Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Policing of protests, HC 369
Wednesday 6 December 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 6 December 2023.
Members present: Dame Diana Johnson (Chair); Ms Diane Abbott; Lee Anderson; James Daly; Carolyn Harris; Kim Johnson; Tim Loughton; Alison Thewliss.
Questions 1-89
Witnesses
I: Chris Nineham, Vice Chair, Stop the War Coalition; Ben Jamal, Director, Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Yasmine Adam, Head of Media and Politics Office, Muslim Association of Britain.
II: Dr Dave Rich, Director of Policy, Community Security Trust; Gideon Falter, Chief Executive, Campaign Against Antisemitism.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Chris Nineham, Ben Jamal and Yasmine Adam.
Chair: Good morning and welcome to the Home Affairs Select Committee. This is our first session looking at the policing of protests, and we are very pleased to have the panel in front of us this morning. Will each member of the panel please introduce themselves?
Yasmine Adam: My name is Yasmine Adam. I am the head of the media and politics office at the Muslim Association of Britain.
Chair: Welcome.
Chris Nineham: I am Chris Nineham. I am the vice-chair of the Stop the War Coalition, and I was the chief steward on the demonstrations that have recently taken place.
Ben Jamal: Good morning. I am Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Q1 Chair: We are very pleased you are with us today. We are looking at the demonstrations that have taken place since the 7 October attack in Israel and the subsequent events in Gaza. Could each of you start by giving your overall reflections on the protests you have been involved with? Obviously, the Committee is particularly interested in the relationship with the police and how that is working. I do not know who would like to start. Chris, as the chief steward, perhaps you would like to.
Chris Nineham: Thanks very much. My overall impression of the demonstrations is that they have been very large. There has been a cycle of five national demonstrations, starting on 14 October. All of them have been large by any measure; they have all been over 100,000, and the demonstration on 11 November was the second biggest in British history, by our calculations.
They have been, contrary to some of the reportage, very diverse; they have involved people from across our communities. They have been very much marked—I think a lot of people have talked about this—by a family feel; there have been lots of young children, families, kids in buggies and so forth.
They have also been very peaceful. We have just been analysing all the stats coming from the police on arrests. On the demonstrations themselves, there have been almost no examples of any kind of disorder, which is something the police themselves have said. There have been very, very low levels of disorder, and the demonstrations have been very well organised and very peaceful—that is a quote from the Met police.
In terms of relations with the police, maybe we will go into that in further questions. We have been in constant touch, or regular contact, with the police about the demonstrations. We have planned them. We have told the police about our plans. In terms of the practicalities of the demonstrations, on the whole they have worked reasonably well on the ground—there are some exceptions, but that is probably too much detail.
There are two areas that we have concern about, where things have got difficult with the police. The first is that I think the police have been part of a wider tendency to mischaracterise the demonstrations and to give the impression—despite their official statements, oddly—that they are somehow, to quote our former Home Secretary, “hate marches” and somehow violent or hateful or in some way threatening. That has included an unprecedented use of section 12 orders. It has included huge police mobilisations, which have been very publicly presented. It has included giving out leaflets on the demonstrations—something that is very unusual and, in fact, unprecedented—talking about possible arrests. And it has included generally tweeting and social media-ing about the demonstrations and implying that they have been somehow problematic.
The other aspect that was a big problem was that the police really pressured us to cancel the demonstration on 11 November. Partly, I don’t think that protesters are the police’s favourite people necessarily but, more generally, I think the police have been under a lot of pressure from a Government that is very hostile to our cause, very hostile to the cause of peace and very hostile to the cause of the Palestinians to give this impression about the demonstrations and, in the case of 11 November, to actually stop them happening.
Chair: We will come back to that—there will be more questions on it—but just so we are all clear, that was Armistice weekend, wasn’t it?
Chris Nineham: Yes.
Chair: It was 12 November. Mr Jamal, would you like to give your view?
Ben Jamal: I would echo what Chris said about the nature of the protests and the fact that they have been overwhelmingly peaceful, with small levels of disorder and an extremely low rate of arrests, given the extraordinarily large numbers of people who have been marching. I would also echo what Chris said—I am sure we will return to this in other questions—about how they have been characterised by the Government, across the political establishment and in large sections of the media.
It is worth saying something—because of that mischaracterisation—about the purpose of the demonstrations and why people are marching. As Chris said, we have had five national marches. Interspersed with that, we have also been organising days of action, which have seen protests in hundreds of towns and cities across the UK—not just in major cities, but in towns like Tunbridge Wells, Worthing and Barnstaple, where people have been holding vigils and marches and have been protesting. People are demonstrating as a response to Israel’s assault on Gaza and, in particular, in protest at the indiscriminate bombing that has killed thousands of Palestinians, including thousands of children.
Chair: I think we are very well aware of why people are marching and protesting. What we are interested in on the Home Affairs Select Committee is the process of the protests that are taking place, the relationship with the police and whether criminal acts are being committed on these protests—that is our focus. I fully appreciate and respect your views on what is happening, but I don’t think we want to get into that today, because we have only a limited amount of time.
Ben Jamal: Sure. Maybe I will come back to that in other questioning, because it is worth asserting the fundamental principles on which we are marching. The one thing I would say is that we have been very clear about our principles with regard to international law and how it should apply and about the anti-racist foundations on which we are marching.
Chair: Right. Thank you very much. Yasmine, would you like to give your view?
Yasmine Adam: Just to echo what my colleagues have said, I think the protests have been broad; they have attracted different sections of society, with all walks of life united in the belief that, again, international law should be upheld and that a ceasefire is immediately needed.
Behind the scenes, we do collaborate and work with the police on issues regarding public safety. The wider context is that we are operating in an environment where we are very heavily policed and where the rhetoric of the Government and the police has led to an increase in hate crime—mainly, from my perspective at least, in Islamophobia. We have seen the levels of Islamophobia rise, echoing the rhetoric the Government has been putting out.
From our side, to organise these protests, we have a large process that we go through on the day and in the weeks leading up to it—I am sure my colleagues will go into that later in further questions. We have massive teams of stewards on the day. We have done our absolute best to navigate some of the restrictions that have been put on us and the heavily politicised environment that we are operating in.
Again, the protests have been largely peaceful. They have been united in their belief, and I feel that they have been reflective of public opinion regarding Israel’s assault on Gaza. They have been an incredible show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Q2 Chair: Just so I am clear, you have all been responsible for the big marches in the main cities and particularly in London—the demonstrations that have happened outside MPs’ offices are not anything that you have been involved in.
Ben Jamal: We have not organised, specifically, protests outside MPs’ offices. As I said, alongside the national marches, we have called for days of action, where people have marched and held protests and vigils in towns and cities across the UK. We have not specifically organised or called for demonstrations outside MPs’ offices.
Q3 Carolyn Harris: I accept that you have not called for these events outside MPs’ offices, but have you condemned some of the absolutely appalling behaviour we have seen? MPs’ offices have been vandalised, MPs have been accused of being baby killers, and effigies have been left. Have you not condemned that kind of action? At the end of the day, the MP is very unlikely to be in their office; it will be the staff who are in the office.
Ben Jamal: Let me come back on that. Again, this speaks a little bit to how certain actions have been characterised—
Carolyn Harris: No, can I stop you there—
Ben Jamal: Let me answer your question—
Carolyn Harris: I am talking about evidence.
Ben Jamal: I have seen political narratives—I am not sure this is the intent of your question—that say that it is inherently problematic for people to protest outside an MP’s office. I would not share that view. I think protesting outside an MP’s office is a legitimate way of holding an MP to account. There is a great deal of public disquiet about the positions that MPs are taking and, in particular, about how people voted when it came to a parliamentary vote on the ceasefire.
I would not endorse anybody taking any criminal action or vandalising somebody’s office. We would not support that, but we would also not make it our business to condemn any action that we have absolutely nothing to do with. We would support people’s right to legitimately and peacefully protest, and taking a protest to an MP’s office does not seem to me to be inherently problematic—
Q4 Chair: Outside an MP’s home?
Ben Jamal: That is entirely different, and I—
Chair: That is entirely different. Right.
Ben Jamal: I am not aware of protests that have taken place outside MPs’ homes—
Chair: Yes, there have been.
Q5 James Daly: Can I just follow up on that point? Is it your evidence that you feel that the intimidation and threats to MPs are completely justified?
Ben Jamal: Which threats and intimidation are you talking about?
James Daly: No, don’t go into pedantics about it. On this Committee, we all know colleagues who have been through the most appalling situations. I am asking you, rather than dancing around the issue, to say whether you condemn that.
Ben Jamal: I cannot answer a question when I don’t know what—[Interruption.] With respect, where you define as intimidation somebody peacefully protesting outside an MP’s office, I would say that’s legitimate. If you are talking about people being issued with personal threats or threats of violence, of course I would not endorse that, but you have to be specific about what you are talking about.
Chris Nineham: Can I just come in here as well? One of the problems we have experienced is that there is a tendency in the public narrative about these protests to focus in on particular instances—which may or may not be things that we support, or which may be things that we do indeed condemn—as a means to try to give the impression that there is something wrong with the protests in general. It is very important in this Committee, which is, after all, discussing the policing of the protests, that we look at the picture in the round. As the police have said, this cycle of protests has, overall, been remarkably peaceful, remarkably united and remarkably trouble free. So it is important that this Committee—
James Daly: I was—
Chris Nineham: Hang on—let me finish. It is important that these proceedings are not characterised by an attempt to demonise the whole protest—
James Daly: Should we just allow you to give your party political broadcast here?
Chris Nineham: Can I finish?
Chair: Okay. I am going to stop both of you. We are going to ask some more questions about the policing of the protests. Chris, we hear what you have said—you have said it already. I am going to come to Kim Johnson now.
Q6 Kim Johnson: Good morning, panel. Ben, I’ll come to you because the Palestine Solidarity Campaign issued a statement about reaching out to Mark Rowley about what you have talked about—the politicised policing of the marchers. I just wanted to know whether you have received a response from Mark Rowley, why you felt it was necessary to write to him about the politicised process the police were getting involved in, and what your relationship is with the police now regarding the ceasefire marches.
Ben Jamal: We actually wrote asking for a meeting with him several weeks ago, and the quick answer to your question is that we have not had a response to that request. We reissued that request and made it public about a week and a half or two weeks ago. We were informed by the police that we would be receiving a response shortly, but we have not received one as of now.
It is worth saying that, whenever we are organising a march—particularly marches where we know we will be bringing exceedingly large numbers through the streets of London—we always operate on the basis of meeting with the police and seeking to co-operate with the police. That is fundamental for issues of public safety. We need to make sure, for example, that we have an agreement on the roads being closed, that we are aware of the route we will be taking and that there are no issues we should be aware of, such as obstacles on the route, so we always meet the police.
Usually, that process is co-operative. We are very conscious that, in the past seven weeks, the police have come under extreme political pressure. We may come back to this in more detail, but we have talked of the significant pressure placed on the police before the protest on 11 November, with, effectively, calls from members of the Government for that protest to be banned. The police made clear that they saw no evidence to do that.
