Have police got the power to protect Poppy Day?

At 11am on 11 November, Armistice Day will be observed across the country with a minute’s silence in a national moment of reflection. 

The next day, Remembrance Sunday services will honour Britain’s war dead. Whitehall will grind to a halt for the ceremony at the Cenotaph, where the King, the Prince of Wales and other leading royals, along with the Prime Minister, government officials and religious leaders, will be among those laying wreaths.
The police are worried. The Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has vowed to police any pro-Palestinian protests so that demonstrations do not ‘collide or interfere’ with the Poppy Day commemorations.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is just one anti-Israeli group that has called on followers to prepare for a march in London on Saturday, November 11. At a previous march, protesters draped Palestinian flags over the Cenotaph.

Sir Mark said officers would ensure the security of the events in Whitehall “from all sorts of threats and risks, including any problems caused by protests, spontaneous or planned”.

But public disorder in the capital in the weeks since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel does not suggest the Met are in any position to offer such reassurances to the public.

Soon after the Hamas massacre, pro-Palestinian protesters converged on Whitehall, outside the gates to Downing Street. Anyone emerging from their offices in the vicinity that evening and attempting to head to Westminster tube were told by police to take a different route home.

Far from managing the crowd, the easier approach was to manage the people going about their business, dispersing workers rather than extremists because they were clearly less of a challenge.
The subsequent weeks have seen rallies up and down the country, as well as a sit-in at Liverpool Street station during rush hour on Tuesday in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Activists were reportedly heard chanting the incendiary Hamas mantra, ‘From the river to the sea’, that demands the destruction of Israel.

The Jewish News said Jewish commuters were intimidated and had to find alternative routes home. The Transport Secretary Mark Harper, meanwhile, said he was meeting with the British Transport Police to discuss their failure to break up the protest.

There was another sit-in, on the concourse at Waterloo station, on Saturday with further reports of anti-Semitic chanting.

Israel’s ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, told the Daily Telegraph that London now feels less safe for Jews than Israel in the wake of hate inciting protests and the spread of ‘jihadi ideology’.

Jewish faith schools closed for security reasons after the October 7 atrocities and there has been a ‘massive increase’ in anti-Semitic incidents in the capital since then, the Guardian reported.

The police have come under fire for not doing enough to protect the public in general and while there have been some arrests, they admit there is confusion over whether laws are being broken by activists.
Mark Rowley said laws would need to be changed if the government wanted firmer action over hate crimes. But what about using straightforward public disorder legislation, which has been updated recently to tackle less sinister public nuisances?

The Public Order Act 2023 bans ‘serious disruption’ to two or more people or an organisation in a public place, where they are hindered from day-to-day activities, including journeys.

The government said that the new measures will not ban protest, but ‘only prevent a small minority of individuals from causing serious disruption to the daily lives of the public’.

The measures have been applied with some success to the cursed eco warriors who have caused mayhem by gluing themselves to roads, holding up traffic and trying to spoil some of the hallmarks of British life, from the Grand National, to the Proms to the Chelsea Flower Show.

As Just Stop Oil embarked on a 30-day campaign of disruption on an ‘unprecedented scale’ this month, frustrated police warned that officer resources were being wasted at a time when the Israel-Gaza conflict was sparking surging hate crime and heightened fears of a terror attack.

They made more than 60 arrests in Parliament Square on Monday and they cleared the A4 in Kensington in just 26 minutes after green zealots blocked the road.

In fact, after months and months of seeming to do nothing, the new powers have prompted a clampdown, against a backdrop of growing public intolerance over eco stunts. 

So much so, that the law breakers are now whining about the punishment meted out to them, which includes a bar on entering London, inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway unless answering bail at a police station, attending a court hearing or to visit a solicitor by prior appointment.

Police are naturally sensitive to inflaming tensions in the community and grandmothers lying on wet pavements to save the planet are an easier target than flag waving religious diehards demanding jihad.
Of course, not all pro-Palestinian marchers are Hamas apologists, though they may appear to be, and everyone has the right to peaceful protest.

But in the absence of effective law enforcement, the sense of a carte blanche emboldens the rallies’ ring leaders. 

While ministers review the legal definition of extremism in a move to counter hate crimes, can the police not deploy the public order powers already at their disposal to curb protests that threaten civil equilibrium?

How far will the radicals have to go before their activities on our streets and at our railway stations are deemed a danger to public safety and they are brought to justice?

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