Defend The Right To Protest

Here:

Dozens of prominent UK legal scholars have called for an independent inquiry into the Metropolitan Police actions during our pro-Palestine protest on Saturday 18 January at which our chief steward Chris Nineham was violently arrested.

In a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the lawyers describe the policing of the demonstration as “a disproportionate, unwarranted and dangerous assault on the right to assembly and protest”, and call on the government to intervene as the “drift of British law and policing poses a fundamental threat to the right to protest”.

Full text of the letter below:

Letter to the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper MP 

CC: Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London

CC: Richard Hermer, Attorney General 

Defend the Right to Protest

The arrest of the Chief Steward, Chris Nineham, and various participants in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) demonstration on the 18 January 2025 and the subsequent bringing of charges against Ben Jamal, the Director of the PSC, represent a disproportionate, unwarranted and dangerous assault on the right to assembly and protest in Britain.

This right has been held central to democratic life in Britain for centuries. Advancing the causes of the Chartists, trade unionists, the Suffragettes and many more. It is now formally protected via the Human Rights Act 1998 through Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Taken together, these two articles have been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights as conferring on individuals an extensive right to peaceful protest, which imposes stringent obligations, both negative and positive, on public bodies to respect and facilitate the right to protest.

Over the last few years, this right has been undermined by a raft of new enactments, and by a shift in policing tactics that emphasises controlling and limiting protest, rather than facilitating it, as required by both European and international legal standards. This assault on the right to protest has heightened in the last year, with anti-war and pro-Palestine protestors experiencing particularly acute attacks on their rights to peacefully protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The conditions imposed by the Metropolitan Police on the PSC demonstration on 18 January 2025 were disproportionate and an abuse of police powers. Despite a demonstrable track record of overwhelmingly peaceful protests for over a year, the police prevented the demonstration to assemble near, or march towards, the BBC on Saturday without offering any compelling evidence. The police thus seemed to be motivated by political considerations that seek to limit the efficacy of the protesters and shield state institutions from criticism.

The subsequent arrest of the Chief Steward and others based on factual claims that available video evidence seems to clearly controvert, further reflects this abuse of police powers. It is a worrying escalation in the assault on the right to protest in general, and on anti-war and pro-Palestine protests in particular.

As lawyers and legal scholars, we echo the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and many others that the drift of British law and policing poses a fundamental threat to the right to protest. A threat that it behoves all of us concerned with human rights, equality and the rule of law to resist.

We believe the charges should be dropped against those arrested, or subsequently charged, in relation to alleged public order offences on 18 January 2025, and that an independent investigation should be conducted into the policing of this protest. More fundamentally, we call for a repeal of the raft of anti-protest laws passed in recent years, and a recalibration of the law in a way which genuinely protects the right to protest.

Dr Paul O’Connell, Reader in Law, SOAS University of London 

Dr Nimer Sultany, Reader in Law, SOAS University of London 

Dr Daniella Lock, Lecturer in Law, King’s College London 

Dr Kanika Sharma, Senior Lecturer in Law, SOAS University of London 

Dr Gregory Davies, Lecturer in Law, University of Liverpool 

Dr Eva Nanopoulos, Reader in Law, Queen Mary, University of London 

Dr Lena El-Malak, independent legal consultant

Dr Tanzil Chowdhury, Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary, University of London

Professor Neve Gordon, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Dr Nicola Perugini, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Edinburgh

Professor Jeff King, Professor of Law, UCL Laws

Professor Marco Goldoni, Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Glasgow

Professor Laleh Khalili, University of Exeter

Dr Sarah Keenan, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Professor Penny Green, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Professor David Whyte School of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Professor David Mead, School of Law, University of East Anglia

Dr Shahd Hammouri, Lecturer in International Law at the University of Kent Law School

Dr Michelle Staggs Kelsall, Senior Lecturer in International Law, SOAS University of London 

Professor Kristian Lasslett, School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, University of Ulster

