{"id":336740,"date":"2025-08-11T21:39:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/336740\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T21:39:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:39:17","slug":"anger-fear-and-a-total-rejection-of-politics-the-palestine-action-protest-was-a-snapshot-of-britain-today-andy-beckett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/336740\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today | Andy Beckett"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority.<\/p>\n

You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people<\/a> in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd \u2013 to chants of \u201cgenocide police!\u201d, \u201cshame on you!\u201d and \u201cfascist scum!\u201d \u2013 to a ring of police vans at the square\u2019s perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away.<\/p>\n

So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair\u2019s Labour<\/a> government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, so that the capital\u2019s police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to \u201cmakeshift outdoor processing centres<\/a>\u201d, the Observer reported \u2013 as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. \u201cGiven the numbers of people arrested,\u201d said the Metropolitan police, \u201cit would have been entirely unrealistic for officers to recognise individuals who returned to [the square].\u201d \u201cEntirely unrealistic\u201d is not a reassuring phrase for those who believe that the government\u2019s approach to Palestine Action is practical and based on sound law.<\/p>\n

If charged, those arrested will enter the overburdened criminal justice system and then, if found guilty, Britain\u2019s bursting jails. It\u2019s likely that further supporters of Palestine Action will follow. The organiser of Saturday\u2019s protest, Defend Our Juries, has promised<\/a> a sustained campaign of \u201cmass, public defiance\u201d, to make the proscription of Palestine Action \u201cunworkable\u201d.<\/p>\n

This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act \u2013 a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution \u2013 states that anyone who \u201cwears, carries or displays an article\u201d publicly, \u201cin such a way\u2026 as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of\u201d Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who \u201cinvites support for\u201d the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years.<\/p>\n

One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. She told me: \u2018I don\u2019t like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government\u2019s funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour\u2019s thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament\u2019s leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems.<\/p>\n

The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest\u2019s focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain\u2019s police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era\u2019s escalating crises.<\/p>\n

As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action\u2019s proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates.<\/p>\n

While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older \u2013 usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: \u201cI don\u2019t like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not.<\/p>\n

But either way, broad opposition erodes a government\u2019s legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters \u2013 much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to.<\/p>\n

Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. \u201cI\u2019m in two minds about carrying on with this,\u201d one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there\u2019s no safe space for anything at all.<\/p>\n