Shaken and stirred

I don't know where Yvette Cooper was today but she certainly wasn't in Parliament Square to witness the inevitable consequences of her proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

While her Cabinet colleague, David Lammy, enjoys his bromance with JD Vance at his grand 18th century country residence of Chevening House in Kent, Cooper will have to make her own summer arrangements. Wherever these may be I hope she can live with her conscience as she relaxes in her garden hammock. Actually, I hope she can't.

Had she seen what I saw today as an observer in the Square, I wonder if she would have been as unrepentant as her recent statements suggest? Almost certainly. She claims to have received intelligence suggesting that Palestine Action is planning violent action. That may be correct and we await to hear precisely what that information is but until she makes it public we will have to take it on trust that her proscription was justified - and few of us, I suspect, are disposed to do so.

Until that time, however, those of us protesting it are, it seems to me, acting in good faith and the police action Cooper signed off on was too heavy-handed and authoritarian for a supposed liberal democracy, which daily seems to be becoming more and more illiberal. It was quite clear that Cooper was seeking a showdown in the hope of cowing further protest. If that was her motivation then I think we all know where shock-and-awe leads us.

The official Met tally of protesters arrested now totals 474* but the decision to proscribe Palestine Action is subject to a legal challenge in November so what happens in the interim to those arrested is anyone's guess. Perhaps Cooper will enlighten us when she returns from her holiday but if the judicial review fails protesters could be imprisoned for up to fourteen years. What I can absolutely attest to as someone who was there is the heavy-handed and disproportionate actions of some of the police. 

I was sitting close to the statue of the suffragist, Millicent Garret Fawcett, in the corner of the Square when a young woman sitting on the plinth holding a placard was grappled to the ground by the police and arrested. As officers prepared to carry her away I saw, from just a few feet away, her right hand shaking uncontrollably. She was obviously terrified and that image will remain with me indelibly.

This show of force majeure was totally unnecessary. Had she chosen to do so Cooper could have instructed the police to ignore the protest and wait for the outcome of the review. The demonstration was entirely peaceful and appeared to involve a disproportionately large cohort of pensioners. The fact that Cooper settled instead on an uncompromisingly forceful response tells us quite clearly where we stand as citizens on her watch. The Peelian principle of policing, that 'the police are us and we are the police', no longer seems to apply.

Under a Labour government, that venerable tradition appears to be broken in Britain.

*Latest figure 522

Popular posts from this blog

A knight's tale - creative non-fiction

England - 1088 'What's a king without a kingdom?' 'A man, sire. And a man fights for what's his.' The king had been thinking aloud and the thirteen year-old lad's unexpected reply to his rhetorical question caught him off-guard. It was a bold response but, rather than being angered, he felt chastened by it. It was profound coming from one so young and junior in his service though prompted, he knew, by genuine love and loyalty rather than impertinence.  At a moment of grave peril so early in his new reign he valued candour, a commodity in short supply at court. He had followed his father, the Conqueror, as King William II less than a year earlier and now faced widespread rebellion. At such a time he could ill afford self-pity, much less self-doubt. He blamed himself for allowing a brief moment of self-indulgence in front of his page.  Since receiving the devastating news at Eastertide of his brother Robert's challenge the lad had been his closest companio...
Read more

2024 - a year to forget?*

As we approach the end of another rollercoaster year of 'natural' and manmade disasters, I'm taking a moment to look back - and forward. Janus, the two-faced Roman god, gave his name to the month of January, a time for both reflection and anticipation. But as I find myself unexpectedly housebound with a bout of 'flu - or it could be Covid but who has a lateral flow test kit lying around these days? - I'm self-isolating for the remainder of December. Fortuitously, this gives me some time to ponder the existential ' quo vadis ?' questions now rather than waiting until the New Year. I can always have another bite of the glacé cherry then, of course, so these are just some preliminary musings, though with so much hanging in the balance - Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, a second Trump presidency - my observations at this stage can't really be anything more than prefatory. Let's start with the unfolding situation in Syria, the outcome of which could prove to be piv...
Read more

The eagle has landed

The Syrian Arab Republic has just unveiled its new national logo, a golden eagle surmounted by three stars. Just before Christmas ( 2024 - A year to forget, 13/12/24) I pondered the chances for a post-Assad Syria. "Is it possible" I wrote "that, between them, [President] Sharaa and [Prime Minister] Bashir will preside over a national 'truth and reconciliation' process rather than the murderous vengeance that usually follows such upheavals? After the appalling brutality of the Assad regime, and with so many simmering ethnoreligious tensions, it is hard to see how a functioning state, founded on the rule of law, could realistically emerge out of the chaos." Well, seven months on, the emergence of a new symbol for the fledgling state, embodying the aspirations of its pre-Assad past while signposting an inclusive post-Assad future, must give rise to cautious optimism. According to the Arab News report of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) press release: "th...
Read more