We have become increasingly concerned about the police’s response to that political pressure. One aspect of that now is the routine use of section 12 orders, which we think are entirely disproportionate, given that, as Chris has said, the police have made clear that the protests have been largely peaceful with minor issues of public disorder. They are routinely imposing section 12s.
Q7 Chair: Do you want to give an idea of what a section 12 is, so that everyone is clear?
Ben Jamal: It is a condition placed on a protest. I will give an idea of where that has become deeply problematic. The last protest was on 25 November. The day before the protest, on the Friday afternoon, we received notification from the police that they had imposed a section 12 order with a condition that anybody arriving at the protest before the agreed assembly time of 12.30 pm was liable to be arrested. That left us in a position of having to organise, at the very last minute, emergency meetings with the police—we eventually got them into the room at about 7 o’clock that evening—to clarify what that meant, because the wording meant that anybody turning up on Park Lane before 12.30 pm intending to be part of the protest was liable to be arrested.
When we organise protests, our staff arrive at about quarter to 9 in the morning. We have hundreds of stewards, who are tasked with making sure that public safety can be maintained, and they arrive at 10.30 am. Thousands of people were arriving from all across the country. Some were going to come on coaches that would arrive at about 11 o’clock, to make sure they got there on time. We therefore had to verify with the police whether they were intending potentially to arrest thousands and thousands of people who were arriving in an orderly fashion in order to protest. Their response was, “No, of course we are not going to do that.” We had to say, “But that is what you have just issued. You have tweeted that without having a conversation with us. You have given a message to the public that anybody turning up on this protest before 12 o’clock might be arrested.”
Why did they do that? I think the answer is very clear: the same day, they did a press conference in which they reassured people that they were going to be extremely robust in policing the protest. They also handed out leaflets to people protesting, which simply reinforced the law but created a sense that people involved in a largely peaceful protest—which is what all the protests had been, with people abiding by the law—needed to be reminded of what the law said in relation to hate crime, and that hundreds of thousands of people needed to be placed at risk of being arrested if they got there before 12.30 pm.
Given that the police also indicated to us that they wanted us to march by 1 o’clock, they were actually proposing that somehow, magically, 200,000 or 300,000 people would arrive simultaneously at 12.30 pm and be ready to march half an hour afterwards. By any standards, that is not sensible policing.
These are the types of issues we want to address with Mark Rowley, but we are aware of why they have happened. We think the police are responding to political pressure that seeks to demonise these protests.
Q8 Kim Johnson: Thanks, Ben. Yasmine, the narrative from the Government and the media on the pro-Palestine marches has been more about policing than protection. There have been incidents on those marches in which pro-Israel far-right groups have been involved in attacks. As a Muslim organisation, do you feel you have been supported by the police, particularly in terms of the rise in Islamophobia?
If you look outside at the broader context, this is reflected across the country. There has been an instance of a pig’s head being thrown at a mosque. It is really the Government’s unconditional support of Israel that has emboldened members of the far right. When a far-right person feels confident enough to throw an empty petrol can with the words “IDF” on it at a mosque, there is no sense of there being solidarity from the Government. The main lens through which the Government see Muslims is that of securitisation. That is the rhetoric that we have seen. When Mark Rowley calls for an increase in state powers with regards to hate crime and terror legislation, the Government have failed to act to deal with hate crime. The solution is not to increase state power. I think that, fundamentally, that is one of the biggest issues—instead of dealing with their failures, the Government respond by increasing state powers to give the illusion that they are actually doing something about the issues that they are failing to address.
Q9 Kim Johnson: Thanks, Yasmine. Chris, do you want to come in on any of those points?
Chris Nineham: I wanted to elaborate on one particular thing. Ben talked about some of the individual practical problems that we have come up against with the section 12 orders and some breakdowns in communication. For me, the defining moment of our relationship with the police in the last couple of months has been around the 11 November demonstration. In the end, the demonstration wasn’t banned, but, in the run-up to the demo, the police put an enormous amount of pressure on us to call the demonstration off—to cancel it. I have been a chief steward on scores of demonstrations, and I have never experienced a situation where the police have said to us in a meeting, point-blank, “We don’t think this demonstration should go ahead,” without giving any kind of serious public disorder reason or any kind of practical reason. It was quite clear—absolutely obvious—from that situation that that was a result of meetings they had had and pressure from Suella Braverman and, indeed, Rishi Sunak, who came out publicly to say that this demonstration should not happen.
That was a low point, and it was very important that we said to the police, “I’m sorry, we are going to uphold our right to protest in these circumstances.” It seems strange now, but I think those were actually quite dangerous days for democracy in this country. They were days in which the right to protest—a fundamental right that goes back hundreds of years in this country—was seriously under threat, although, to their credit, the police did defy Suella Braverman and Rishi Sunak at the end of the day. Things turned out well, in that sense, but I have to say that I think they did that because we held the line. I am very proud of everyone who held the line that day, because I think we took a stand for democracy, the right to protest and freedom of expression. It is very important that we did that.
Ben Jamal: Can I add one thing? Chris is right that that was a very significant moment, and it was very clear to us what was going on when the police said, “Will you agree not to protest?” They knew they did not have the grounds to ban the protest—that is what they subsequently said—and they wanted to put pressure on us to remove the problem for them. They were doing that because of the pressure being exerted by the Home Secretary.
There is something that ought to be said about that. The rhetoric that was used was that this protest was intending to go to Whitehall to disrupt Armistice Day preparations and desecrate the Cenotaph. Now, the Home Secretary knew, because we had made it clear to the police weeks before, when we looked ahead and thought, “We are still probably going to be marching on Saturdays going forward,” that on November 11 we would not go near Whitehall; we wanted to protest somewhere else.
I grew up in this country, as did we all. We know that the main commemorations around the Armistice take place on the Sunday. We were marching on the Saturday, but we did not want to disrupt preparations. The police knew that, and it is inconceivable that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister do not talk to the police. When they made their statements, they knew full well that what they were saying was not true and that the protest had no intention of doing that. What they then did was light a touch paper that mobilised the far right. It is up to them to say whether they did that intentionally or not—I don’t know whether you are calling the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to give evidence—but the far right were already saying across social media that they were going to make sure the Cenotaph was protected.
You asked a question, Kim, about threats to the safety of marches. I will say this about the police: on that day, they acted extremely well. You are all aware that far-right activists went to Whitehall. Some of them stayed to try to intimidate our march, and they gathered in a pub near Vauxhall Bridge. The police went into the pub, searched those people and found knives and knuckledusters. They put a cordon around the pub and kept it there for four and a half hours until the whole march had progressed. Now, the people who came to our march intending to attack families and young children with knives and knuckledusters are responsible for their own violent intentions, but the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary bear their own responsibility for creating the climate in which those far-right, pro-Israel activists acted.
Chair: Okay. I am going to bring in Tim Loughton.
Q10 Tim Loughton: I have one specific question, and then I will come back on other things later. Mr Nineham, you have just said that you have been a steward on scores of protests over the years, and that you have never seen the sort of pressure that the police were putting on you to abandon the one on 11 November. On how many other mass demonstrations in central London have you been chief steward on 11 November previously?
Chris Nineham: If you want an exact number, I can’t give you one. It must be—
Q11 Tim Loughton: Give me some examples of mass demonstrations on 11 November in central London that you have been chief steward on.
Chris Nineham: On 11 November?
Tim Loughton: Yes—an important day.
Chris Nineham: Well, I guess that is a rhetorical question, but let me give you an answer. I never bought the idea that there is something inappropriate about us marching on Armistice Day.
Q12 Tim Loughton: That is not my question, Mr Nineham. Is the answer zero, or is it two, five or 10? Give me some examples. It is not a rhetorical question; it is a perfectly legitimate question requiring an answer.
Chris Nineham: I will have to look through my old diaries, and I will send you an answer in writing. I imagine that what is behind your question is that there is something specific about 11 November—
Tim Loughton: There is.
Chris Nineham: —which is that it is Armistice Day. I am going to answer your question as I wish. I never bought the idea that there is anything wrong with us marching on Armistice Day, for the simple reason that “armistice” means ceasefire, and the main slogan of our demonstration—
Q13 Tim Loughton: That is your—
Chris Nineham: No, no, I am answering your question.
Tim Loughton: You are not answering my question. You did answer my question: you said that you will have to write to me with the answer. That is all I wanted to ask. Thank you very much.
Ben Jamal: Can I add one thing on this issue of Armistice Day? It was very clear that what was going on in the rhetoric from the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister—
Chair: I think we have heard you.
Ben Jamal: If I can make one important point—
Tim Loughton: You have made lots of points. Let’s go on to other questions.
Chair: We have heard your views about the rhetoric of the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.
Ben Jamal: Can I make one additional point, because it is pertinent to the question that has just been asked? I will be very brief.
Chair: Be very brief.
Ben Jamal: Part of what has been suggested is that there is something inherently problematic about marching on 11 November, and that that is a well-established principle. The reality is that on every Saturday before Remembrance Day, going back to 2018 at least, there has been a march, save the year of covid. Most significantly perhaps, in 2018—the 100th anniversary of the Armistice—there was a large pro-Brexit march that took place in Trafalgar Square. Maybe many of you were present at it. I don’t remember rhetoric then about it being absolutely disgraceful for marches to be taking place on the day before Remembrance Sunday.
Chair: We are grateful for your information there. I don’t think it is very appropriate to make remarks about what the Committee members may or may not do in terms of protest, to be frank.
Q14 Lee Anderson: I am just going to rehash a question that my hon. Friend Mr Loughton asked. I think it is important, because you didn’t answer it, and you are actually here to answer questions, not to dodge questions. Mr Nineham, Tim asked how many demonstrations you had organised before on Armistice Day or Armistice weekend. You said you would have to go through your diaries. I will make this easy for you: have you organised any at all on Armistice Day?
Chris Nineham: I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, but— As I say, I will have to check. The only relevance I can see—what is presumably behind the question—
Lee Anderson: I am not talking about relevance.
Chris Nineham: What is the point to your question?
Lee Anderson: You must know whether or not you have organised a mass demonstration on Armistice Day. You must know.
Chris Nineham: Must I? I don’t know. As I say, I would have to check my diary. It is not something that is—I honestly don’t know.
Lee Anderson: Can I just hazard a guess, Chair, please? I am going to go with zero.
Chris Nineham: You know, do you?
Lee Anderson: Well, I would have to check me diary.
Chris Nineham: Exactly. So neither of us know, so shall we move on?
Q15 Chair: I think we are not going to get to the bottom of this, so you are going to write to us about the number of demonstrations you have organised on November 11. Okay.
Q16 Ms Abbott: I have the advantage over my colleague in that I was on two of these marches, and as I think Mr Nineham said, the striking thing about them was the broad range of people there. I was struck, because I have been on a march or two, by the number of young women with babies in pushchairs there. Some of them had come from outside of London, and that seemed to me to be remarkable. You have said that there were about 100,000 people on the march. As a rough estimate, how many of those people, on your march, do you think were carrying offensive or illegal material or chanting offensive or illegal chants?
Chris Nineham: I think extremely small numbers. In terms of illegal chants, I haven’t heard any examples on our demonstrations, although there have been cases where people have falsely alleged that there have been illegal chants on our demonstrations, or questionable chants on our demonstrations, when in fact they took place on demonstrations organised by other groups.
