Two major protests are taking place on Saturday in London, with the Metropolitan police warning it may be one of its busiest days in recent years.<\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of people are marching in the capital for Unite the Kingdom, an event arranged by far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, and the annual pro-Palestine Nakba Day march.<\/p>\n
The Met drafted more than 4,000 officers to police the two events, a scale of operation it said was \u201cunprecedented in recent years,\u201d over fears that far-right demonstrators may clash with pro-Palestine marchers if not kept apart.<\/p>\n
Police put up barriers to block routes between the two protests and officers are equipped with riot gear and have drones to scan for suspects, as well as the use of live facial recognition cameras.<\/p>\n
The force said that 11 arrests had been made by 1 p.m. local time on Saturday, though the offenses and the connection to which protest were not specified.<\/p>\n
The protests come in the wake of growing concern over rising levels of hate crime, in particular antisemitism, in Britain. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said earlier this month that there may be a case for banning some protests, and people chanting slogans such as \u201cglobalize the intifada,\u201d based on an Arabic word for uprising, should be prosecuted. He pledged to use the \u201cfull power of the state\u201d to crack down on antisemitism in the wake of an April stabbing in North London where two Jewish men were hospitalized.<\/p>\n
\u201cFears in Jewish communities are particularly heightened, but we have also seen increased concerns more broadly, including in Muslim communities,\u201d the Met\u2019s Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman said this week. \u201cTaken together, these factors give us significant cause for concern heading into the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
The terrorism threat level in the U.K. was raised to severe at the beginning of May, while the government\u2019s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, has said antisemitism is now the \u201cbiggest national security emergency\u201d in almost a decade.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the U.K. government banned 11 foreign far-right agitators from entering the country ahead of the Unite the Kingdom march planned for Saturday.<\/p>\n
Yaxley-Lennon\u2019s previous Unite the Kingdom event last September drew at least 100,000 people, and Harman said while there were many peaceful attendees, there were also clashes with police and anti-Muslim hate speech incidents, with a number of arrests for violence made.<\/p>\n
Pressure on police is exacerbated by the fact that tens of thousands of football fans will also be in London on Saturday, heading to Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup Final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two major protests are taking place on Saturday in London, with the Metropolitan police warning it may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-965628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116587278330774794","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965628","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=965628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}