How the British State Protects Israel With Political Policing
By Gordon Dimmack
“Protest is a fundamental right,” says Shabana Mahmood — just before promising new powers to shut down that fundamental right.
The reason the UK’s new Home Secretary is all over the news this morning announcing new powers to clamp down on protest is because yesterday the Metropolitan Police spent another entire day in London arresting peaceful protesters — including the blind, the disabled, and pensioners.
Not because these people were a threat to anyone. Not because they caused disruption or blocked traffic. Not because they were aggressive to the police. No. It was because they were holding up signs opposing genocide and supporting Palestine Action — a group the government has proscribed as terrorists, against the advice it was given.
The government know these protesters are no harm to anyone. The police know it. The public walking through Trafalgar Square know it. In fact, the public are generally supportive of these protesters, beeping horns and shouting words of encouragement.
But, because ministers have labelled them terrorists, the police are forced into a grotesque ritual: devoting entire days every few weeks to rounding up hundreds of ordinary people and pretending it’s counter-terrorism.
Thousands of them, now — and counting.
A Waste of Police Time
Since the proscription of Palestine Action in July, Defend Our Juries have organised four major protests in London. Four days. That’s it. And in those four days the Metropolitan Police have carried out over 2,000 arrests under the Terrorism Act.
Think about what that means. Entire days swallowed by this pantomime. Vans lined up around Trafalgar Square. Hundreds of man hours in preparation alone. Officers drafted in from other forces, some from as far as Wales and Northern Ireland. Overtime paid. Paperwork piling up. All to arrest people who were no threat to anyone — people who just stood there with cardboard signs. Silently.
Meanwhile, London is drowning in crime. Burglaries ignored. Knife crime on the rise. Sexual assault victims waiting months just for a statement to be taken. Everyone knows the Met hasn’t got the resources to deal with day-to-day crime. They even admit it themselves.
It’s costing a fortune while letting actual criminals run amok. And for the Metropolitan Police, it’s by choice.
Elsewhere in the country, no action is taken against protesters doing the very same thing.
And when I handed myself into West Midlands Police for doing far more than just holding a sign in support of Palestine Action, no further action was taken. Case dropped.
So why are the Metropolitan Police arresting people when other forces in Britain are not?
It’s a complete waste of police time, and the optics of arresting crying grandmas for terrorism offences is certainly not helping the Met’s already shredded reputation with the London public.
A Waste of the Court’s Time
And the waste doesn’t stop once the vans drive off. Every one of those 2,000 arrests gets pushed into a court system that was already on its knees.
The Crown Court backlog now stands at almost 77,000 cases. One in four has already been waiting a year or more to be heard. The magistrates’ courts are even worse — more than 310,000 cases waiting to be processed. Justice delayed has become justice denied for tens of thousands of victims.
Even with extra funding, the court system isn’t clearing cases fast enough. And onto that pile the government is now tipping thousands of peaceful protesters charged under terrorism legislation. Protesters whose intention was to challenge the law in the first place, meaning they won’t be taking a plea deal anytime soon.
And yet ministers are deliberately clogging the system with political cases that never should have been there in the first place.
It’s not law and order. It’s self-sabotage. A state manufacturing chaos in its own courts so it can then turn around and say, “Look at the disruption — we need more powers.”
Cumulative Disruption
This is the phrase the Home Secretary is pushing now in order to restrict peaceful protest even further than it has been: “cumulative disruption.”
Make no mistake: these new powers the police will have will not just be used against pensioners holding placards. If there was any doubt, Mahmood spelled it out herself in that interview with Laura Kuenssberg:
“There will be protests that are to do with the Middle East conflict that will come into the purview of these changes.”
That’s it. That’s the whole game. Peaceful British citizens opposing genocide in Gaza are being rebranded as terrorists so the government can crush dissent in service of Israel.
Want to protest outside Downing Street because they’re complicit in a genocide? Sorry — there was one of those here last week. You can all go stand in the middle of a field and protest if you like. Just don’t disrupt anybody.
And if you think these new laws will only apply to protests about Israel, and not something you care about in the future — maybe under a different government — then I have to ask: how old are you? Are you less than twelve?
When Free Speech Itself Becomes a Crime
If you think this is just about signs saying “Palestine Action” — think again.
A woman was arrested in Trafalgar Square on Saturday for holding a placard that read: “I do not support the proscription of Palestine Action.”
That’s it. A lawful statement, even under Labour’s new laws. It wasn’t advocacy. It wasn’t incitement. It was dissent — disagreement with a government decision.
And yet she was dragged away by police officers as if she’d committed a serious offence.
That’s where we are now: the state policing not just actions, but thoughts. Arresting people for disagreeing with the government in public. It’s the clearest proof yet that this isn’t counter-terrorism.
It’s authoritarianism — dressed up as law and order.
It’s also entirely anti-British. It’s an affront to everything we are and every Brit to ever live in this country.
Britain has a proud history of protest. It’s not an exaggeration to say the country we live in today was forged by people who stood up when they were told to sit down.
The Peasants’ Revolt marked the beginning of the end for feudalism. The Civil War and its radical movements shattered absolute monarchy and planted the seeds of representation. Out of the Glorious Revolution came the Bill of Rights, setting the stage for parliamentary democracy. Peterloo, though a massacre, spurred the drive for reform. The Chartists and suffragettes forced the vote into the hands of ordinary people. In the twentieth century, the Poll Tax riots, anti-apartheid marches, and countless others changed policy and toppled governments.
Great Britain today was not gifted by rulers from above. It was won, piece by piece, from below. Protest is the reason we have the freedoms we claim to cherish.
And right now, Israel is committing a genocide — and our government is helping them do it. They’re helping them do it to the point where they’ll call you a terrorist if you hold up a sign opposing it. That’s the reason there are so many protests. That’s the reason there’s so much “disruption.”
They call it cumulative disruption. But the truth is, they’re choosing to do this on purpose — arresting thousands under ridiculous legislation — in order to bring in further protest restrictions and quell an ever-growing anti-Israel sentiment in this country.
What it really is, is political policing. And the target isn’t extremism.
It’s conscience.
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