I think there is a tiny minority of people who have had placards that we challenge. We have an operation, with our hundreds of stewards, to try and make sure that anyone who holds placards or flags, or anything, that could be construed as liable to be inciting hatred, or of proscribed organisations, is talked to and is removed, and that has been a very effective operation.
I think two things, really. The fact that, despite a record policing operation in terms of the numbers of police that have been drafted in from around the country, there have been so few arrests on the demonstrations for these or for any other issues, I think attests to the fact that we are talking about a very, very, very tiny minority of people who are doing these things.
The second thing is, I think the fact that this issue has been so prominent in terms of the coverage of the demonstrations shows that there is a kind of operation going on here to try and paint the bulk of the demonstrators with the brush of what is a handful of individuals. When it comes to characterising protest movements, marches and demonstrations, it is very important to look at the whole. This is one of our main concerns. The real experience of coming on demonstrations—in the public domain, in terms of the discourse and the narrative in the media and from politicians—has been obscured. There has been an attempt to frame them in terms of race and religion, but our demonstrations are not about race or religion at all. Our demonstrations have, as you say, Diane, been very diverse and inclusive. They have included a huge number of Jewish people, by the way.
Also—this is crucial—we cut against the question of race and religion because these demonstrations are universalist demonstrations. They are demonstrations for essentially two things: first, the right of nations to self-determination, which is a universal demand enshrined in UN law, and secondly, the sanctity of human life. People come on these demonstrations because they think that the indiscriminate killing of innocent people, of children—
Q17 Chair: I do not think we need to get into all of that.
Chris Nineham: But it is important to say that that is the narrative that actually characterises the demonstrations, as against—
Q18 Chair: You have said it is about peace. I think we all understand that it is about peace. That is why people are protesting.
Ben Jamal: Can I just add something briefly? Diane, what you said about your experience and how you would characterise them is reflective of what most people say. There is one interesting observation. Some of the media—BBC, Sky and The Guardian have done this—run live blogs from the demonstrations because they have been so high-profile. If you go back and look at what they say when they are in the heart of the demonstration and commenting, there is a universality about what they say—a commonality about their response. They say that these are orderly, these are peaceful, there are lots of young families.
What then happens is that in the immediate aftermath, the next day or on the Monday, what we get across large sections of the media and the press, usually from newspapers and then picked up by pro-Israel groups in the UK who want to delegitimise the cause on which we are marching, is a handful. So in answer to your question, I then look at social media. On most of these marches what we have seen is a maximum of about 10 to 15 placards or incidents and one high-profile incident where a woman at a train station said something grotesquely antisemitic and offensive in an argument with somebody. But that then dominates the narrative and is used to characterise the entire march.
I have done numerous media interviews over the last few weeks. Almost universally, every time I go in, I get asked the question, “Do you condemn what this person said?” or “Do you condemn this particular placard?” Ten or 15 people on marches of hundreds of thousands, but it is used to characterise the entire march. People need to ask what is going on when there is a focus on a small element in a broad march that is characterised as peaceful and orderly.
Chair: We have got your point. Diane Abbott is next.
Q19 Ms Abbott: I think I know what is going on, but the question that I wanted to ask you was about material promoting or glorifying terrorism. Out of the march of over 100,000, how many people on that march would you estimate were carrying material promoting or glorifying terrorism?
Ben Jamal: I would say a tiny handful. The types of incidents that I have seen picked up are one or two incidents of people there with Hamas flags. One thing that got a lot of profile was two people with headbands on with Arabic script. It is not entirely clear what the headbands represented, but potentially they indicated support for Hamas. Those were two individuals. There was a huge amount of media attention and narrative about those two individuals. There was an incident where two women had something on their backs. It wasn’t clear. It was very odd, like paragliders sellotaped on their backs, which could be interpreted as glorifying what happened on 7 October. So there is a tiny handful of incidents where I would say there has been evidence produced as saying, “Here are people at the marches who are glorifying terrorism.”
Q20 Ms Abbott: Finally, I was going to say this. Mr Nineham, you have been asked by colleagues about how many marches you organised on Armistice Day. I do not know about Armistice Day, but I think you have organised one or two marches in your time.
Chris Nineham: I have indeed, including the big demonstration against the Iraq war in 2003. That was the biggest demonstration in British history. The demonstration on 11 November was, I think, the second biggest demonstration in British history. There are a number of things that unite those two demonstrations. One thing that unites them is that they were an expression of a deep democratic deficit in British society over questions of foreign policy, funnily enough. In order to understand what is happening at the moment in Britain around this question, you have to understand that the political classes in general have become completely adrift from public opinion. We are in a situation where the key opinion polls now show that 68% or 75% of the British population are calling for a ceasefire.
Q21 Chair: I did say at the beginning that we were not going to get into the issues about Israel and Palestine. We are talking about the protest marches that have taken place in the last few months. We are keen to hear your reflections on your relationship with the police and what happens on the marches. We do not have the capacity on this Committee to talk about whether the political classes are doing x, y and z and whether people—
Chris Nineham: But this is important context to understand the scale of the demonstrations and the tensions with the police. That is where it stems from—from this terrible democratic deficit where—
Chair: We are not going to get into that. Diane, would you like to come back on anything else?
Ms Abbott: No, I am fine for now.
Q22 Alison Thewliss: I have a few questions on the suggestion about tightening up the legislation on marches and protests and—as you mentioned, Yasmine—Mark Rowley’s suggestion that hate crime laws need to be redrawn. Can you tell me a bit more about why you feel that is problematic? You mentioned that earlier on.
Yasmine Adam: Our ability to protest and assemble is a fundamental right in any healthy democratic society. There is a slight track record here whereby the Government, during times of crisis, use legislation to tighten our civil rights. The response to a minority of incidences occurring on these protests is not to increase state legislation, because then we set an extremely dangerous precedent on not just the ceasefire protest, but any cause. One thing that Ben may not have mentioned is that on the first protest we had, we actually found out via Twitter that a section 12 was being imposed on the protest. I do not know about my colleagues, but I had no idea what a section 12 was, to be honest. I imagine that that was also the impression of large numbers of members who were coming on to the protests.
If the concern here is about hate crime, for example, there is a fundamental failure by the Government and the police to deal with hate crime. I can tell you that as a Muslim woman, as someone representing a Muslim organisation and as someone who speaks to Muslims across the country. That is backed up by the stats. I think Liberty did a study whereby in 2020, despite the number of hate crimes doubling, police had failed to deal with as many as they dealt with back in 2015. That is the claim they were operating on.
The response should not be increasing terror legislation. One important thing to note, which is happening outside these protests, is the wider criminalisation of any form of solidarity with the Palestinian people. There have been instances in schools where children are referred to Prevent simply for wearing a badge or sticker that happens to say “Free Palestine”. We have seen people lose their jobs. There is a very criminalised attack on any form of solidarity.
It is in that context that Mark Rowley’s response, instead of engaging with us—we wrote to him many weeks ago—was to suggest that we should tighten legislation. The Government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation has said that that should not be the response. We then risk tightening the civil rights of everyone. That is the track record that the Government has, so you can see why we talk about a lack of trust of the police and the Government.
Q23 Alison Thewliss: Thank you. Ben, you said that you had discussions with the police about the protests and that they did not have the grounds to ban the protest on 11 November. Do you believe that there is now a narrative that they want to have those grounds, or that the politicians are seeking for them to have the grounds to ban things, if they want to, to tighten up the ability to protest?
Ben Jamal: I would echo what Yasmine said about any increase and if any changes were to be made to protest laws, I think that excessive powers have been granted through successive pieces of legislation that have placed in jeopardy the fundamental right to protest. I have given examples of how the new powers have been able to impose conditions on marches and are actually potentially used to fundamentally threaten the right to protest.
I want to add something, because I think there is a fundamental issue with what Mark Rowley said about hate crime and the need to tighten laws. If we go to the heart of this issue—why he is making those remarks and the narrative that is informing them—it has been suggested, across a range of quarters, that this is about a need to be clearer in defining what is and is not antisemitic. We have a fundamental problem, which is that there is a well-established and well-documented political project to conflate antisemitism with legitimate criticism of Israel’s violation of the rights of the Palestinian people. For example, there are pro-Israel groups in this country—some of them may be giving evidence to you later—who have indicated that they believe that it is inherently antisemitic to define Israel as a state practising the crime of apartheid, despite the fact that numerous human rights monitoring bodies, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have made that judgment.
Chair: Mr Jamal, could I just say to you that we just do not have the time today, and it is not within the remit of the Home Affairs Select Committee, to get into what you are talking about. We want to talk about whether there are gaps in the law and whether there are issues that need to be addressed around protest. If you could keep your remarks to that, that would be helpful.
Ben Jamal: The point that I am getting to about this conflation is that one of the most stark examples of that in relation to the current protests, and part of what has been the narrative, is when we hear, for example, about problematic, hateful racist chants at protests. People often focus on is the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. I get asked the question, “Do you tolerate that chant?” We do not tolerate it; we chant it. I speak as a Palestinian. That chant is used by the vast majority of Palestinians. It describes how they are deprived of their rights across all of historic Palestine, whether they are citizens in the state of Israel or living under military occupation. It in no shape or form seeks the abrogation of anybody else’s rights, and to suggest that it does is a way of saying, “Let’s not listen to Palestinians when they say what they mean and when they choose the words they say.”
Chair: I am going to stop you there, Mr Jamal.
Ben Jamal: But it is—
Chair: Mr Jamal, I am chairing this meeting.
Ben Jamal: Sure.
Chair: Thank you. I was just going to say that we understand your views on that, but, equally, there are people who find that chant very offensive and believe that it is about the annihilation of the state of Israel. We need to have some balance; we have heard very much what you have to say.
Q24 Alison Thewliss: I suppose my questions lead on from some of that. I have not been to any of the London demonstrations, but I have been to lots of demonstrations in Glasgow Central, because that is my constituency and where things have been happening. I would agree that, broadly, those have gone off very peacefully and respectfully; sharing voices in a very measured way.
But I am a little concerned about some of the things that are perhaps not directly within the demonstration organisers’ control—the things that happen thereafter. I suppose you will be aware of the quite troubling demos outside Marks & Spencer in Glasgow, with people boycotting Marks & Spencer. In terms of the instructions that go to your stewards and organisers about demonstrations, how do you discourage people from peeling off and doing things like that within the context of a demonstration?
Chris Nineham: One of the central aspects of our stewarding operations is to discuss the framework of the protests that we are organising. We very much do talk about the importance of keeping to the messaging of the demonstrations and avoiding anything which could be construed as being antisemitic or in any way implying race hatred.
I take the example you have given, but I don’t know much about it myself. In general, there have been very, very few examples that anyone can point to, including the police—and the police have been monitoring this situation very closely in the demonstrations and local protests. Every example is to be opposed and dealt with, but nevertheless there have been very few examples in what is quite a tense situation.
