London, October 28, 2023. Photo by Rose Morelli, used under CC license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

‘In Our Millions’: the policing of Palestine protests since October 7th 

The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) published the results of their research into how police in England and Wales have tried to repress the wave of protests against the genocide in Palestine. rs21 members Ambrose B and TK Adisa attended the launch and report back with key takeaways.

We attended the launch event for Netpol’s report on the policing of Palestine protests in England and Wales since October 7th, alongside representatives of various other left and pro-Palestinian organisations. The event was in panel format, chaired by Netpol director Kevin Blowe, and featuring the author of the report, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, and two activists from Workers from a Free Palestine, Amardeep and Saorsa. The event, and the report itself (‘In Our Millions: A Netpol report on the policing of protests in Britain against Israeli genocide in Palestine’), provided clarifying insight into the repressive and racialised policing of demonstrations in the last 9 months. 

Many of us have witnessed or experienced overt racism by police towards pro-Palestine protesters, since October 7th, either whilst attending protests ourselves or following the latest egregious incidents through social media, but the report provides a comprehensive account of these dynamics. Drawing together statistics, evidence and extensive testimony from legal observers, legal support organisations, protest organisers and a broad range of protest participants, it is underpinned by an analysis of the role of the state, media and organised Zionist forces in successfully framing pro-Palestine, anti-genocide protests as antisemitic “hate marches”. Importantly, it situates this specific phase of policing within a broader context of racism and political repression embedded in the function of the institution, through the decades of the War on Terror but also more recently in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, and 

It concludes, most obviously, that despite the oft-repeated claim that the police are successfully maintaining their “institutional neutrality” in their response to Palestine protests, in reality, the policing has been highly racialised and Islamophobic. Importantly, it concludes that rather than depending on newer police powers coming into effect in the last few years (e.g. the new Public Order Act and Policing, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022), police repression has largely utilised long-established public order tactics and powers. Whilst police have always been violent and repressive, crucially, the increased reliance on anti-terrorism laws and the weaponisation of “anti-racist” legislation around hate speech, is indeed a newer development.

The key trends are as follows:

• The policing of chants and uses of the term ‘intifada’ and the phrase “from the river to the sea,” flags, and more broadly, expressions of Palestinianness and Muslimness through the targeted harassment and arrests of those chanting in Arabic, wearing keffiyehs, or displaying items of clothing or flags with Arabic on them.
• Despite its non-legal character, the IHRA definition of antisemitism has indeed been invoked by police, politicians and Zionists more broadly, to justify the repression of statements which are by no means antisemitic. Relatedly, hate speech legislation has been used to charge protesters with racially-aggravated offences or “hate crimes”. This was often done based on the mere possibility that someone may see them and take offence, rather than actual complaints by offended passersby.
• The use of Public Order powers to get people to remove masks on request, which resulted in very few arrests, undermining the case for the use of Public Order powers in the first place. [We note, anecdotally, that when these powers were deployed, many protesters opted not to wear masks at all, out of fear over these powers].
• “Rigid adoption” of powers under the Public Order Act (1986), including restrictions on protest through section 12 (concerned with public processions) and 14 (concerned with public assemblies), which have been “wholly disproportionate to any realistic prospect of serious public disorder” or “serious disruption to the life of the community”. For example, restricting the area or route where protests can take place (meaning we have not been able to protest outside the Israeli embassy since the very first demonstration on October 9th), restricting the number of people allowed, and/or restricting the length of time a protest can occur.
  
• Unjustified use of Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014) giving police the powers to disperse protesters, under the guise of a likelihood of disorder or anti-social behaviour (harassment, alarm or distress) emerging from protest activities. These powers were used “in circumstances where this threshold was not reached, and in a way that unacceptably curtailed freedom of assembly.”
• Use of anti-terrorism measures and laws to target expressions of solidarity with Palestine, including a very broad interpretation of what constitutes “glorifying” proscribed “terrorist” organisations. This includes the arrest of individuals for merely wearing particular styles or colours of clothing or displaying writing in Arabic. Many of these arrests were “reactive, and were made following online “doxing” and social media fuelled complaints from political opponents of the demonstrations.”
• A high level of individual discretion given to individual police officers leading to “arbitrary and uneven decision-making” about whether particular leaflets, placards and banners constituted racially aggravated public order offences. Some individuals have been arrested merely for showing the scenes of destruction in Gaza. Panellists also noted that policing tactics often seemed confused, disorganised, and contradictory, a dynamic exacerbated by police forces being brought in from around the country to police these demonstrations i.e. officers with less experience policing protests in large cities and are informed with certain tactics.
• Aggressive and violent policing towards children – some as young as 9 – and babies in pushchairs being filmed, which has not been seen historically.

Several important points were made by the panel regarding these trends, the contents of the report and the broader implications of the repressive policing since October 7th. Dr Gargi Bhattacharyya and Kevin Blowe, director of Netpol, both noted the pain and irony in the deployment of hate crime legislation against racialised people protesting genocide, after anti-racist groups long struggled decades ago to get the state to enshrine protection against racism within law. Both noted that this further demonstrates the limits of asking or depending on the state to protect us from racism and discrimination. Since the report was written, it has emerged that Marieha Hussein – who carried a placard depicting Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as coconuts in the demonstration on November 11th – has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence. Here, colour-blind ‘’’anti-racist legislation’’ is being used against people of colour protesting racism, in defence of those espousing and materially supporting genocidal racism.