Dr Maria Tzanakopoulou, Birkbeck, School of Law 

Dr Sara Razai, British Institute of International and Comparative Law, London

Dr Nicolette Busuttil, Lecturer in Law, SOAS University of London

Dr Luigi Daniele, Senior Lecturer in IHL and ICL, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University

Dr Andrew Pitt, Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London

Dr Zoe Adams, Affiliated Lecturer in Law, University of Cambridge

Dr Rose Parfitt, Senior Lecturer, Kent Law School, University of Kent

Dr Steven Cammiss, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham

Dr Mazen Masri, Senior Lecturer in Law, City St George’s, University of London

Professor Lynn Welchman, School of Law, SOAS University of London

David Amos, Associate Professor in Law, City St George’s, University of London

Paul McKeown, Barrister, Associate Professor of Law, City St George’s, University of London

Professor Tawhida Ahmed, City St George’s, University of London

Lord Hendy KC, Honorary Professor, Law Faculty, UCL

Professor Lutz Oette, School of Law, SOAS University of London

Dr Mayur Suresh, Reader, School of Law, SOAS, University of London

Dr Angela Sherwood, Lecturer, School of Law, Queen Mary, University of London

Dr Andrew Woodhouse, Lecturer, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool

Dr Vidya Kumar, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, SOAS, University of London, UK

Dr Josh Bowsher, Assistant Professor in Sociology, University of Sussex

Professor Violeta Moreno Lax, Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of London

Michael Bartlet, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, SOAS University of London

Jonathan Cook writes:

I was an eyewitness to events on Saturday. The Metropolitan police are lying when they claim the ex-Labour leader and MP John McDonnell forced their way through a police cordon.

The Metropolitan police, with the assistance of obedient media like The Guardian and BBC, are trying to frame as lawbreakers the organisers of the latest London rally, held this Saturday, against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Britain’s complicity in it.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell – both leftwing MPs who have found themselves politically homeless since Labour came under the authoritarian leadership of Keir Starmer – were issued cautions by the Met and interviewed on Sunday. Dozens of protesters have been arrested.

The Met has suggested that Corbyn, McDonnell and others broke through a police cordon to make their way from Whitehall into Trafalgar Square, supposedly breaching arbitrary conditions placed on the rally at short notice.

According to Adam Slonecki, who led the policing operation: “This was a serious escalation in criminality and one which we are taking incredibly seriously.”

The original aim of the protest was not to rally in Whitehall, but to mass outside the BBC’s offices, some distance away, to protest its consistently biased coverage favouring Israel, its downplaying of the slaughter of innocents in Gaza and its obscuring of the British government’s complicity in what the International Court of Justice ruled a year ago was a “plausible” genocide there.

After negotiations with the organisers, the police agreed months ago to the timing and route of Saturday’s march.

But the Met reneged on that agreement at the last moment, declaring a no-go zone around the BBC, which is funded by British taxpayers through a compulsory licence fee.

The specific purpose of Saturday’s peaceful protest – to highlight the institutional failings of the BBC in its reporting on Israel’s genocide – and the more general aim of opposing the British government’s collusion in the genocide have now been completely overshadowed by the police’s confected furore about the rally.

That will be a major relief to both the government and the BBC. Starmer would doubtless love to see the back of these regular protests, which have attracted hundreds of thousands of demonstrators and kept the spotlight on his government’s complicity, chiefly though arms sales and by providing Israel with intelligence and diplomatic cover.

What is clear is that the police account of Saturday’s events is a lie. I know that firsthand because I was there – and saw exactly what happened from up close.

Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the police, the video evidence confirms that the Met is lying. The videos show that, far from breaking through police lines, the police voluntarily opened the cordon at the top of Whitehall to let protesters into the square.

The question is why are the police smearing Corbyn and McDonnell, and why are they seeking to imply that peaceful protesters were disorderly, violent lawbreakers.

There is an unmistakable pattern to the police’s recent behaviour.

