Ahead of the next UK national rally in London on January 13 against Israel’s genocidal destruction of Gaza, thousands protested in regional actions around Britain on Saturday in a “Day of Action for Palestine”.
There were 11 protests in London, including one in Camden which marched to the constituency offices of Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, both supporters of Israeli genocide. The rally in Harrow included a march to the office of Starmer’s Shadow Minister for International Trade of the United Kingdom, Gareth Thomas MP.
The march in Camden passes the local London Underground station, January 6, 2024
More than 50 protests were held nationwide, including in Birmingham, Brighton, Derby, Leicester, Lancaster, Manchester, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Sheffield, Glasgow, Dundee, and Cardiff. Thousands protested at the rally in Belfast. A rally outside the RTE broadcaster, called by Mothers against Genocide was held in Dublin, Ireland. 108 pairs of shoes were laid out in a display to signify the number of journalists killed by the Israel Defence Forces since the conflict began in October.
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London’s Metropolitan Police mobilised to clamp down on the protests. Protesters, led by the Free Palestine Coalition gathered in St James Park, planned to block nearby Westminster Bridge, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament. As the protests was assembling, police removed one of the group’s sound systems. Scuffles broke out police attempted to break up the protest by moving several organisers away from the area. They arrested two women under the Royal Parks and Open Spaces Regulation 1997.
As protesters staged a sit-in near Westminster Bridge, hundreds of officers moved in to prevent the action from spreading. Police kettled the demonstration of more than 1,000 people, forming a wall on three sides, preventing them from moving for hours and stopping any more protesters accessing the bridge. Protesters chanted, “Who do you serve, how do you protect?”
Police did not give a figure on how many officers were deployed, but stated, “A large number of officers responded to a protest in central London this afternoon.” At 2.15pm the Met announced they had “imposed conditions under Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. This means the group is only allowed to protest in Bridge Street and it must end by 3pm.”
WSWS reporters spoke to some of these protesting at the rally in Camden, London against Starmer’s support for the genocide.
Zineb, a teacher, said, “Unless you give a voice to these issues, they end up being not forgotten but hidden. Especially with this issue there’s so many ways it gets hidden or people’s words get misconstrued; you get told you can’t call for a ceasefire because that’s a horrific thing to say, that you don’t want children to die!”
Her partner, a Palestinian, added, “To be taken seriously needs action. I’m not sure that trusting the political class to act on our interests is reasonable anymore.