I think that comes down to the fact that we have managed to get the message across very clearly in our demonstrations that—as I said before—this is not about religion or race; this is about justice, peace and humanity. I think that message has been quite effective. We have had the biggest stewarding operation that we have mounted on any demonstration since—I think—the Iraq war, and I think that has played its part.
Q25 Alison Thewliss: You talked about challenging banners and placards that stewards feel are inappropriate. When you get to the point where you have a rally and speeches at a demonstration, do you make any challenge to the people who are giving speeches that may make people in the audience listening to those speeches feel uncomfortable?
I have had contact from a few people from some of the Glasgow rallies who felt quite uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric from the speakers. As I said, broadly that has not been the case, but there have been instances of that. Do you communicate with those speakers to say “If you are speaking again, don’t say that” or would they get banned from a future rally?
Chris Nineham: We absolutely do communicate with the speakers about the kind of arguments they are putting. To be honest with you, the Glasgow demonstrations are organised independently of us.
Alison Thewliss: I am just—
Chris Nineham: I don’t think anyone has come up with a single example of any kind of speech on the stages in London—in the national demonstrations—that has been in any way questioned. We have literally had no feedback whatsoever about those things. Those are things that we discuss with our speakers before they come on, and afterwards as well. I think that has been quite an effective operation.
Ben Jamal: I would echo that there has not been a single speech that has been made at any of the demonstrations we have been organising in the past few weeks that has been identified as problematic. Historically, where we have had people speaking at demonstrations who have said things that we think are problematic, or not in accordance with the principles, we disinvite them. We do not ask them to come back and speak, and we make clear why that is the case.
You raised the question about people going off at the end of demonstrations. When a demonstration finishes there are hundreds of thousands of people there. We ask people to disperse, and the vast majority want to head home, particularly at this time of year when it is cold and dark. There are always a small handful of people who want to go off and march somewhere else. As the police have said, where that has happened there have been minor instances of disorder. But again, I think one of the issues is the framing of that, and how those instances are then reported. I am a football fan. I go to football matches. I know that at the end of a football match there are people who will go off and start chanting for their team in a local town or on the tube on the way home because they have not used up their energy. It is usually a handful of people. We do not usually have a huge public debate about the problem of football fans leaving the ground and marching into the town centre chanting for their team. The issues are minor, but the framing of them, in terms of how they are reported, is quite different.
Q26 Carolyn Harris: What communication have you had with, or what consideration have you given to, the Jewish community during these protests?
Ben Jamal: One thing that has not been the subject of much political discourse around this is that, on every single demonstration, we have a Jewish bloc. There are Jewish organisations that come to march as part of the demonstration. There are usually hundreds and hundreds of people in that bloc. At every demonstration we have held, there have been Jewish speakers, usually representing the organisations that have organised that bloc.
Q27 Carolyn Harris: I understand that. They would be sympathetic to your cause. I am talking about the Jewish community who are not necessarily sympathetic to what you are calling for. What communication have you had with them? What consideration have you given to their feelings during the protests?
Ben Jamal: I am very conscious that there has been a narrative and rhetoric that says that these marches are making Jewish people feel unsafe coming into London. That is probably what lies behind your question. Two things about that narrative are problematic. The first is the assumption that the Jewish community—
Q28 Carolyn Harris: Mr Jamal, I asked a very simple question. What communication have you had with, or what consideration have you given to, the Jewish community during your protests? I understand that you feel quite mystic in knowing what is behind my question, but I would just like a simple answer to a simple question.
Ben Jamal: The consideration is that, first of all, these are marches where we are very clear about the anti-racist principles on which we are marching, and we assert those. As Chris said earlier, these are not religious or faith-based marches.
Q29 Carolyn Harris: Have you had a dialogue with the community?
Ben Jamal: It depends what you mean by the community. The hundreds and hundreds of Jewish people who march with us are part of the Jewish community.
Q30 Carolyn Harris: Those who are sympathetic to your issue. What about those who are not? Quite simply, what communication over these protests have you had with those who are not sympathetic to your ask?
Chris Nineham: The question, “Have we had a relationship with the Jewish community?” makes the assumption that the Jewish community is somehow united on this issue. The point that Ben is trying to make—
Q31 Carolyn Harris: So the answer is none.
Chris Nineham: No, that is not the answer. You don’t want to listen to my answer.
Q32 Carolyn Harris: I don’t think you have one.
Chris Nineham: The Jewish community is divided on this question. The central question here is, “What is your attitude to a particular attack that is taking place against a particular set of people?”
Q33 Chair: I am going to stop you there, because you are getting into the detail again. What Carolyn Harris was asking was very clear, and it has been very clear that some of the groups that represent the Jewish community have said that there are Jewish people, particularly in London, who will not come into the centre of London because of these marches and the way they make them feel. That is the issue.
Ben Jamal: Can I come back on the thing that I was not allowed to say? I said that the narrative is problematic for two reasons—
Q34 Chair: No, Mr Jamal, I will stop you. I am pointing out to you that a sizeable group of people are saying they feel uncomfortable. I am not having you deny that those people have that view.
Ben Jamal: I am not denying it. If you will allow me to finish, that ignores the fact that hundreds of Jewish people feel quite safe to march. The second point is this: do I think that, legitimately, there may be members of the Jewish community who feel unsafe because of what they are hearing about these marches? Yes. But if the narrative—
Q35 Chair: So you do accept that?
Ben Jamal: If the narrative about the march, if what you read about these marches, is that there are thousands of people marching through the streets of London with antisemitic placards, chanting “Jihad”, chanting genocidal slogans, attacking synagogues—because that has been part of the narrative—if that is the characterisation, you would understand why people would be fearful. If you give an alternative narrative, which, going back to what Diane Abbott said, I think is more truthful—that these are largely peaceful marches, populated by many families with young children and by people committed to peace, on anti-racist foundations, with many hundreds of Jewish people with them—perhaps people would be less fearful.
Chair: We have heard this. Mr Jamal, you are repeating yourself. [Interruption.] Tim Loughton is next and then I’ll come back to you, Diane.
Q36 Tim Loughton: This inquiry is about the policing of the marches. It is not about the ideology that provoked them or the circumstances that provoked them. Tempting though it is to take on your conspiracy theories about narratives, that is not the purpose of the investigation this morning.
I absolutely uphold the right of those marches to take place. I uphold the right of those marches to take place on 11 November; I just think it was extraordinarily disrespectful, almost unique and actually counterproductive to the cause, but that is by the way. You mentioned how you deal with people who you feel have antisemitic, incendiary placards or whatever, saying that they will be spoken to and perhaps removed. Mr Nineham, as you are the chief steward, can you talk us through the mechanics of how your stewards physically deal with those people without any comment about it being a very small minority? I am not saying there were loads of them, but clearly there were some. We saw photographs. The police have put out social media posts wanting to trace people where, potentially, hate crimes were being committed. Just how are your stewards instructed to deal with those?
Chris Nineham: They are instructed, first of all, to look out for them. That is the central part of the role that the stewards have. Secondly, they are instructed, when they see them, to, in a group, go up to the people who have these questionable placards, flags or whatever and ask them to take them down and to remove them. Then, if that doesn’t work—actually, the feedback that I have had is that, interestingly, nine times out of 10 this does work and people say, “Okay, fair enough. I didn’t realise,” or, “I can see what you mean,” and they do take them down. They are instructed, where it doesn’t happen, to get in touch with the head steward, and more stewards are moved in to persuade people that this really isn’t a good idea. They are instructed, if that doesn’t work, to ask them to leave the demonstration. That is basically the routine—
Q37 Tim Loughton: So you will forcefully remove people if they refuse to do so and you are concerned about—
Chris Nineham: It is not the role of the stewards to forcibly deal with protesters. That is not something we can do, because apart from anything else, that is liable to create incidents and can lead to arrests. So that is not something that we—
Q38 Tim Loughton: So they will be allowed to march with you, ultimately?
Chris Nineham: No, they won’t be allowed to march. They will be surrounded and they will have the banner removed from them if necessary. They won’t be—
Q39 Tim Loughton: So you will forcefully remove a banner from somebody?
Chris Nineham: We will take the banner away from them, but that has actually happened in very, very few circumstances. By and large what happens is that people—
Q40 Tim Loughton: I am just trying to get to the mechanics of what you are prepared to do. So you will forcefully remove a banner that is deemed to be a hate crime or whatever?
Chris Nineham: Yes, but that hasn’t happened in many instances. In fact—
Q41 Tim Loughton: Okay. That’s all I wanted to know. What about this? Do you hand out leaflets? You mentioned concern about the police handing out leaflets at your demonstration. In fact, the police also handed out leaflets at the support for the Jewish community demonstration the following week or whenever it was. Do you hand out leaflets advising people about how best to behave to maximise the impact without falling foul of some of the bad publicity that you have complained of?
Chris Nineham: No, I think that would be overly prescriptive, to be honest. These are broad demonstrations. I don’t think that the organisers want to get down to instructing people on what to do in print. But we do give broad outlines in the emails that we send out in advance of the demonstrations. We indicate some of the issues that way. We also do it at all our public meetings and, as I say, we do it in our discussions with the stewards and from the stage. What we have managed to do, which is quite important and speaks to why we don’t want to be too prescriptive and get too heavy-handed, is through a process of discussion, analysis and debate in the movement create a situation where people understand very clearly what should be said and what arguments should be put. That is extremely important. I would also say that it has not been a difficult process. There is a high level of understanding in the country at large, among the people who are protesting and so on about the kind of arguments we are putting, and they run very much counter to the caricatures.
Q42 Tim Loughton: We are running out of time. Do you acknowledge that the Government could have banned the demonstration on 11 November, and indeed other days?
Chris Nineham: I think it is within their powers to ban demonstrations.
Q43 Tim Loughton: But they didn’t, did they?
Chris Nineham: No, they didn’t, and the reason they didn’t was—
Q44 Tim Loughton: You don’t know the reason they didn’t.
Chris Nineham: Sorry, I am not going to let that pass.
Tim Loughton: In terms of—
Chair: You cannot both speak at the same time.
Chris Nineham: What just happened was you made a statement to me that was not true. I do know why, and you know why as well.
Tim Loughton: I don’t know why.
Chris Nineham: The Home Secretary quite clearly stated that she needed—I am not sure that this was a correct legal position but—
Q45 Tim Loughton: No, this is an opinion. You do not know.
Chris Nineham: No, Let me finish. You have just said something that was not true. The Home Secretary said that she needed the police to recommend a banning for her to institute it. The police refused to do that, and that is why the demonstration wasn’t banned.
Q46 Tim Loughton: You have just told me that the Government have the power regardless to ban that demonstration, which they do.
Chris Nineham: Yes, but Suella Braverman wasn’t aware of that fact, and she said in public that she needed the police to—
Q47 Chair: We don’t know that.
Chris Nineham: No, I do know that, because she said in public—
Q48 Tim Loughton: You are replacing fact with your opinion.
Chris Nineham: Sorry, I am not going to accept that.
Tim Loughton: You are going to have to because we are running out of time.
Chair: Stop. Right, Tim.
Q49 Tim Loughton: Do you think that the policing of the far right who invaded the Cenotaph on 11 November was tough enough? Mr Jamal, would you like to take that?
Ben Jamal: I was not at Whitehall. We were marching several miles away, so I can’t really comment precisely on how they managed that. I was aware; I saw the television pictures of clashes between far-right, pro-Israel activists and the police. What I can comment on is what I spoke about earlier, which is how they dealt with the far-right, pro-Israel activists who came to disrupt our demonstration. I would say that was actually quite well handled.
Q50 Tim Loughton: Why are the far right, who I think would be characterised as Nazis, pro-Israel? I think they are equal opportunity racists, aren’t they, between Islamophobic and antisemitic?
Ben Jamal: There is a well-observed phenomenon in the country, which we have experienced at previous demonstrations, of our demonstrations being disrupted, including attempts to stand across the road to prevent us from marching, by pro-Israel groups that have links with the far right—links with EDL. You will be aware of the public rhetoric around Tommy Robinson, for example. Tommy Robinson has attended pro-Israel demonstrations draped in Israeli flags and has been warmly welcomed at some of those demonstrations. His narrative is that he regards himself fully as a supporter of Israel. What is the basis for that? I would say that there are two. It is the same reason why, politically—I know you don’t want to go into politics—there are links between the current Israeli Government and far-right Governments across the world.
Tim Loughton: Okay, we are treading way beyond the remit of what we are doing here.
Ben Jamal: It is rooted in anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. It is a well-established phenomenon.
Tim Loughton: I asked the question because one of you made the statement that it is the Government’s unconditional support of Israel that has triggered the far right. That is a highly subjective opinion, and actually the far right don’t need any triggering. They will turn up when there is trouble to be made, regardless of what anybody says. Isn’t that the case?
Ben Jamal: Actually, to correct you, what I said—
Q51 Tim Loughton: You don’t have the evidence to say that the Government deliberately, proactively, triggered a bunch of fanatics to come and demonstrate. It is entire speculation with no basis.
Ben Jamal: Let’s go back to what I actually said, which was that what triggered the far right on 11 November was the Government rhetoric that there was an attempt to violate Armistice Day commemorations and desecrate the Cenotaph. What we saw in the aftermath of that—
Tim Loughton: I think that is what I have said. You have accused the Government of triggering that, but you do not have the evidence for it.
Ben Jamal: We had, for example, a far-right commentator saying, “Everybody needs to mobilise to stop these barbarians demonstrating and desecrating the Cenotaph.”
Yasmine Adam: As the person who made the comments that have been referred to, could I just read you some of the comments we get that allow me to come to the conclusion that the Government’s unconditional support does embolden the far right? This is by no means simply this year or through this escalation—this is a trend. Every single time we show solidarity with the Palestinian people, we get this barrage of comments.
In May 2021, we got a comment that was reported to the Met police and to Twitter at the time. No action has been taken, despite us following up multiple times. It said, “The simplest way to dispose of these people is through one of these.” The attached image was of an Apache helicopter shooting people down. Those are some of the comments we get. As I mentioned, an empty petrol can with the letters “IDF” written on it was thrown at a mosque. Some of the other comments we get are, “Demolition of mosques needs to take place. The Government could learn a thing or two from the IDF.” The Government—
Q52 Tim Loughton: Ms Adam, I am not sure that is relevant to my question. I absolutely acknowledge some of the ghastly incidents of Islamophobia, just as I acknowledge the ghastly incidents of antisemitism. The same things that happen to mosques regrettably happen to synagogues as well. I do not think that is the point. The question I was asking was about the evidence that the Government have in some way proactively and of their own accord sought to trigger the far right to leap into action. There is no evidence.
Yasmine Adam: The only way someone would feel emboldened and confident enough to throw a petrol can that has the letters “IDF” written on it is if they knew that the Government’s unconditional support was backing their position.
Tim Loughton: Come on. Ms Adam, you cannot say—
Yasmine Adam: Allow me to finish. We are acutely aware of the rise of antisemitism—
Tim Loughton: What you have just said is that the Government are engaging—
Chair: You cannot both speak at once.
Tim Loughton: You have just claimed that the Government are instigating somebody to throw a petrol can full of petrol with the letters “IDF” marked on it at a mosque. That is an absolutely outrageous thing to say with no evidence whatsoever. By the same token, I could put to you that the large-scale demonstrations are inciting people to go and be abusive and violent towards members of the Jewish community. I am not making that assertion, because I do not have the evidence for it. On the same basis, you have absolutely no evidence that the Government are triggering those sorts of responses.
Chair: We are getting very short of time. I will allow you to come back and respond very briefly to Tim. I will then take Diane Abbott, and then we will conclude this session.
Yasmine Adam: My comment is that members of the far right are emboldened by the Government’s position on Israel. That is reflected in the comments we get from members of the far right on Islamophobia. We are aware of the rise of antisemitism and we are in no way, shape or form saying that our protests are allowing people to commit acts of antisemitism. The position we took recently, for example, when Havering Council were going to cancel the Hanukkah memorial, we offered our stewards—the same stewards we are putting on the pro-Palestine marches. We offered to have them standing outside the council to protect it. The fight against antisemitism and the fight against Islamophobia is one fight.
Chair: Thank you. That is a good point to end on.
Q53 Ms Abbott: We are looking at public order. With reference to this argument that Jewish people are frightened to come into the centre of London, I would say that I represent one of the largest Jewish communities in the country, the Haredi community in Stamford Hill and, far from being frightened to come into central London, they marched from Stamford Hill to take part in your march, because they cannot use a car—it is their Sabbath.
In relation to public order, to what extent do you think that your marches have been mischaracterised, and why do you think that is?
Chair: You need to be very brief, because we have to move on to the next panel.
Chris Nineham: That is fine. The key point here is to look at the stats released by the Metropolitan police itself, which show that—I am not just talking about its comments but the actual statistics that we have compiled from its information—the actual public order issues have been very limited. On each of the national demonstrations, there has never been more than 20 people arrested, and most of the arrests have been for issues other than public order. We are talking about 2 million people demonstrating over the last 2 months, and yet the overall figure for arrests on our demonstrations is in the region of 160—that is arrests, not charges. I think the overall picture is one in which public order, despite the furore, hype, and constant barrage in the media and from some elements of the political class—
Chair: Yes, we have heard this.
Chris Nineham: This is not substantiated by the actual reality, even according to the Metropolitan police.
Chair: I am going to draw this to a conclusion now. Thank you very much, indeed, for giving your evidence this morning. We were very pleased to be able to question you and have these robust exchanges. We are now going to move to our second panel, and I am going to run this until at least quarter to 12—just so Members are aware, as I know that they want to get to Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Witnesses: Dr Dave Rich and Gideon Falter.
Chair: Good morning. Apologies for keeping you waiting—I know that you were at the back of the room for the previous session. First, could you introduce yourselves to the panel?
Gideon Falter: I am Gideon Falter, and I am the chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism. I am very grateful to the Committee for taking the time to investigate this issue and for having this hearing today.
Dr Rich: I am Dave Rich, and I am the director of policy at the Community Security Trust. Thank you for inviting us to give evidence.
Q54 Chair: I want to start really at where we were at the end of the last session. I wonder whether both of you can give an overview about the protests that have been taking place over the last couple of months, and what is the effect of this on the Jewish community?
Dr Rich: We have to go back to the beginning, where this started on 7 October with the absolutely horrific Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel that killed over 1,200 people, and sent a shockwave through the Jewish community here and around the Jewish world. That left a completely traumatised and grief-stricken community. We then saw, within 24 hours, the first pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstrations beginning, starting in towns and cities around the country on Sunday 8, but actually on the afternoon of Saturday 7 October, while the terrorist attack was still going on, the first demonstration in London was called to be held outside the Israeli embassy on Monday 9. These protests were organised in language that seemed to welcome and endorse what Hamas had done. Speeches were given that celebrated it. At the demonstration in Brighton, one of the speakers has since been arrested for allegedly supporting a proscribed organisation. The demonstration in the centre of Manchester on 8 October had big banners saying, “glory to the freedom fighters”. The Facebook post announcing that demonstration called the Hamas attack a “heroic move”, and said that, “It is our duty here to express our unconditional support for the Resistance.” This is the impact of the start of the protests.
These then grew to the scale of protests we saw in London, to the point where I think on the biggest one there were more people marching than there are Jewish people in the whole of Great Britain. We put out a call at one point—not a public call, just through Jewish community networks and WhatsApp groups—for impact statements from ordinary Jewish people on how it made them feel. Within three or four hours we had over 50 impact statements from across London—we were focusing on the big demonstrations here—from Jewish people. I have 23 pages of them; I am happy to share them all with the Committee.
It was statements like, “I feel very unsafe living in my country.” “I have been afraid to go into London on every Saturday.” “I’ve avoided making plans.” “I feel afraid on the tube.” There are people who have changed the times and dates of hospital visits because they didn’t want to clash with the protests. Central London synagogues have changed their service times so that congregants leaving synagogues do not clash with protesters arriving. There are people who won’t allow their children to use the tube at the weekends. The impact on the Jewish community of just the protests has been absolutely profound. Of course, this has happened at a time when there is an unprecedented spike in anti-Jewish hate crime happening across the country, very much in London, that is still ongoing.
Q55 Chair: I will just follow up on Carolyn Harris’s question to the previous panel about any communication that goes on between the organisers of any of these protests and your organisation or the main Jewish organisations. Is there any dialogue or conversation going on at all?
Dr Rich: There is no dialogue. I have heard the evidence that has been given. I have not seen any public calls by the organisers for people not to bring antisemitic placards, not to chant certain chants. I have not seen any calls for supporters of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group, not to come to those demonstrations. That kind of thing would be welcome, but I have not seen or heard it, and there has been no direct contact at all.
Q56 Chair: Mr Falter, would you like to give your view of the situation and the impact it has on the community?
Gideon Falter: There are a couple of things that it is important to convey. One is the impact that the protests have had on the community. The other is the impact that the way that this has unfolded and the policing of these events have had on the community. We actually concluded, just a couple of weeks ago, some polling of a sample of nearly 4,000 people from the Jewish community—representative polling of the UK Jewish population. A number of statistics from that give a really good sense of how the Jewish community is feeling: 69% of British Jews say that they are less likely now to show visible signs of their Judaism at the moment. A staggering 90%—90%—of British Jews say that they would avoid travelling to a city centre if one of these major marches or demonstrations were taking place. Only 16% of British Jews believe that police treat antisemitic hate crime the same way as other forms of hate crime. We know also that approximately 60% of British Jews have either personally experienced antisemitism or know somebody who has.
The marches, in the context of public debate around this issue, have basically caused a situation in the Jewish community where we have heard of people removing mezuzot from their doors. These are small prayer scrolls that stand outside a Jewish home. We have seen people who have been tucking their Star of David necklace inside, or taking off their kippah or hiding it. We have seen people over the weekends of these marches who have actually vacated their homes—people who live in central London who have decided to vacate their homes for the weekend.
