Source: PSC

100,000 People and Nowhere To Go

100,000 people gathered in central London on Saturday for the latest Ghazzah ceasefire rally, according to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the event organisers.

The rally was meant to be a march but after police reversed an earlier decision the organisers were left with little choice but to gather along Whitehall in a static protest. With nowhere to go the march that became a rally became chaos, in large part due to the police’s botched approach on the day.

With 1,100 officers on duty, many brought in from outside London, communication broke down, leaving less experienced officers unaware of what policing strategy was being used on the day. Lines of officers formed a hi-viz yellow wall and physically pushed protestors back towards Trafalgar Square, where they were met by a second line of police who refused to allow the crowd through, even families with young children. A temporary kettling ensued, during which multiple arrests were made, including that of a pregnant woman. 

Eventually, the crowd were allowed to access Trafalgar Square where several protestors appeared to be arrested at random. It was a bizarre scene, made more peculiar by the heavy-handed arrest of sixty-two-year-old Chris Nineham. A founding member of the Stop the War Coalition, Nineham was: “Part of a delegation of speakers, who wished to peacefully carry and lay flowers in memory of children in Ghazzah who had been killed. This was facilitated by the police,” said Jeremy Corbyn. 

We did not force our way through. When we reached Trafalgar Square, we informed police that we would go no further, lay down flowers and disperse,” continued Corbyn.

It was at this point around ten officers encircled Nineham and wrestled him to the ground as captured in this footage by Migration Films. He was arrested and taken to an awaiting police van. 

By 7.30pm approximately eighty arrests had been made, with two coaches (which had been hired earlier in the week by the Metropolitan police) transporting the arrestees to five police stations across London. 

In the sound bites that followed the Met’s communications team were at pains to suggest the static protesters were to blame for the escalation.

We have policed more than 20 national protests organised by the PSC since October 2023. This is the highest number of arrests we have seen, in response to the most significant escalation in criminality” Commander Adam Slonecki concluded.

The  Genocide Is Being Televised 

Slonecki was being disingenuous. He omitted to mention Saturday’s gathering was initially due to be a march, following a route used before, and that the march had been approved by the police. Early last week the police did a very public and well-choreographed U-turn banning the march from Portland Place – home to the BBC – and the march’s assembling point. The starting location was strategically chosen to highlight the BBC’s biased coverage of the genocide in Ghazzah. The unconvincing reason for the U-turn – that the march might cause ‘serious disruption’ to a nearby synagogue. The synagogue was unaffected during all previous marches and was not even on the march route.

This was Alice in Wonderland logic. The march organisers refused to be silenced, and the march became a static protest along Whitehall, with everything that ensued.

But Saturday also marked something different. Over the past couple of years police powers have been extended to the point where they are excessively oppressive and overtly political. Their iron fist no longer needs the velvet glove, and the façade, like that of so many institutions, has fallen away. What we saw was the physical brutality of masculinity -uniformed gangs pushing and shoving peaceful crowds, snatch squads disappearing lone individuals, and little respect for the spirit of the law by those who are supposedly sworn to uphold it. We have gone from bobby-on-the-beat policing to militia policing. 

Palestine has birthed a new, very British struggle. In pursuing a pro-Zionist, pro-colonial, pro-genocide policy, the British government has deliberately sacrificed its people’s right to free speech, and organised protest. And on Saturday, 100,000 citizens were denied the opportunity to call out their national broadcaster for its bias, even though many, probably the majority, were BBC licence holders.

©Sul Nowroz

[Former Labour leader and Shadow Chancellor, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were both interviewed under caution this afternoon in connection with yesterday’s protest.]

©2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer