. Using the Terrorism Act to ban a direct action group that targets property rather than people – specifically by disrupting the supply of weapons to an army which international courts are investigating for genocide – contradicts generally accepted definitions of ‘terrorism’ in international law. A point which the UN’s Human Rights chief Volker Türk made in a forceful statement on 25 July.

The arrests on Saturday stretch the definition of ‘terrorism’ even further, as Amnesty International warned the Met several days in advance. No wonder even the police officer arresting me was at times confused as to whether he was supposed to be doing so under the Public Order Act (more commonly used for policing protest) or the Terrorism Act.

The mass processing of prisoners in Great Scotland Yard, where I queued for hours in the sun with hundreds of others, together with the pre-printed ‘street bail’ forms we were given, all point to an adaptation of police tactics from the waves of mass arrests targeting climate protests such as those organised by Extinction Rebellion in 2019.

The acceleration of the Terrorism Act’s transformation into yet another anti-protest law will have grave consequences for democracy, which is why the proscription of Palestine Action must be opposed and challenged by everyone who thinks that governments should serve the people rather than the other way around. Saturday’s policing operation builds on an existing campaign of repression that targets pro-Palestine activists for protest speeches placards and social media posts using the same legislation. 

 ‘Authoritarian’ is not a word I use lightly, yet this use of ‘terrorism’ as a catch-all, fuzzy concept to encompass speech, actions and even thoughts which the government deems criminal does bear comparisons with the behaviour of the brutal regimes I’ve spent most of my adult life researching and writing about.

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Of course, the consequences of defying genuinely authoritarian regimes are much more severe than what most people arrested on Saturday are likely to experience. Yet the logic of criminalising something as vague and poorly defined as “support” for a proscribed organisation gives wide scope for abuse of basic human rights.  My arrest was for carrying placards which only mentioned support for campaigning against proscription, referencing the position adopted by my own trade union.

The apparent contradiction between arresting hundreds of people on terrorism charges and then promptly releasing them on ‘street bail’ begins to break down when viewed from this perspective. It becomes perfectly logical within an authoritarian mindset, one that responds to mass dissent at government complicity in genocide by giving the police ever greater discretion and a license to use a wider range of repressive tools to suppress protest. This style of government is all about placing citizens in a state of perpetual anxiety about whether they have crossed an imaginary ‘red line’ into criminality or not, simply for peacefully expressing their political opinions.

Yes, there is an authoritarian logic at work here which must be challenged in the streets and not just in the courts if we want to stop the slide towards a society in which the space for protest against war and genocide disappears.

There are, however, hopeful as well as pessimistic lessons to be drawn from 9 August. According to Defend our Juries, hundreds of people challenged the ban and were not arrested. The police and government spokespersons seeking to defend the clampdown have faced a barrage of criticism from the wider public and the media.. The decisive fact is that the mass movement for Palestine is expanding.

At one point on Saturday the police van taking me away from Parliament Square got trapped in the flood of tens of thousands of demonstrators arriving at Downing Street from the national march. All of us waiting to be ‘processed’ in Great Scotland Yard, yards from the demonstration, were buoyed by the huge crowds who gathered at the street entrance to chant ‘Let them go’ and ‘Shame on you’ at the police. No one should be fooled, meanwhile, by the home secretary’s claim that only Palestine Action is affected by restrictions on the right to protest, when the organisers of the national demonstrations for Palestine are also facing trial.

What happens in the next few months has the potential to shape British politics for many years to come. The academic year that is about to start promises to be more turbulent than the last. Student activists have already faced numerous examples of repression – both by their own institutions as the outrageous decision of SOAS management to expel Haya Adam, president of SOAS Palestine Society illustrates, and at the hands of the police. The proscription of Palestine Action will put many at risk of being criminalised further. Yet as Israel’s project of annihilation continues apace, the signs from last Saturday are that the campaign of defiance against genocide and repression will continue to grow.

Anne Alexander is an author, journalist and researcher. She is currently working on a book on the consequences of economic and military competition over AI and is a signatory to the Protest is not Terrorism open letter and to the open letter from academics opposing the proscription of Palestine Action.