One of the other things that is important to understand is the impact of the policing of these marches on the community. The Jewish community is unfortunately the subject of a great deal of hatred; and it is necessary, growing up in the Jewish community, to have the protection of police. In the Jewish community, we are brought up to have two words to say to police—“Thank you.” There is really a sense—I do not use the word lightly—of grave disappointment and even betrayal within the Jewish community because of the fact that, week after week, we are seeing tens, even hundreds, of thousands of people coursing through the capital city, and on display within those marches you have people who are clearly glorifying terrorism, displaying placards whose messaging would not have been out of place in 1930s Germany, and apparently no reaction to that from the people surrounding them. The Jewish community has seen this happening week after week. There is about to be the ninth weekend of this, and the sense from the Jewish community that something has changed in this country, and that the protection that people thought they had is now lacking, is absolutely palpable.
Chair: It is very helpful that you have set that in context.
Q57 Alison Thewliss: I wanted to ask similar questions to those that I asked to the previous panel around legislation and the threshold to ban marches or to change the ways in which freedom of speech currently operates. What would be your views on that? Is there a necessity to make any changes to the current legislation?
Dr Rich: Obviously, everyone has a right to protest, but that always has to be balanced with the impact on other communities. The specific impacts in this case are on the Jewish community, but there is also the disruption to wider society. When you have repeated large-scale demonstrations in the centre of London or other cities week after week after week, I think that over time that balance shifts. Where there is a protest where most people may be peaceful but offences are committed every time and it is the same pattern and the same types of offences—through placards and chants that are either stirring up racial hatred, other public order offences or support for proscribed organisations—and it is happening every time, I think that over time the balance between the right to carry on protesting like that and the rights of everyone else not to be subjected to it shifts.
I do wonder whether one of the learnings from this period is that, as well as looking at the likelihood of public disorder with protests, there should also be other obligations on protest organisers in terms of messaging and public instruction in advance of protests in terms of how they will deal with any offending that takes place. I was very struck by the fact that on the march against antisemitism, which Campaign Against Antisemitism organised and was attended by a large part of the Jewish community, there were only two arrests, one of which was at the request of the organisers when Stephen Yaxley-Lennon—Tommy Robinson—turned up. Far from being welcomed, as we heard in the previous evidence, he was rejected and the organisers got him arrested. That kind of obligation on march organisers to try and ensure that things stay within the law and don’t cause wider harm to community cohesion, which these protests absolutely undoubtedly have done, perhaps might be something worth looking at.
Gideon Falter: There has been a lot of debate publicly about changes to the law and quite a lot of it has been unhelpful in many ways. We have had Sir Mark Rowley telling news channels that he basically is not able to do anything until the law is changed. The fact is that there are gaps in the law. He has got a point to some extent. There was a report some time ago, for example, noting that there is a gap in between hate crime and terrorism offences, and that gap is dealing with what the report termed “hateful extremism”. The fact is that new laws probably are required to deal with that, but we also have a huge number of offences which do apply and which are enforceable and which simply have not been enforced.
If you look at the wording of section 12 of the Public Order Act, which talks about putting conditions on marches, it is very clear that these marches, week after week, are passing the threshold—the police clearly agree with this—whereby they cause significant disruption to the life of a community, where there is a significant risk of criminality. Indeed, the wording of the Public Order Act was amended, so that, rather than looking at each individual march on its own, you can look at the cumulative effect. And because, as we have said, we are about to enter the ninth weekend of these things, and you look at the kind of criminality that we’re seeing on these marches—we’re seeing people who are ostensibly dressed as Hamas terrorists. We’re seeing people chanting in Arabic a chant about the battle of Khaybar, in which Jews were massacred, and warning in this chant, “The army of Muhammad is returning.”
In addition, we have seen people chanting, again in Arabic, a chant that is sometimes heard at Hamas demonstrations: “With our blood, our soul, we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Al-Aqsa.” We have seen people carrying placards with a Star of David thrown in the bin and the caption saying, “Please keep the world clean.”
So the law, as it stands, is not being enforced, but there are certainly amendments that ought to be made in respect of hateful extremism and also in a way to tighten the law around restricting some of these demonstrations that go on week after week after week, and cause this kind of harm.
Q58 Alison Thewliss: You would accept, though, that those things— as horrific as they are, and they should be acted upon—are very much the minority of these wider demonstrations and that, broadly, these demonstrations are attended by a wide range of people from all different walks of life and there are relatively few arrests, given the number of people going to them.
Gideon Falter: I am not sure that I accept that, for a couple of reasons. One, there is a big difference, and some of the policing of these demonstrations has looked at them in terms of, “Were people punched? Were shops broken into and looted? Was there that kind of public order criminality?” And by and large, no, there hasn’t been. But going and saying very unpeaceful things, indeed criminal things, in a peaceful way is not the same as having a peaceful protest.
I would add that if you hold these demonstrations, which are so intimidatory that people who disagree with you stay off the streets, that would also account for the fact that there is less violence. For example, we have seen somebody who turned up to one of these demonstrations with a placard that said, “Hamas is Isis,” and this person was physically attacked. According to the person who was attacked, one of the people had a knife and it sounds like a lucky escape.
One of the worries that we have is that policing of these demonstrations has been extremely lax. And when you look at chants like this, it takes a few people to chant them but hundreds of people walking nearby to ignore them. When you see placards like this, it takes one person to hold the placard and hundreds of people walking around to see it and to decide to take no action at all, including sometimes these stewards.
We have heard an awful lot about stewarding. If you go right now on to the social media feeds of some of the organisations that we just heard from, they are recruiting these stewards from members of the public; people on the pavement outside could sign up and be a steward. It’s completely mythical to say that there is some kind of steward force that is going on and taking on antisemites in these demonstrations and making sure that antisemitism is dealt with.
Therefore, we are seeing not only a failure of stewarding, but a failure of policing.
Q59 Ms Abbott: Mr Falter, I have actually been on these demonstrations; you haven’t. And I have to tell you that on both the big London demonstrations I have been on, I have not seen a single solitary soul glorifying Hamas.
The other thing I would say—I said it in the earlier session, but I will say it again—is that there is all this talk about people being frightened to come into central London, but my community in Stamford Hill marched all the way from Stamford Hill to central London. If they felt frightened and intimidated, they wouldn’t have done it.
However, the question that I wanted to ask is this: are you saying that you want marches of this kind completely banned?
Gideon Falter: Well, we also know very well that you didn’t see any antisemitism at all in the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn. And when you talk about which demonstrations you were on, which demonstrations are you talking about? Were you on the national march against antisemitism that took place just over a week ago?
Q60 Ms Abbott: That isn’t what I asked you. I asked you a question.
Gideon Falter: Let me answer the question.
Ms Abbott: Are you able to answer it?
Gideon Falter: Yes, I am able to answer it. We are very well familiar in the Jewish community with your particular contribution to the fight against antisemitism in this country. What I would say regarding these marches is that there have been marches where, after four weeks, we were asking the police to put in place stronger conditions. And when the police failed to put in place stronger conditions under section 12 of the Public Order Act, we did, with the backing of a number of prominent lawyers, say that we felt that the legal threshold had been met for banning these marches, as indeed has happened in numerous other civilised countries, like France.
Q61 Ms Abbott: Finally—I know other people want to come in—do you accept that there is a right to protest in this country even if you don’t agree with the subject that people are marching about?
Gideon Falter: It is nice to be asked an easy question. It is obvious, from the law that MPs in this House have passed, that all freedoms in this country come with responsibilities. There are limits on every freedom. You can’t have absolute freedom to do to anybody else what you please. Of course, we are very fortunate—I think people in the Jewish community particularly, given the history that it has faced, feel very fortunate to live in a country where we have such strong freedoms, but there should be no freedom to intimidate other people, glorify terrorism and commit acts of hatred. In fact, the bar is much lower than that. We see, for example, that people from the Just Stop Oil group get stopped for blocking roads. There is no absolute freedom to do what the hell you like in this country on the basis that you have the freedom to march and demonstrate.
Q62 Kim Johnson: Good morning, panel. Mr Falter, you mentioned concern about placards and chanting on these intimidatory marches. We heard from the first panel that only a handful of those banners and placards would be deemed hateful. I am aware that you have allegedly said that those people joining the march are all complicit with those comments made by a handful of people, but on your Facebook page there are lots of hate-filled, genocidal comments. I want to know whether you feel the same applies to the people who made those negative comments.
Gideon Falter: Unfortunately, we do receive a great deal of hatred. It is a well-known fact that it is something we try to deal with. I think that, as a volunteer-led charity, we do a pretty good job of removing some of those hateful comments. We see an awful lot of antisemitism in relation to what we post. I am not sure whether the allegation is that, because there are antisemitic comments on our Facebook page, that makes us antisemitic.
Q63 Kim Johnson: No, sorry; I was referring to negative comments towards Palestinians. They are referred to as Nazis, and various other comments have been left on your Facebook page.
Gideon Falter: Anything that we see, we remove very, very swiftly. I can say, for example, that at the national march against antisemitism, there were over 100,000 people present. It was the largest gathering against antisemitism in this country in a lifetime, since the battle of Cable Street in 1936, which saw people standing shoulder to shoulder against antisemitism to break the backs of Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. At the march that we held just over a week ago, with 100,000 people present, as was just said, there were two arrests; these were people from outside the demonstration.
What I can tell you is that there is a great difference in the way these things are policed. At the marches we are talking about today, the police look inward, largely. They look into the marches for criminality. They look at people glorifying terrorism, inciting antisemitism and the like. At the march that we held—the march against antisemitism—the police were looking outward. They were working closely with the Community Security Trust to protect people on the demonstration from antisemitic attacks from outside. There was not a single placard, or anything of the like, that was in any way criminal, and certainly not objectionable. In fact, one of the things I remarked was that Peter Tatchell attempted to attend the march the day before with a sign that said, “I stand with Jewish people. And with Palestinians. Against ALL hate/violence. Solidarity!” He was rejected from the march. He was very warmly welcomed at ours.
Q64 Kim Johnson: There has been some suggestion that pro-Israel far-right demonstrators were going to join—you mentioned Yaxley-Lennon being arrested. What information and evidence do you have that other people were participating in that march? I will also ask you what was asked of the first panel: what role did your stewards have in ensuring that no hate was incited during that demonstration? You have made it clear that, from your point of view, none was, so I want to know what stewards would have done in those instances.
Gideon Falter: We have a history of occasionally having to pull out people who turn up to demonstrations or marches that we hold. For example, we held a demonstration outside Scotland Yard just over a month ago in relation to the failures of policing at these marches. We found that the leader of the National Front had turned up. We later found out from his social media feed that the purpose of his being there was “to monitor the Zionists”, and from the stage we led chants of “Racist scum, off our streets” until he left.
The individual you refer to, who tried to attend the national march against antisemitism, was not able to do so, because he was arrested before it began. I am very proud that, when we march against antisemitism, we do so with a voice that really reflects what a peaceful march looks like. If anybody wants to know what a peace march looks like, they should look at the march against antisemitism.
Kim Johnson: We heard from the first panel that the pro-Palestine marches had very few arrests as well. We have heard that families and women joined those protests, so they were also peaceful protests.
Q65 James Daly: Dr Rich, can I ask you a question? It covers both the panels that we have had, is something that I am interested in and certainly relates to Sir Mark Rowley’s comments. The message has been sent out that we are a country with a proud tradition of free speech that encourages marches, protests or whatever we want to call them—and thank goodness we are. But on the policing of behaviour on marches that steps into a criminal category, what types of offence—I don’t know whether you have discussed this with the police—could police officers present potentially arrest somebody for? I will give you an example: section 5 of the Public Order Act.