Throughout this affair, the Met has consistently acted in bad faith. One of the march organisers, Ben Jamal, of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, sets out the games the police have been playing over this Saturday’s march in detail here.

It is worth noting, as Jamal explains, that the objections to the march raised by the police, citing the concerns of the rabbi of a synagogue hundreds of metres from the BBC, are entirely bogus.

The original route of the march – the one the police belatedly banned – did not pass near the synagogue. There is also zero evidence that Jews have faced any form of intimidation from the demonstrations. That should hardly be surprising, given that there is a large and very visible Jewish contingent at every single march. One of the main speakers on Saturday was Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Notably, he received the biggest cheer of the day from the tens of thousands of demonstrators in Whitehall.

Let us note too that the rabbi’s concerns about the march are not rooted in any realistic risk to himself or his congregants. His public utterances make clear that he holds deeply racist views about the Palestinian people, whom he does not see as properly human. He wanted the march banned, it seems, because he approves of Israel’s genocidal actions. The marchers’ opposition to the genocide offends his twisted political worldview.

After the police revoked permission for the Saturday march at the last minute, the organisers bent over backwards to accommodate the police and the rabbi’s professed concerns. They reversed the order of the march so it would end at the BBC late in the day, and long after the synagogue’s Sabbath service had ended.

Still, the police refused to allow a march that went anywhere near the BBC.

After Saturday’s events, it is clear that the police’s aim all along was to frustrate the march. The plan was to constantly impose new, unreasonable “conditions” – restrictions intended to underscore to the demonstrators that the right to protest is no longer a foundational democratic right in Britain.

It has been turned into a privilege the police may nor may not concede, with the state able to nullify that right not on genuine public order grounds but for self-serving political reasons. That signifies we are already some way down the slippery slope towards a police state.

Further, the Met has been making it ever clearer that the route and the timing of the protests are no longer a negotiation between the march organisers and the police to ensure the safety of everyone involved. The Met now issues diktats, and ones that visibly serve the interests of Britain’s genocide-colluding government, its complicit national institutions like the BBC, and the Israel lobby, whose very purpose is to act as apologists for the Gaza genocide.

The Met’s statement on the march is revealing: “Conditions were put in place after taking into account the cumulative impact of the prolonged period of protest on Jewish Londoners, particularly when protests are in the vicinity of synagogues often on Saturdays, the Jewish holy day.”

The Met’s deeply racist statement assumes all “Jewish Londoners” are in favour of Israel’s genocide and that all of them find protests against it offensive. In doing so, the police choose to ignore the many thousands of Jews who regularly turn out at the protests to say Israel’s genocide is not being conducted in their name.

The Met’s message to those Jews is this: “No, the slaughter is in your name, whether you like it or not, because we and Israel say it is.”

The police also ignore, of course, the cumulative impact on British Palestinians of having to watch the slaughter of their families for 15 months, and on all people of good conscience in the UK whose mental and spiritual health has been damaged by the parade of crushed children’s bodies on our screens week after week, month after month.

The statement indicates something else too. That the negotiations over the right to demonstrate against Israel’s genocide now occur out of view, between the police and the Israel lobby, and over the heads of the protest organisers.

It is the same decades-old, western colonial script that has always treated the Palestinians as invisible in their own story. It echoes the way Washington and Israel negotiate between themselves on the fate of the Palestinians in their own homeland.

Now the British police and Israel lobby are doing the same: negotiating over the heads of the protesters on whether an anti-genocide rally will or will not be allowed to take place, and, if it will, where it can be held.

Freedom of assembly, and the right to demonstrate, are being shredded before our eyes. To insist on these foundational rights being upheld, as Corbyn and McDonnell have now discovered, is to have oneself turned into a pariah, into a “lawbreaker”.

The police have a clear game plan. Letting those who support a genocide decide whether those who oppose it are allowed to express their opposition is a surefire recipe for stirring up tensions, frustrations and anger.

