Over 40 prominent UK legal scholars have condemned the actions of the Met Police in relation to Saturday 18 January’s Palestine March in London in a letter to the home secretary. They have called the Met’s approach to policing “an abuse of police powers” and called on the government repeal repressive legislation and defend the right to protest as a cornerstone of democracy.
It comes as news has broken of the Met Police boss schmoozing with the pro-Zionist organisation the British Board of Deputies AFTER Saturday’s march
Met Police: getting it from all angles
Events on Saturday at the national Palestine protest have drawn a wave of criticism from across the political and social spectrum towards the Metropolitan Police.
The Met reneged on a previous agreement to allow a march from BBC Portland Place to Whitehall, a route taken several times before. It then sought to impose a route the pro-Israel Board of Deputies publicly claimed that it had proposed to the police.
This was rejected by the Palestine Coalition organising group. Finally, the Met banned any alternative march route allowing only a rally in Whitehall.
On the day there was a massive police presence, with police obstructing the gathering for the rally in many respects. There was an unusually high number of arrests of protestors.
The chief steward who organises the demonstrations for the Palestine Coalition in discussion with police was violently arrested on the day, and with the director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, subsequently charged with offences under the Public Order Act.
Schmoozing with the Board of Deputies
It has emerged that the day after the protest the Met Police chief Mark Rowley addressed a meeting of the Board of Deputies in which he boasted he had “used conditions on the protests more than we ever have done before”, and that his team imposed “sharper and stronger conditions” on the organisers of the demonstration.
As Middle East Eye reported;
The day after the rally, on Sunday, Rowley gave a speech at an event held by the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews, where he said that “the powers to condition protests are quite limited – we’ve used conditions on the protests more than we ever have done before in terms of times, constraints, routes”.
“We have to take into account the Human Rights Act, that’s what the law says, and of course the rights of all communities, the rights of protesters and freedom of speech, etc,” Rowley said.
The Board of Deputies supported Israel’s war on Gaza and slammed the Labour government for imposing a partial arms embargo on Israel in September.
It was also one of the groups that reportedly urged the Met to ban the pro-Palestine march’s original route.
Dr. Paul O’Connell, Reader in Law, SOAS University of London said:
This letter is signed by over 40 leading lawyers and academics. People who, in one capacity or another, have worked on issues related to human rights and the rule of law for decades. It shows, in no uncertain terms, that these experts have the gravest of concerns about the policing of the PSC demonstration on 18 January 2025, and more generally about the assault on the right to protest in Britain.
Freedom to assemble and protest is the very lifeblood of a democratic society. If people protesting the commission of a genocide in Gaza are not safe to do so, then it bodes ill for individual freedom and democratic life in Britain in the twenty-first century.
The Home Secretary, and anyone else in a position of authority, has an obligation to act now, to make sure that the law and police tactics in Britain protect and facilitate the right to protest, as required by regional and international human rights treaties that Britain is a party to.
Featured image via the Canary