Dr Rich: We have been in constant discussions with the police and the CPS since 7 October, as we were prior to that as well, about the policing of these marches, as well as about a lot of other issues with the policing of hate crime, the protection of the Jewish community and so on. We have seen that the police are now approaching these marches in a very different way from how they were two months ago. And the approach is radically different from the approach two years ago, during the last war in Israel and Gaza, when we saw very similar offences on those demonstrations in May 2021: antisemitic chanting, calls for Jews to be killed and antisemitic placards, with relative impunity. We are not seeing that impunity now. I am not saying that the police are getting everything right, but we are seeing a genuine effort to improve in this area and to intervene.
Q66 James Daly: Sorry, but because of time, I just want to make this point. I want you to give the Committee some evidence regarding the offences that people are potentially being arrested for.
Dr Rich: Of course. The arrests will include support for proscribed organisations, primarily Hamas, and that might include explicit placards. We have seen one placard saying, “I support Hamas”, or the sticking of images of paragliders as a symbol of support for Hamas, because that is how Hamas got into Israel on 7 October. We have seen arrests for Arabic chanting. There is an Arabic chant that begins, “Khaybar Khaybar ya yahud,” which is a death threat, so that would be stirring up racial or religious hatred. We have seen arrests of people carrying placards with swastikas on, which would again be a public order offence. And we have even started to see police proactively intervene and take these placards off people.
Q67 James Daly: Can I just ask one question on that? I could have been asking these questions to the first panel as well as the second panel, because obviously different people have different viewpoints on this, but, in terms of some of the offences that you have talked about, is it your understanding that the police essentially are the complainants themselves? The police have to, in a sense, receive a complaint regarding that poster, that chant or whatever the behaviour may be.
Dr Rich: It is both. On some occasions, it will be police officers seeing placards at the time and intervening directly themselves. That is something that we have only really seen in the last couple of weeks, and it is very welcome. In other cases, it is members of the public, or us at CST, seeing material on social media from these marches and reporting them to the police.
James Daly: But if that is in real time—
Dr Rich: That is in real time, yes.
Q68 James Daly: If that is in real time, how would you or a member of the public report that to the to the police to allow action to be taken? How does that work?
Dr Rich: We have long-standing existing relationships with both hate crime units and counter-terrorist police in London and around the country as part of our general work protecting the Jewish community against anti-Jewish terrorism and hate crime. Those relationships exist for us to report in real time. I imagine that for a member of the public, it might be harder to do that.
Q69 James Daly: My final question is on section 5 of the Public Order Act, which says that an offence is committed if someone has caused “harassment, alarm or distress”. We could have a whole debate about whether section 5 should be on the statute book, but that is a very low evidential threshold for potentially criminal behaviour to be addressed. Is that particular offence something that the police use, whatever the march is, as a deterrent against some of this behaviour?
Dr Rich: There are a range of offences, and that is one of them. Section 4 would be another. Section 18, on displaying material stirring up racial hatred, is another that gets used quite a lot. A range of parts of the Public Order Act are relevant here.
Q70 James Daly: Do you think that the police officers are aware of this in their training in terms of how marches are policed, and the legal options—if that is the correct term—that are potentially open to them if they see certain types of behaviour?
Dr Rich: This is the ongoing challenge we face: to what extent do the individual officers who are policing these protests understand the full range of legislation that is open to them? Bear in mind that a lot of the officers on these protests may not be Met officers; they may have come in from other forces, so they may not have as much experience of policing these protests. How much do they know about the full range of legislation? How much will they recognise the language and imagery on those placards as being potentially antisemitic or criminal? It is constantly changing, and the police are constantly trying to adapt to new types of offending. I think that the new model that the police and the CPS are working with, where there are senior CPS prosecutors in the police operation rooms to give real-time advice, is very helpful in this respect.
Q71 James Daly: Again, this could be in respect of all marches and all circumstances, and this is a little unfair because Sir Mark is not here to either defend himself or not in respect of this, but one of my concerns is that the general view is that the policing of protest is now about containment. It is about tolerating certain behaviours in terms of the wider public order and ensuring that the wider public order is not exacerbated, if you understand what I mean.
Do you think that that would be a very unfair viewpoint on the Metropolitan police: that when they are faced with a march, rightly or wrongly, of many hundreds of thousands of people, their concentration has just been on literally keeping control of the streets and making sure that there is no wider public disorder, and that it has therefore been extremely difficult to, at the same time, have officers arresting people for some of the things we have been talking about?
Dr Rich: I think that is not an unfair comment. That was our perception as well, certainly until fairly recently: that the police’s priority was purely the public order side and getting everyone from A to B and home safely. It is understandable that that should be very important, but what happens now is that we see antisemitic placards or chants or things supporting Hamas that get videoed and photographed and go viral on social media. The community sees nothing happening, and it has a really damaging impact on community confidence in the police and safety for Jewish people. Because of that aspect, we have tried to encourage the police to shift their balance so that as well as maintaining public order, they are also willing to step in in real time. They have started to do that, and it is very welcome.
What we saw last weekend in smaller demonstrations in London and Manchester was that the police stepped in to arrest people for criminal placards, and the surrounding protesters basically made it very difficult for them to do that. They blocked the police vehicles and would not leave until they had released the people and so on. When you have a situation where you have a large number of protesters effectively protecting someone who is holding a racist placard and making it difficult or impossible for the police to arrest, I have some sympathy with the police’s view that they then need so many more officers to do that, which then has other operational implications.
Gideon Falter: May I add something? That is one of the reasons why conditions under section 12 of the Public Order Act could really be very helpful to police. We have a lot of sympathy with frontline police officers, including some who have been hospitalised by the demonstrators at these marches, and it is almost impossible to control crowds of hundreds of thousands with 1,000 or 2,000 police officers.
One thing we have been saying is that if there is such criminality on display regularly at these marches, as there has been, it would make sense to use section 12 powers to limit the size of the marches and put better constraints on the timeframes in which the marches can take place. It would also help the police to make them more policeable. As we have just heard, we see incidents in which supposedly peaceful demonstrators are surrounding police vans and stopping people from being arrested.
Q72 James Daly: I was not present at either of the marches, so I am not a witness to this. I accept the evidence of the first and second panels and the people who were present, because I have no knowledge to challenge that. What I am trying to get at is that I understand the point you are making, but I welcome mass protest; I think that whatever the subject is, as long as it is legal, we should cherish that. I am just trying to get at the challenge, and I understand that this is the point you are making, Mr Falter. I think the public look at certain things that are put on social media and wonder why individual police officers are not acting there and then to arrest somebody who may have a banner or may be saying something like that. I think it is down to a mixture of numbers—you have a very fair point in that respect—and a lack of training and a lack of basic understanding of the law.
I do not think that on some of these marches, police officers have been encouraged by their senior officers to take proactive action there and then if they see somebody acting in an inappropriate way. People have been arrested but, as we have heard, there have been very few arrests throughout the whole of these marches. We will have to face up to that tension or issue, because we will have more and more marches, quite justifiably.
I am assuming that your argument is we restrict the numbers to make them more manageable. I do not want to do that, because I want people to have the freedom to march in the numbers that they want, and to be enabled to do it. If we have to bring in more police officers and train more up to take proactive action against criminal behaviour, I would personally view that as a better outcome than trying to limit people’s rights and freedom of speech to say what they want to say. Is that unreasonable, do you think?
Gideon Falter: I think where we agree is that we just want the law to be enforced. If that means bringing in more police officers to do so—frankly, I think that senior police officers have been letting down frontline officers by failing to provide sufficient numbers and by telling police officers, it appears, to take a standoffish attitude rather than going in and enforcing the law, as you said—so be it.
We need to have more police officers. If they cannot muster more police officers because these things are so huge and uncontrollable—we have had police officers hospitalised, fireworks have been launched into them and the like—by all means we should use powers under section 12 of the Public Order Act to limit their size or section 13 powers to ban them.
Q73 Chair: Could I ask about the approach that the Metropolitan police took in some of the earlier marches? They were tweeting out explanations about why they were not taking action against certain incidents, where I think most people would have thought that action should have been taken. I am referring to the chants of “Jihad”. There were quite long tweets coming out from the Met. What did you make of them trying to explaining why they were not taking action?
Dr Rich: I thought it was probably well intentioned but misguided to try to explain something as complex and nuanced as the application of laws around the stirring up of racial or religious hatred in relation to the word “jihad” in a public demonstration setting. That was from an extremist organisation with a very particular ideology that makes it clear that they mean it in a violent way, but did they mean the kind of violence that would break British law or not? It is very complex, and trying to convey that in a tweet or a series of tweets was probably done with the best of intentions about trying to communicate to the community in real time, but was not the best decision.
I have noticed that they have not really tried to do that again. That is why I say that I think the police are trying to learn as they go along. They are trying to adapt and improve. These are very big demonstrations, with a range of different types of offending within the mass of people. The offences are sometimes quite new—the images and language are quite new and nuanced—and it is sometimes difficult to adapt existing laws to what is going on. But, yes, I think that was a tweet too far.
Gideon Falter: I think some of the messaging coming from the Metropolitan police about what is and is not acceptable is absolutely extraordinary. For example, saying that people chanting “Jihad” might be calling for scholarly introspection or something is essentially gaslighting not just the Jewish community, but the public at large. It is a real shame that that is what happened.
We saw another incident where somebody was waving a black flag and shouting, and the police said, “There is not an offence being committed there, because that is not an ISIS flag.” Of course, it turned out that it was an al-Qaeda flag, and the thing he was shouting was, “May Allah’s curses be on the infidels. May Allah’s curses be on the Jews.” We have had that kind of messaging from the police, which is factually incorrect, and at worst one might even say that it is almost gaslighting. It is trying to put officers in a position where they don’t have to make arrests by misinforming the public.
We have also seen something else extraordinary. I was in a meeting with a senior police commander when, ahead of the first large march, we saw a tweet from the police saying that they wouldn’t be taking any action against this genocidal “From the river to the sea” chant. In any of the demonstrations that we have seen policed on this or any other topic, I have never seen the police pre-emptively put something out saying, “We will not be taking action against this kind of thing.” That is unprecedented, as far as we are aware, particularly when it is a genocidal chant—it is widely recognised as such.
Q74 Tim Loughton: On the basis that, regardless of whether you or we like it or not, the demonstrations are set to continue, members of the Committee have been invited to go and see the police’s operation one Saturday. We will be doing that shortly. What should the police be doing differently in handling these demonstrations?
Gideon Falter: There need to be much larger police numbers deployed, unfortunately. There has to be a change in mindset. This is not something where the demonstration is peaceful and a success if nobody gets physically assaulted, shops don’t get broken into and nothing is set on fire.
Tim Loughton: Yes, you have made that point.