The goal is both to overturn long-cherished rights fundamental to the idea of British democracy and to pitch the protesters into a direct confrontation with the police, and thereby craft a bogus narrative that the demonstrations are violent and criminal, as well as “antisemitic”.

We will see the clamour for banning the marches grow volubly. And no one will be more delighted than Starmer. The last thing he needs is for these protests to be highlighting his utter complicity in the slaughter of children in Gaza.

There is an issue here bigger even than the Gaza genocide. Are we going to resign ourselves to living in an authoritarian state, one where the police serve their political masters in deciding which rights we are permitted, and whether we are allowed to engage in any kind of meaningful protest against our government?

Corbyn, McDonnell and the march organisers had told the police precisely what they intended to do. They would march as far as the police allowed towards the BBC, and then, when the police blocked their way, they would lay down flowers, in memory of the slaughtered children in Gaza and in protest at the silencing of the demonstration. Then they would disperse. That is precisely what they did.

Now they are being portrayed by the police and by the establishment media as criminals. Meanwhile, the real villains – British leaders who have actively conspired in Israel’s genocide, and a media that has shielded those leaders from accountability – have licence to carry on with their crimes.

And John McEvoy writes:

Senior officers in London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have accepted invitations to address an Israeli think tank linked to its government and intelligence service, Mossad, Declassified has found.

Those figures include Mark Rowley, the MPS’ current commissioner, and Cressida Dick and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, two previous commissioners.

A number of high-ranking MPS officers have also accepted gifts or hospitality from the Israeli embassy in London, despite MPS guidance stating that such offers be refused.

The revelations come after the MPS, under pressure from the UK government, initially urged pro-Palestine organisations “to consider postponing any demonstrations in London” this weekend.

It then acknowledged that it did not have sufficient intelligence to justify banning the protest.

Collaboration between the Israeli government and the MPS dates back to at least the early 2000s, when an MPS team was sent to Israel to learn about the country’s counter-terror strategy.

International Institute for Counter-Terrorism 

The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) is an Israeli think tank based at Reichman University in Tel Aviv district. It was founded in 1996 as a forum for “international cooperation in the global struggle against terrorism”.

It offers “consulting and training” to foreign governments and corporations, provided by “the most senior veterans of the Israeli intelligence and security establishments”.

While the ICT claims it is “independent”, it is staffed and advised by an array of figures linked to Israel’s military and intelligence community.

The ICT’s founding director, Boaz Ganor, has served as a member of the advisory committee of the Israeli National Security Council on counter-terrorism, and was a consultant to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, on his book “Fighting Terrorism”.

Shabtai Shavit, the ICT’s chairman of the board between 2001 and his death in 2023, was the director of Mossad, Israel’s covert intelligence service, between 1989 and 1996.

The organisation’s founding president and other chair, Uriel Reichman, has served as a paratrooper and reservist in the IDF.

Other senior staff have similar backgrounds. The group’s managing director, Colonel (retired) Miri Eisin, previously served in the Israeli intelligence community while its research director, Eitan Azani, was a Colonel in Israel’s military with “experience in counter-terrorism in the regional and international arenas”.

The ICT strongly supports Israel’s current attacks on Gaza. It states these are “a decisive effort by Israel to safeguard the security and well-being of its citizens and to address the challenges posed by extremist elements in the region”.

‘I have learnt a huge amount’

Over recent years, a number of senior MPS figures have accepted invitations to speak at the ICT, which regularly offers to pay for travel and hospitality for attendees.

In 2013, MPS assistant commissioner for specialist operations Cressida Dick gave a keynote speech to the ICT’s 13th annual conference as part of a “large British contingent”, according to the ICT. She was pictured at the event alongside Jonathan Davis, a Lieutenant Colonel in the IDF spokesman’s office. 

MPS commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and its counter-terrorism director Dean Haydon spoke at the conference in 2014 and 2016 respectively.

In 2017, Mark Rowley, then the MPS assistant commissioner for specialist crime and operations, spoke at the ICT’s 17th annual conference. He was joined by Alistair Sutherland, the City of London police assistant commissioner.

