Last Saturday, I stood in Parliament Square and bore witness to the largest mass arrest in a single day in the last decade. The Metropolitan Police detained 532 peaceful protesters – an operation that will live in infamy.
The demonstration was organised by Defend Our Juries, which had called on participants to sit peacefully on the Parliament Square lawn between 1pm and 2pm, holding signs that read: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” Organisers had expected around 500 people. In fact, thousands turned up.
That morning, I had published an opinion piece in The Independent announcing that I would be there, holding a sign quoting Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
I also quoted Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, who warned that the UK government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation “appears to constitute an impermissible restriction on those rights that is at odds with the UK’s obligation under international human rights law”.
When I arrived at 1pm, the square was surrounded by officers. Hundreds of Metropolitan Police vans were stationed around the square, stretching as far as Oxford Street. Police formed cordons to prevent people from entering, but I managed to squeeze in. For nearly three hours, I stood in silence, holding my sign.
The arrests began shortly after the scheduled sit-in concluded at 2pm. Officers began to position themselves to advance against the peaceful protesters seated on the lawn and the few lying on the ground. Police reinforcements, including officers from Wales, swept into the square. Of the 532 arrests, 522 were for the simple act of holding placards supporting Palestine Action, under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The statistics are as shocking as the scenes I saw. According to the police’s own figures, 112 of those detained were in their seventies, and 15 in their eighties. Nearly half were 60 or older, with an average age of 54.
The police waged a relentless campaign against the protesters. Many were frail, elderly, or disabled. I saw priests and vicars in clerical collars led away in handcuffs. I saw retired nurses and NHS healthcare workers in scrubs being taken into police vans.
One of them, Nick, was interviewed and asked if he was afraid. His reply was very moving and it almost brought me to tears: “I’m absolutely terrified. I’m shaking. I’ll be honest with you. I nearly cried earlier. The thought of doing something like this is just awful, but it’s even more awful if we don’t do it. I mean, I think to myself, you know, I’ve seen things, not on the mass media. I’ve seen things that cannot ever be unseen. And if we don’t protest about it, we’re culpable.”
I also saw Jewish protesters critical of the Israeli government’s actions being arrested alongside climate and human rights activists, including Chris Romberg, 75, a former British army colonel and the son of a Holocaust survivor. No one was spared.
One image that is seared in my mind: an elderly blind man in a wheelchair being dragged away by multiple officers as demonstrators shouted “Let him go!” and “Shame on you, shame on you!”
I also watched the police arrest a frail woman in her eighties suffering from Parkinson’s disease, while her son pleaded with the officers not to arrest her. The Metropolitan Police’s motto is “Working together for a safer London”, but it is hard to see how dedicating so many resources to policing a peaceful protest and arresting frail and elderly citizens exercising such an ancient British freedom achieves this objective.
Jonathon Porritt, former environmental adviser to King Charles, referred to the government’s policy as “absolutely standard authoritarian tactics”.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that the UK government is incontrovertibly complicit in this genocide – not just through the continuing sale of arms to Israel, but because of its reckless refusal to follow guidance to seek to prevent genocide in countries like Gaza.”
This is exactly how states erode democratic freedoms – not in one sudden lurch, but in small, calculated steps, until dissent itself becomes a criminal offence.
The decision to ban Palestine Action was itself the product of a cynical political ploy. Home secretary Yvette Cooper bundled the group together with two violent white supremacist organisations – the neo-Nazi Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement – and forced MPs to vote for all or none. Many later admitted they felt they had no choice but to approve the ban.
As Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch, has warned: “Proscribing Palestine Action is a grave abuse of state power and a terrifying escalation in this government’s crusade to curtail protest rights.”
The crucial issue here is that Palestine Action exposed what it – and many of us – see as the UK’s complicity in the commission of genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people. Since December 2023, the RAF has flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza, reputedly to locate hostages. This is why ordinary citizens – older people, clergy, disabled protesters – were criminalised for condemning what we believe to be genocide and demanding accountability.
It also begs the question: who does prime minister Keir Starmer answer to – the UK electorate, Donald Trump, or the Israeli government and its lobbying organisations?
Let me be clear: I unequivocally condemn Hamas for the atrocities of 7 October 2023. I call for an immediate and lasting ceasefire, and the unconditional release of all hostages. I was horrified seeing the images of an emaciated hostage. These crimes demand justice, but not through the carpet bombing of Gaza from North to South, the slaughter of civilians, and what is surely a deliberate policy of starvation of the population.
Renowned human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who has defended Guantánamo Bay detainees, has drawn direct parallels between this crackdown and authoritarian measures elsewhere: “Supporting Palestine Action’s right to protest is not the same as supporting Palestine Action. It’s time for Keir Starmer to remember why human rights exist.”
Even conservative voices such as Andrew Neil, who strongly disagrees with Palestine Action’s aims, have condemned the terrorism designation as absurd and a waste of police time and public resources.
What I saw on Saturday was not public order policing. It was the suppression of lawful dissent, and the deliberate targeting of vulnerable people to send a chilling message: no cause is safe from criminalisation. This is the logic of authoritarianism – a steady erosion of freedoms under the pretext of security.
I know what authoritarianism looks like. I was born in Nicaragua. In 1981, in Honduras, I faced Salvadorian death squads armed with M16 assault rifles. I had a terrifying experience that changed the course of my life. That experience taught me the importance of bearing witness. I came to Parliament Square to stand with ordinary citizens calling attention to the genocide against the Palestinian people – and the UK government’s complicity.
The UK government has embarked upon a dangerous path. The right to peaceful protest, the cornerstone of our democracy – from the suffragettes to the anti-apartheid movement – is under attack. The government has conflated dissent with terrorism, and the police have acted as enforcers of political orthodoxy rather than guardians of public safety.
When Benjamin Disraeli said in 1845 that “a Conservative government is an organised hypocrisy”, who could have imagined that his words would describe so aptly the current Labour government?
The question we must ask ourselves is simple: When history judges us, will we be remembered as those who stood against injustice, or those who stood by in silence?
Parliament Square on 9 August was not just a police operation. It was a test of our democracy – and it is a test we are in danger of failing.
Bianca Jagger is the founder, president and chief executive of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation. She is also a Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, and member of the Executive Director’s Leadership Council of Amnesty International USA