Gideon Falter: If the demonstration goes off and anybody who incites racial hatred or glorifies terrorism is arrested, that is a success. The first thing is the mentality and the numbers that the police deploy. The second thing is that the police need to start making greater use of their powers, particularly under section 12 of the Public Order Act. If the premise of the question is that these marches are going to continue, there has to be greater action by police and greater enforcement of the section 12 orders that are made.
There is one thing that we have seen being regularly flouted: on pretty much every one of these marches, the police say that you cannot turn up, masked up, with just your eyes showing, in garb that in many cases is very similar to the kind of garb that Hamas terrorists wear. Police issue these orders saying that you cannot turn up like that and then completely fail to enforce them. We have to start seeing these measures being enforced.
Q75 Tim Loughton: Are you aware of whether the police, when confronted with protesters who are wearing balaclavas or are completely disguised, as you say, have ordered them to remove their face coverings and, if they did not, arrested them?
Gideon Falter: We have a demonstration and event monitoring unit that goes to all these marches to gather evidence. They have never witnessed any police officer telling somebody to remove a mask, and there are a lot of masked people at these marches.
Q76 Tim Loughton: Were you aware of anyone marching at the antisemitism march with their faces covered?
Gideon Falter: Not at all. We are not aware of anybody who was masked at the national march against antisemitism.
Q77 Tim Loughton: Why do you think there is that contrast?
Gideon Falter: Because I think that that is what a peace march looks like: a peaceful march is a group of people who, when they walked past the Cenotaph, sang “God save the King”. It is not a bunch of people who turned up, masked up; people with antisemitic placards; people inciting hatred and glorifying terrorism; and other people marching past them quite happily. That is not what a peaceful march is.
Q78 Tim Loughton: What do you think should happen when police on those marches witness people chanting, “From the river to the sea”? We know that that has a long history of interpretation, but if they are quite clearly chanting in that way, what should the police do?
Gideon Falter: If police see people chanting a genocidal chant, we believe that there are existing offences under which those people can and should be arrested.
Q79 Tim Loughton: Such as what?
Gideon Falter: For example, section 5 of the Public Order Act.
Q80 Tim Loughton: I have some sympathy, but I have seen some people being interviewed and asked why they were chanting, “From the river to the sea,” and they cannot even name the river. There are some useful idiots among this lot, as well as people who know full well the implications of that phrase, from its use by terrorist organisations going back to the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Should there be some protocol whereby, if somebody chants that, they are effectively given a warning and, if they continue to do it having had the explanation that it could constitute a genocidal chant, that would be an offence under whichever section?
Gideon Falter: There has been a very significant public debate, including on the front pages of newspapers, about that chant. If somebody takes the trouble to get up early in the morning, travel down to London, attend a protest and start chanting something, they ought to know what it means. And if that chant is a genocidal chant, the law ought to be enforced. The law contains an allowance for people who, during the course of a criminal trial, can show that they were absolutely ignorant about what they were chanting—useful idiots, as you say.
From a practical point of view, it might also be that police might first tell people not to chant that chant and then take action later. Instead, we are seeing the opposite: the police tell people, before it has even been chanted, that they will not take any action against the chant. That is only emboldening people and is partly responsible for these marches getting worse, not better, week after week.
Q81 Tim Loughton: Do you think the law needs to be changed, or is the law sufficient but not properly enforced?
Gideon Falter: There are definitely gaps in the law, but by and large the main problem we are seeing at the moment is that the law is not being properly enforced.
Q82 Tim Loughton: Finally, looking at examples of other countries, one of you—I cannot remember who, sorry—mentioned civilised countries such as France having banned these demonstrations.
Gideon Falter: That was me.
Tim Loughton: Would you go as far as that?
Yes, I think we have reached the point where, if the police are unable to enforce the law and uphold the law of the land, then a ban is probably the only measure that would enable the law to be upheld on our streets.
Q83 Tim Loughton: It is difficult, then, to justify an antisemitism march, however you may regard it as being peaceful. If it is going to be banned in advance of it happening and those crimes potentially taking place, then, however peaceful the examples may have been so far, that potential exists at an antisemitism march as well. Is that not double standards?
Gideon Falter: That is a fairly ridiculous point to make, because we have only called for bans after weeks of these marches at which there has been a significant degree of criminality. We have not seen any criminality whatsoever on the national march against antisemitism. As I said, there were two arrests, and those were of people outside the demonstration, one of whom was shouting antisemitic obscenities at the people on the march. It would be completely unconscionable to start banning lawful protest. We are not talking about protests that are entirely lawful here. The marches that we are seeing, week after week, are marches at which there is a significant degree of criminality, including offences that are very serious and carry sentences of many years.
Q84 Tim Loughton: I understand. So your organisation and other comparable organisations in support of the antisemitism march did not call for the pro-Palestinian marches to be banned right at the outset?
Gideon Falter: No.
Tim Loughton: You are sure?
Gideon Falter: No, we did not. We watched to see what happened. As we have heard, before there was any response, there were, for example, people in Israel who were already demonstrating, celebrating the atrocity committed by Hamas. We watched for weeks, and, following a number of weeks of protest, we started to see that there was no real control of the protests by police and that there was a significant degree of criminality. Only then, after considerable efforts with politicians and police to try to get the law enforced, did we call for a ban.
Q85 Ms Abbott: I heard you say, just now, that there was a significant degree of criminality in the pro-Palestinian march. That is not what the Metropolitan police say, and they might be supposed to know.
Okay, sorry; that was obviously too difficult.
Gideon Falter: No, it is not difficult; I was actually waiting for there to be a question. I will answer your statement.
Ms Abbott: The question is—
Gideon Falter: Oh, there is a question.
Ms Abbott: Why do you think that, on the one hand, you are saying that there was a significant amount of criminality on the march but that, on the other hand, after all of these marches, the Metropolitan police have not said that?
Gideon Falter: We have already seen the Metropolitan police putting out tweets during marches with videos of people committing criminal acts, saying that they were not criminal acts, and later having to change their line. The Metropolitan police have been getting it wrong, and there has been a significant effort to whitewash criminality on these marches and to whitewash the antisemitism that we have been seeing. Unfortunately, there is a significant degree of it; there are plenty of videos and photographs of it, including many taken by the people who I would like to pay tribute to from our demonstration event monitoring unit, who go into these marches to gather that kind of evidence.
It is simply a matter of fact that there is a significant degree of criminality on the marches. If you are the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and you are being criticised for failing to enforce the law, it is obvious that you might say that there was not really anything to enforce against or that there was a low degree of criminality. The facts show that that is not the case. Indeed, we have started to see, very belatedly, improved police action to start acting against the criminals on some of these marches.
Dr Rich: May I add to that? The Metropolitan police recently announced that there have been 289 arrests on protests up to 1 December in London. That is not an insignificant number, and I do not think it is a number we should be complacent about.
We have to bear in mind that those are only the cases where the police have been able to identify, locate and arrest someone for committing an offence. There will be many others who have been perhaps photographed, or were not even photographed but who the police have not managed to identify. The important thing is that it is the same type of offending every time. It is the same type of antisemitic placard, pro-Hamas placard and antisemitic chanting week after week on the protests. Whatever the organisers and stewards are doing or think they are doing to try and stop this, it is clearly not working. It’s got to the point where the police have to issue their own leaflets to tell marchers what not to do to avoid breaking the law, because so many of the marchers are clearly not capable of working that out for themselves.
And the Jewish community sees this. It sees it happening every single week. It sees the arrests pile up. It sees the marches happening and the hateful rhetoric. It is the same rhetoric that is shouted at Jewish people in hate crimes. If people drive through Jewish neighbourhoods shouting “Free Palestine” when there are Jewish people visibly on the street or wave Palestinian flags outside synagogues, it causes immense fear. I do not think we should be complacent just because it is only a few hundred people who get arrested. I still think that that is a significant number.
Q86 Ms Abbott: I just wanted to ask a final question. In October the Prime Minister announced an extra £3 million in funding to the Community Security Trust. He said it was to protect schools, synagogues and other buildings. Do you have any knowledge of how the funding is being used in practice?
Dr Rich: Yes. The Home Office provides an annual protective security grant to the Jewish community. As of this year it was up to £15 million a year. That pays for Jewish schools, synagogues and other Jewish buildings around the country to hire commercial security guards to protect their buildings primarily against anti-Jewish terrorism. CST receives the grant from the Government, but then disburses it across the community as per need by each location. The CST does not provide the guards; they come from private security companies.
The £3 million top-up announced by the previous Home Secretary and the Prime Minister in October was in addition to that £15 million. It pays for the same thing: security guards across the Jewish community at schools, synagogues and so on. That money has all been allocated up to the end of this year to provide for more guards or more buildings to have guards or more guarding hours at existing buildings.
Q87 Kim Johnson: Mr Falter, we heard from the first panel about the policing that you have alluded to and the fact that the police issued leaflets, but my colleague mentioned that those leaflets were also handed out on your demonstration—your march—on 25 November.
Gideon Falter: That is not true, to the best of my knowledge.
Q88 Kim Johnson: That was raised at the first session. I just wanted to qualify that. You also mentioned people turning up to demonstrations masked up, but I know that anarchists turn up to lots of demonstrations, including Just Stop Oil. Do you recognise that those people do those things as well?
Gideon Falter: When there is a police order in place saying that you must not wear a mask and you arrive masked up, the police have a duty to enforce that order and the public have a duty to comply with it. I also point out that people wear different types of masks. If someone comes wearing a mask that covers all but their eyes and a green headband very similar to the kind worn by Hamas terrorists, they are not just wearing a face mask—they are dressing up as Hamas terrorists.
Q89 Kim Johnson: We have talked about the “From the river to the sea” chant, but are you aware that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has used that phrase in his speeches as well?
Gideon Falter: I am not going start commenting on Israeli or Palestinian politics—
Kim Johnson: No, but you have used it today.
Gideon Falter: I do not think Binyamin Netanyahu is going on the pro-Palestine marches, so let’s talk about the people who are on the marches. Perhaps that would be more helpful. If we talk about the people who are on the marches and what they mean by that, there is—
Kim Johnson: I will just stop you there, because I just wanted your response to the fact that the phrase had been used.
Gideon Falter: No. You have asked me a question so I will answer it. It is a completely ridiculous thing. “From the river to the sea” refers to the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. Hamas are very clear on what “From the river to the sea” means. They say that it means every inch of the land, which currently has both Palestinians and Israelis living on it, is going to be “liberated” by them in just the same way that they committed atrocities on 7 October. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, now the Palestinian Authority, actually dropped the “From the river to the sea” wording as part of the Oslo peace accords. It is rejected by everyone who is seeking peace in any way at the time that they are seeking peace. It is solely adopted, as far as we can see, by organisations such as Hamas.
Chair: I think the session has, sadly, come to a conclusion. I am sure we could spend far more time on this. I thank you both for coming today and giving evidence. If there is anything that you feel we have not been able to ask you questions on because we have not been able to carry on, please write to us with any further information. One thing I would actually quite like to have asked you—there is not time—is about police forces other than the Met, the approach that they are taking and whether there are lessons to be learned from, say, Greater Manchester or the West Midlands or those of other large conurbations that have seen marches. Perhaps you could write to me about the approach of other police forces. Thank you again for your time this morning.
Gideon Falter: Thank you very much.