Streets Ahead

British arms have killed more than 90 already displaced people at prayer in al-Taba'een school, but the Government's resumption of the funding of UNRWA, its withdrawal of its objections to the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants, and its hints at the restriction of arms sales and at the recognition of Palestine, were all consequences of the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, of the election of four more Left Independents, of the defeat of Jonathan Ashworth and Thangam Debbonaire, of the halving of Keir Starmer's constituency vote, and of the near-defeat of Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Jess Phillips. All of those went back in turn to the Gaza ceasefire marches, which had already brought down Suella Braverman. There had not been such a successful movement from the streets in Britain since the Poll Tax and its Prime Minister were swept away.

And on Wednesday evening, the same movement, complete with the same flag, and again organised by the people who had been driven out of the Labour Party and by their allies, earned the praise of the Police by frightening off the streets the people who, having rioted at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day and injured nine Police Officers, had been rioting for a week until they were told to expect opposition. Faced with that, they ran away and hid.

The rioters were clearly not afraid of the Police, having spent successive days and nights throwing concrete slabs at them, burning their vehicles, and so on. Nor were they deterred by derisory sentences. The Just Stop Oil irritants deserved to go to prison, but these racially aggravated attempted murderers obviously deserved to do so for longer; if the four Green MPs made the complaints that anyone might make about undue leniency, then they would have a point. No, it was when the Left and the unions brought the People to the streets that the streets were reclaimed. They are ours now.

Those who would flatter themselves that they were the counterparts of Continental Cagoules need to be made to explain to those supposed equals why they had decided to watch the counterdemonstrations on television. Meanwhile, the Labour Party had banned its MPs from attending, not that almost any of them would have wished to have done so, because the Government had expected 100 riots, leading to an assault on civil liberties such as had characterised all parties in office in the last 30 years. A classic example lies behind the controversy around the deduction of bed and board costs from the compensation of the wrongfully imprisoned. Even the Liberal Democrats were in the Cabinet when the law was changed so that those applying to be so compensated, and whose appeals had been upheld, would henceforth be required to prove their innocence beyond reasonable doubt, and to do so to a committee of state functionaries. Note that at least in my case, the judge specifically instructed the jury to "disregard the concept" of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. I have explicitly never been convicted beyond reasonable doubt.

In providing the excuse for the latest set of such measures, anyone who looked more like a Palestinian than Keir Starmer did would have been collateral damage. Let their hostels burn. As for dead coppers, they would have been grist to the mill. But this time, it was not to be. For having commended the "show of unity from communities" that took back control, Sir Mark Rowley has attracted the ire of Nick Thomas-Symonds, who is a Minister only because Ashworth lost his seat, and who is a Starmer tribute act, another of those suburban headmasters who think that they are Robocop. Unless I am very much mistaken, while he oversaw the paperwork for a few years, Starmer has never appeared at the Bar to prosecute a criminal case. I have met a lot more sometime criminal defendants than the average layman has, and every one of them, including me, would have laughed in his face. As everyone still should, and never more so than now. Whose streets? Our streets.