Direct action group Youth Demand has made April the month they ‘shut it down for Palestine’ in London. Rightly so, given the unprecedented scale of violence and war crimes Israel is meting out in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian territories.
However, Youth Demand have been met with what it calls ‘unprecedented repression’ in London – as its wildcat shut downs clearly start to rattle the state and subservient members of the public.
Youth Demand: mashing up the capital
As the Canary has been documenting, Youth Demand have been taking direct action in London. It’s over Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and war crimes and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
After the now-infamous Met Police raid on a group meeting in a Quaker building, Youth Demand has been unrepentant in its resolve to shut London down. The past few days has seen the group block multiple roads:
Members of the public were already getting rattled at this point:
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It also staged a protest outside foreign secretary David Lammy’s home address – in what the group has now dubbed ‘Silence of the Lammy’:
However, it has been the road blocks and rallies that have been most frowned upon by the state and the public.
Cops and the public: cracking down
As the Canary previously reported, a rally outside Senate House Library grabbed the attention of the far right. Then, on Tuesday 8 April another rally, this time at the Ministry of Defence, saw cops nick one activist for ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
Also on 8 April at a road block a man assaulted members of Youth Demand and tried to steal a journalist’s camera. As one social media user put it:
This man decided it was a good idea to assault activists this morning, throwing several of them to the floor before grabbing a journalist’s camera and attempting to snatch it off his neck.
Imagine being more angered by a 10 minute delay than 20,000 dead children.
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The repression continued on Wednesday 9 April, as another member of Youth Demand was also arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance:
🚨 UNPRECEDENTED REPRESSION CONTINUES
Today at Southwark Crown Court a young person has been arrested for conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.
The state is scared of us telling the truth. We will not be intimidated.
Join us on the streets: https://t.co/rqU3Oswm2K pic.twitter.com/gpfkq2UGPC
— Youth Demand (@youth_demand) April 9, 2025
In UK law, “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance” refers to an agreement between two or more people to intentionally or recklessly cause a public nuisance, which is now a statutory offense under Section 78 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022. This replaced a previous common law offence.
In other words, this is cops and the so-called justice system policing pre-crime: nicking people for planning to do something, rather than actually doing it. Of course, under the Tories PCSC Act this is not new.
The state jailed the Just Stop Oil ‘Whole Truth Five’ for years for organising but not taking part in a protest. Similarly, the state used this argument against a member of Palestine Action.
Just think about this for a minute.
The world is ending – but think of the nuisance from Youth Demand
The Canary has, in the past few hours, reported on Israel burning journalist Ahmad Mansour alive in a tent. He is now dead. Many readers will have seen on social media the image of a decapitated baby; decapitated by Israel when it bombed a UN refugee camp. 50,000 slaughtered Palestinians – mostly women and children – later, yet sycophantic cops and servile members of the public think it’s Youth Demand causing the nuisance in society?
Our world stands on a knife edge – more so perhaps than any time in human history. From the climate crisis to brazen far-right authoritarianism in supposed democracies in the West via Israel’s impunity to commit genocide and a sixth extinction event – the ‘world order’ those in power sell us is falling apart at the seams. Humans will be lucky to make it another half-century.
Youth Demand is rightly responding to this. And let’s be honest, the group’s actions are hardly earth-shattering.
They are peacefully deploying mid-level civil disobedience in the face of cataclysmic world events. Yet here in the West, agents of the state and the public still believe they can go about their daily business like nothing is happening – and that any disruption to this is disastrous.
Think yourselves lucky Lucy Parsons isn’t around
Cops and dumb-ass members of the public (sorry, but they are) are lucky Youth Demand isn’t inspired by Black anarchist Lucy Parsons. As she once said:
Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.
Given how the rich and powerful kill the rest of us with impunity day in, day out – well, y’know.
However, for now it’s Youth Demand (and others like Palestine Action) on the front line in the UK at least. And given the scale of persecution and repression that’s building around them. they need all our solidarity and support right now.
Featured image and additional images via the Youth Demand
