{"id":1146,"date":"2025-04-02T04:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T04:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1146\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T04:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T04:10:08","slug":"the-quaker-meeting-house-raid-shames-the-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1146\/","title":{"rendered":"The Quaker Meeting House raid shames the Met"},"content":{"rendered":"

When news broke over the weekend that two parents had been arrested at their home in Hertfordshire for criticising their child\u2019s school<\/a> too vigorously, you could be forgiven for thinking that policing in Britain couldn\u2019t sink any lower. Unfortunately, you would be mistaken. Before we even had time to process one dystopian event, it emerged that a handful of supporters of a climate \/ anti-Israel group had been arrested by the Metropolitan Police<\/a> at a Quaker Meeting House in central London on Thursday night. <\/p>\n

Judging by the severity of the Met\u2019s intervention, you might think the detainees were jihadists planning to blow up parliament or hijack an airplane. In fact, they were members of Youth Demand<\/a>, an irritating but hardly terroristic organisation opposed to fossil fuels and the Jewish State. According to reports<\/a>, six women, the youngest of which was 18, met at the Westminster Quaker Meeting House in St Martin\u2019s Lane to plan \u2018non-violent civil resistance\u2019 in April. In London, in 2025, it seems that this kind of gathering is serious enough to warrant 20 Met officers, armed with tasers, to force their way into a building owned by a religious denomination committed to peace. All were handcuffed, while photos of the building<\/a> show a cracked glass door and a broken lock. One of the women had her room in her university halls searched.<\/p>\n

They were busted for \u2018suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance\u2019. The Met have provided no detailed justification<\/a> for the arrests, beyond alleging that the group plotted to \u2018shut down\u2019 the capital through \u2018swarming\u2019 and \u2018road blocks\u2019. In other words, they were arrested for precrime. This is the same authoritarian statute the Met used to suppress republican protests<\/a> during the coronation of King Charles in 2023. Police accused campaign group Republic of possessing \u2018locking on\u2019 devices, used to chain people to railings and such. The Met had to apologise<\/a> after it became clear these \u2018devices\u2019 were in fact straps used for holding together placards.<\/p>\n

Youth Demand does indeed plan to \u2018shut down London day after day after day<\/a>\u2019. That might sound troubling \u2013 or at the very least annoying. But, judging by their past efforts, these activists are barely capable of shutting down a high street for 10 minutes. To date, their greatest achievement has been covering a defenceless Picasso<\/a> with a picture of a Palestinian mother and child at the National Gallery. Youth Demand\u2019s month of campaigning is due to begin tonight<\/a> in Bloomsbury, where the only people it will be \u2018disrupting\u2019 will be a handful of students, academics and second-hand booksellers. <\/p>\n

There is no fundamental right to block roads and disrupt everyday life, of course. But, on some level, all protest is disruptive. That\u2019s kind of the point. Plus, investigating and arresting peaceful protesters before they\u2019ve even begun protesting can only have illiberal consequences, greenlighting spying and surveillance.<\/p>\n

According to The Times<\/a>, the officers involved in arresting Youth Demand also interrupted a life-drawing class and a private therapy session, the groups having also hired rooms from the Quakers on the night in question. One wonders if, when police barged into a room, only to encounter a naked model posing on a box, some of them felt as stupid as they now look to the rest of us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for the police to stop interfering with our civil liberties \u2013 and get back to tackling actual crime.<\/p>\n

Hugo Timms<\/strong>\u00a0is an editorial assistant at\u00a0spiked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When news broke over the weekend that two parents had been arrested at their home in Hertfordshire for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[780,781,12,529,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-1146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-civil-liberties","10":"tag-crime-and-the-law","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-police","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114266415020861045","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}