Suella Braverman has launched a full-throated attack on policing “double standards” after the head of the Metropolitan police gave the go-ahead for a pro-Palestine march on Saturday, Armistice Day.
The protests, which have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of London, were described by the home secretary as an unchallenged “assertion of primacy by certain groups – particularly Islamists”, in an article in the Times published on Wednesday night.
She claimed that unnamed police chiefs appeared to care more about avoiding “flak” from tackling such “mobs” than ensuring public safety, in what will be taken as thinly veiled critique of Britain’s most senior officer, Sir Mark Rowley.
“Unfortunately, there is a perception that senior police officers play favourites when it comes to protesters,” she wrote.
“During Covid, why was it that lockdown objectors were given no quarter by public order police yet Black Lives Matters demonstrators were enabled, allowed to break rules and even greeted with officers taking the knee?
“Rightwing and nationalist protesters who engage in aggression are rightly met with a stern response yet pro-Palestinian mobs displaying almost identical behaviour are largely ignored, even when clearly breaking the law? I have spoken to serving and former police officers who have noted this double standard.
“Football fans are even more vocal about the tough way they are policed as compared to politically connected minority groups who are favoured by the left.
“It may be that senior officers are more concerned with how much flak they are likely to get than whether this perceived unfairness alienates the majority. The government has a duty to take a broader view.”
In a direct challenge to Rowley, and using language that is likely to provoke further claims of political interference in operational matters, Braverman went on: “If the march goes ahead this weekend, the public will expect to see an assertive and proactive approach to any displays of hate, breaches of conditions and general disorder.”
On Tuesday, defying days of heavy political pressure, Rowley said there were insufficient grounds for him to ban Saturday’s pro-Palestine march under section 13 of the 1986 Public Order Act.
The last group to have a ban imposed upon one of its planned marches was the far-right English Defence League.
The Met chief was summoned into Downing Street on Wednesday to provide a reasoning for his decision and to reassure Rishi Sunak that remembrance commemorations over the weekend will go undisturbed.
The prime minister subsequently took a more measured approach to the issue in a statement in which he recognised the right to peaceful protest.
Braverman’s comments, however, departed wildly from the prime minister’s tone. The home secretary instead likened the recent marches calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas to sectarian rallies in Northern Ireland.
In her article, Braverman also made reference to a report in the Daily Telegraph that identified a link between a former member of Hamas and one of the six groups that have been organising the recent protests.
“I do not believe that these marches are merely a cry for help for Gaza,” she wrote. “They are an assertion of primacy by certain groups – particularly Islamists – of the kind we are more used to seeing in Northern Ireland. Also disturbingly reminiscent of Ulster are the reports that some of Saturday’s march group organisers have links to terrorist groups, including Hamas.
“There will be time for proper discussion about how we got to this point. For now, the issue is how do we as a society police groups that insist that their agenda trumps any notion of the broader public good – as defined by the public, not by activists. The answer must be: even-handedly.”
Saturday’s London protest is scheduled to start at 12.45pm at Marble Arch and to end at the US embassy in the south-west of the capital, about two miles from the Cenotaph, where formal remembrance events will be held the next day.
The protesters have been calling for a ceasefire in the war that broke out last month after Hamas killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in Israel and took about 240 hostages.
More than 10,000 people in Gaza, many of them children, have been killed in the Israeli military operation since, according to Gaza’s health authority, which is run by Hamas.