In 2018, MPS deputy assistant commissioner Lucy D’Orsi delivered a keynote speech at the ICT “World Summit”.

In 2021, Dick returned to the ICT having been promoted to MPS commissioner, and delivered a keynote speech at its World Summit to mark the 20-year anniversary of 9/11.

“I have… benefitted from the conference in the past and I have learnt a huge amount on my various visits to Israel”, she told the audience.

The next year, MPS acting commissioner Stephen House was also invited to talk at the conference, but declined the offer due to scheduling difficulties.

UK foreign secretary James Cleverly subsequently addressed the ICT conference two months ago, telling the audience: “The work that this summit is doing is incredibly important not just to your country, not just to the region, but of course also to the United Kingdom”.

He added that the UK and Israel cooperate “bilaterally” in the context of “intelligence officers, police officers, diplomats” working to “stop those who would do us harm”.

Gifts and Hospitality

Public data reviewed by Declassified shows that senior MPS officers are also frequently offered gifts and hospitality by the Israeli government.

A number of offers have been accepted, despite the MPS’ “default position” that “officers will decline any gifts or hospitality offered to them”.

In May 2022, for instance, MPS deputy assistant commissioner for special operations Matt Twist accepted an invitation to a “celebration of Israel’s 74th Independence Day” issued by Tzipi Hotovely, the Israeli ambassador in London who is now vociferously defending its war crimes in Gaza.

Specialist operations assistant commissioner Matt Jukes was also invited to join the celebration, but failed to attend due to “previous diary commitments”. He did however accept a plaque from Israeli embassy officials.

Another MPS commander accepted a “gift of a framed certificate/plaque” from the Israeli National Police “during a visit to MPS” in March 2022. The nature of this visit remains unclear, and there was no publicity about it.

In November 2022, MPS commissioner Mark Rowley was also invited by the Israeli police to attend the International Commissioners Conference in Israel, but the offer was declined.

Senior MPS officers have also accepted gifts and hospitality offers from other states such as the US and Jordan.

Operation Kratos 

The MPS and the Israeli police have a longstanding relationship on counter-terror strategy.

Following the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, an MPS team was dispatched to Israel, Sri Lanka, and Russia to investigate “suicide terrorism and what tactics were available that the police in the UK could deploy to counter this threat”.

The research was formalised within Operation Kratos, a national security policy designed to defend against the threat of suicide terrorism in the UK.

According to academic Nick Vaughan-Williams, this new policy was “based primarily upon the experiences of the Israeli police who are told to shoot to the head if there is imminent danger to life”.

In the aftermath of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the MPS in 2005, human rights organisations including Amnesty International called for public scrutiny of Operation Kratos and its implementation of “shoot to kill” measures.

‘More doors will be open for him’ 

The MPS’ relationship with the Israeli police continued throughout the 2010s.

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the MPS commissioner between 2011 and 2017, met with Israeli police chief commissioner Yohanan Danino in 2014 during his five-day trip to Britain.

It was reportedly the first Israeli police visit to the UK in a number of years. “Now, after this visit, more doors will be open for him [Danino]”, observed Diane Eldad-Sheetrit, the head of the Israeli police’s International Co-operation Unit.

Danino also held meetings with the Central Operations Specialist Firearms Command (SO19) of the MPS.

Hogan-Howe would go on to join the advisory board of Carbyne, an Israeli communications firm then chaired by Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel.

In 2019, MPS deputy assistant commissioner Dean Haydon was forced to issue a statement after the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and other non-violent organisations were listed in a leaked Counter Terrorism Policing briefing document “used by Prevent”, the government’s programme to address radicalisation.

More recently, in May 2022, the MPS was met with a “deluge of criticism” after it welcomed an Israeli police delegation to London just one week after Israeli forces had killed Shireen Abu Akleh, a US-Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera.

The visit was facilitated by deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor, who would go on the next year to address the ICT’s 22nd international conference.