The UK’s first pro-Palestine national march to be staged outside London is expected by organisers to attract tens of thousands of people on the periphery of the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
The 19th “national march for Palestine” will start at midday on Saturday near Lime Street railway station and end near King’s Dock, where Keir Starmer’s party is gathering this weekend.
Ben Jamal, the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), said demonstrators would call for an immediate arms embargo rather than what he described as the “inadequate partial suspension” of arms export licences to Israel that was announced this month.
He said: “The Labour government knows that Israel is committing crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. But instead of honouring its obligations under international law, it is still seeking to shield Israel from accountability.”
Organisers, including the PSC, Stop the War, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Muslim Association of Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa and Palestinian Forum in Britain, said they expected tens of thousands of people to march on Saturday.
The marches started in London in the aftermath of the attack by Hamas militants on Israel on 7 October, when about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Israel responded to the attack with a military offensive in the Gaza Strip during which an estimated 41,000 people have been killed so far, according to Gaza health authorities, with the majority of them civilians.
Organisers claimed the largest march, on Armistice Day, was attended by 800,000 people although the police put it at closer to 300,000.
The PSC said it had been supported by constituency Labour parties and trade unions in an attempt to secure a motion for debate on Palestine at the conference, which begins on Sunday. Motions calling for international law to be upheld and a complete stop to arms exports to Israel are on the conference agenda, but it has not yet been decided whether they will be debated.
The PSC said it was concerned “factions linked to the party leadership will seek to push the motions off the agenda to avoid embarrassment to the government, and avoid any discussions that are critical of Israel’s actions or call for its government to be held to account”.
Fringe meetings have been organised at the conference but the PSC complained it had not been allowed to use the words “genocide” or “apartheid” in its description of their events in the official guide.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) passed a motion at its annual conference demanding all UK arms trading with Israel be ended immediately but it was criticised in some quarters for failing to mention Hamas or the 7 October massacre.
A spokesman for the TUC said that its general council had also issued a related statement condemning the 7 October and calling for the release of those taken hostage.
Jamal said: “The wider labour movement, as demonstrated by the motion passed unanimously by the TUC at its recent congress, is calling for action to hold Israel to account including a full arms embargo.
“Opinion polls show that these demands are supported by members in the Labour party and by the wider public. This is a moral test for Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership. They need to stand up for the implementation of international law and be bold in confronting those who undermine it, no matter who they are.”
