Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
Revolutionary
Socialism in the
21st Century

We will not be silenced

rs21

Joint statement with movement organisations on the events of 18 January on the PSC national demonstration for Palestine.

On 18 January, over 100,000 people assembled in London to rally against continued British complicity in the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. 15 months into the genocide, the Met instigated their most repressive approach to policing of a national demonstration, making at least 77 arrests, including lead organisers of the rally.

Before the protest even got going, police began making arbitrary arrests. As the day went on, they picked on whoever looked easy to grab and violently shoved anyone who tried to defend fellow protestors. The arrest of large numbers of people, including children and the elderly, was an act of repression and state censorship which we will not sit down and accept.

We stand firmly with the arrestees, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and all those targeted for intimidation or charged with “Public Order” offences, including Chris Nineham, lead steward, and Ben Jamal, director of PSC, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. We condemn the Met for their brutality against protesters and their desperate attempt to silence our movement in defence of Zionist genocide.

This was clearly a premeditated attack on the idea of protesting in solidarity with Palestine. The Met created, and then incited, the conditions to conduct mass arrests of protesters by attempting to bar us from marching to the BBC after 15 months of British complicity in genocide and millions of people flooding the streets every month to oppose it. Likely handed down instructions by imperialist, pro-Israel politicians, they shamelessly laid out their repressive conditions under the guise of a desire to “fight antisemitism”.

The British state has long tried and failed to crush the Palestine movement. But on Saturday, it felt like the intended message of their escalation was clear: “You’ve protested enough, so go home and don’t come back.” But we know that the genocide continues and Zionist settler-colonialism is far from over, even weakened as it has been by resistance across Palestine, the region, and the world.

Palestinians have remained steadfast in resisting the horrors of genocide and settler-colonialism at the hands of the Israeli state and Zionist movement, backed by the British state. Our movements can and must continue in the face of the repression we face here.

These attacks don’t just threaten the Palestine movement: they threaten everyone, especially those fighting for justice and liberation. They are an intensification of the repressive policing we’ve seen over the last 15 months, itself an extension of the aggressive approach to the policing of the 2020 Black Lives Matter mass demonstrations.

While police have benefitted from an expansion of their powers in law, what we are seeing now is a change in their behaviour, using powers that already existed. What determines the contest on the streets isn’t just the laws that pass or instructions handed down by the government, even if these give them license to persecute with greater impunity. It is our actions, on the streets and beyond, in our communities, workplaces and in and outside the courts, that the state must respond to and which it now seeks to contain.

We encourage everyone to continue to stand united, to take to the streets, and to remember that the law is not a moral compass. The government and the Met may continue on this trajectory, but we have no doubt that our movement will continue to take to the streets in the face of state repression, just as those in Germany and France fighting for Palestinian liberation did when their governments attempted to crack down on protest.

Palestinian Youth Movement Britain
Energy Embargo for Palestine
Black Lives Matter UK
Parents for Palestine
Queers for Palestine
Sisters Uncut
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