A further crucial point was that the increased policing of Palestine protests since October 7th seems to have spilled over into the policing of other kinds of protests and organising work. Firstly, the increase in surveillance of Pro-Palestine protesters, and the overlap in participation between Palestine organising and other causes like anti-raids and anti-fascist work, has led activists to feel that arrests made at other kinds of actions may have been targeted. Secondly, panellists noted that the intensity of policing has escalated in anti-raids work over recent months since October 7th, pointing to the unprecedented mass arrest of over 40 people who allegedly attempted to block a coach taking migrants from Peckham to the Bibby Stockholm prison barge. 

Increased levels of surveillance have most obviously manifested through the use of plainclothes officers at protests, and sometimes even in policing organising spaces before, after or unrelated to demonstrations. Zionist activists have played an important role here too, filming protesters at demonstrations and keeping a lookout for potential criminal offences, sometimes embedding themselves within the protest to do so, and subsequently, passing information to the police or sensationalising it on social media to attract their attention. 

Panellists also noted the increased use of repressive post-arrest practices by police, including highly restrictive bail conditions and the use of “released under investigation” measures, in order to constrain individuals from participating in protests and political or even merely social activity more broadly. They have also checked people’s homes to ensure they haven’t gone to protests. One panellist noted that a comrade of theirs, arrested simply for their presence outside and in support of an action, was given bail conditions that prevented them from assembling in groups of more than three, and also, following the indefinite seizure of their personal phone, stipulated that they could only use a phone given to them by the police. 

As Huda Ammori noted, Palestine Action and related groups and individuals have faced intense police repression for years prior to October 7th. In that sense, we are now seeing something of a slow generalisation of that repression to the broader movement, especially as the Palestine movement has grown much bigger. She noted, and other panellists affirmed, that this is one reason – beyond expressing basic principles of solidarity – that we must not let the state isolate more militant parts of the movement. This also means expressing our solidarity with those in other movements. Climate activists have faced similarly repressive policing over a longer arc, and recently we saw Just Stop Oil protestors sentenced for 5 years in prison under conspiracy charges. In this and other instances since this report was released, the Public Order act powers of 2022 have been increasingly used to make mass pre-emptive arrests of activists on conspiracy charges, notably against Youth Demand and queer activists on the day of Pride.

We feel that this Netpol report affirms our feelings that we are in something of a new phase of struggle. The modes of policing that have been operationalised in the last nine months are a response to the threat posed to the ruling class and capitalist, colonial and imperialist interests through the mass mobilisations and militant actions taking place over the last 9 months. Now, as always, class struggle takes a dialectic form, with state repression evolving in line with the challenges to it from below, and vice versa. And, as Amardeep noted, though we have seen an increase in state repression in these last 9 months, people are becoming more militant in their tactics in support of Palestine – and other causes – and more confident in challenging the police. Panellists pointed to the repeated instances of police vans being surrounded by protesters to prevent those arrested from being taken to police stations, which in various cases led to their de-arrest at the scene, despite the protesters not being trained to do so. This is a key reason for us to feel hopeful. Increased arrestee support has been organised on the fly by protestors, for comrades and strangers who have been targeted by police, involving waiting for the release of those detained and giving them company and hot food. 

Whilst it is depressing to reckon with the sheer racism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism of policing accounted for within it, the report helps us orient ourselves better in our struggle against the British state and its fervent support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Whilst only confirms what we have all seen in the last 9 months, its specific usefulness in providing a solid evidential basis, from which we can bolster, and popularise, our analysis of policing, both since the genocide began and more generally. To state this plainly: the police exist to uphold the capitalist, colonial and imperialist (world) order and the racialisation and gendering of the social relations that constitute it.

Particularly, it helps us to stress the important point that the police carry out this function both through the bourgeois legal apparatus but also beyond the confines of what they are supposed to be lawfully empowered to do, because they are given the powers to make these decisions with no accountability. From arresting people then dropping charges against them and misusing Public Order and Anti-Social Behaviour legislation to restrict and disperse protest, to invoking hate crime or anti-terror legislation in overtly racist ways to silence racialised people supporting Palestine, this has been evident since October 7th. Legislation is important to understand, but we must more-so focus on and respond to what the police are actually doing. The practical function of police is not to enforce some value-neutral law – even if this is what they claim – but rather, social control, in service of the aforementioned systems of power and property, and those who dominate them.

In short, the report is yet another confirmation of what and who we are up against. It reminds us that the movement for Palestine must also be a movement against the capitalist and colonial institution of policing here in Britain. We must hold our friends and comrades close and keep each other safe in this struggle, but we must not be disheartened, firstly because the genocide continues, and secondly, because it shows how much of a threat we are to the British state, to imperialism, and to Zionism.