Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has announced that a pro-Palestinian demonstration calling for a ceasefire will go ahead this Saturday, after concluding that the ‘real threat’ of serious disorder threshold to prohibit the march has not been met.
The power to block protests is ‘incredibly rare’ and must only be used where there is a ‘real threat’ of serious disorder. The Commissioner has shown a willingness to ban the protest if intelligence reaches a high threshold by asking the Home Secretary to do so under the Public Orders Act, but this is a ‘last resort’ (only employed once in the past decade).
The Commissioner has promised to keep the protest well away from the remembrance and armistice events and has confirmed that the organisers of the demonstration have shown a ‘complete willingness to stay away from the Cenotaph and Whitehall and have no intention of disrupting the nation’s remembrance events.’
This decision was made despite calls from politicians to not allow the march. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called the march ‘provocative and disrespectful’, stating that there is a clear risk that memorials such as the Cenotaph ‘could be desecrated.’ The PM has announced that he intends to hold the Commissioner accountable for his decision. Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called for anyone trying to vandalise memorials to be ‘put into a jail cell faster than their feet can touch the ground’.
Braverman has published a piece in The Times today in which she laments senior police officers ‘playing favourites’ when it comes to protestors. She used the example of Black Lives Matters protests being allowed during Covid but anti-lockdown marches being quashed.
In this unlikely intervention for a serving Home Secretary she also described the current wave of pro-Palestine protests as ‘problematic from the start’, ‘and assertion of primacy’ by Islamist groups and said they were ‘reminiscent of Ulster’ because of apparent links between organisers and the terrorist group Hamas.
Scottish First Minister Humza Yousef said this week that the demonstrations should go ahead, expressing his anger for the Home Secretary’s characterisation of them as ‘hate marches’.
Writing on X the Shadow Home Secretary. Yvette Cooper, said Braverman was ‘out of control’. She continued: ‘Her article tonight is a highly irresponsible, dangerous attempt to undermine respect for police at a sensitive time, to rip up operational independence and to inflame community tensions. No other Home Secretary of any party would ever do this.’
There is also the view that a ban could be counter-productive. Former Metropolitan Police Officer Chris Hobbs told Sky News that calling off the protest ‘would create more trouble’, due to there being no guarantee protestors will adhere to the ban, and the risk that the police would have to move in to stop the protest, in which many children will likely be involved.
