newsAnti-apartheid activists in America and Canada support people facing arrest in tomorrow’s pro-Palestine Action demos in London
Angela Davis (right) in Harare in the 1980s. Then, an activist against apartheid. Today, an outspoken opponent of Israel’s actions in Gaza. (Picture: Trevor Grundy).
Reports published here warn that the Met Police could be “tested to the limit” as hundreds – maybe thousands – risk arrest while showing their open support for Palestine Action in central London tomorrow (August 9).
The mass demonstration involves a march from Russell Square to Downing Street.
It comes less than two months since Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed Palestine Action under British anti-terror laws following the group’s claimed responsibility for damaging two Voyager planes at RAF Brize Nortron on June 20.
The ban means that if you reveal open support for Palestine Action – an organisation bitterly opposing Israel and the way it is conducting its military campaign in Gaza – you face a criminal offence punishable by up to fourteen (14) years in prison.
Tomorrow’s mass demonstration has been co-ordinated by a groups that include Cage International and Defend Our Juries (DOJ) which warns that anyone taking part in the pro-Palestine Action march faces arrest.
But a DOJ spokesperson added – “It would be practically and politically difficult for the state to respond to an action on this scale. Even assuming it had to physical capacity to arrest so many people on the same day, the political fallout from such an operation would be incalculable, causing irreparable damage to the reputation of the government and the police.”
On Wednesday, Lisa Nandy, the British Culture Secretary, urged members of the public to stay away from the events in London.
The police have made it clear they plan mass arrests of people contravening terrorism laws.
Meantime, dozens of international scholars and writers have signed a letter and sent it to the left leaning Guardian newspaper calling on the British government to reverse the decision to proscribe Palestine Action.
The letter – signed by Angela Davis, the Canadian academic Naomi Klein, South Africa’s Gilian Slovo and many other top-ranking scholars, authors and lawyers, expressed deep concern about the ban’s possible impact on universities across the UK.
It said- “As scholars dedicated to questions of justice and ethics, we believe that Yvette Cooper’s recent proscription of Palestine Action represents an attack both on the entire pro-Palestine movement and on fundamental freedoms of expression, association, assembly and protest.”
Other who signed the letter include the philosophers Etienne Balibar and Rebecca Comay.
Historians include the Israeli political scientist Ilan Pappe of the University of Exeter and the British- Israeli academic Avi Shlaim of the University of Oxford.,
More than 200 people have been arrested to expressing support for the group since July 5
Over 300 left-leaning Jewish figures, including the film director Mike Leigh and the author Michael Rosen, wrote to the British prime minister Keir Starmer and described the ban on Palestine Action as “illegitimate and un-ethical.”
As all anti-apartheid activists from days of long ago know, Angela Davis was a former member of the Black Panther Party.
Today, she is a distinguished professor emerita at the University of California.