4 hours ago
Protesters at the next mass demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action will withhold their details from officers to force en-masse processing at police stations in an effort to make it “practically impossible” to arrest everyone.
On Friday, Defend Our Juries, the pressure group behind the protests, will open sign-ups for its next demonstration to be held in London on 6 September. The group said it would only go ahead if 1,000 people agreed to take part, making it the largest protest opposing the proscription of Palestine Action since it was banned in June. More than 2,500 people have already expressed interest in taking part.
Earlier this month, 532 people were arrested at the largest demonstration so far relating to Palestine Action since it was proscribed. The Met said 212 of those arrested were transported to police stations after either refusing to provide their details or having been found to already be on bail.
The remaining 320 were arrested and released on bail after giving their details to officers at makeshift processing points near Parliament Square. The force said it did not need to use any stations outside London.
People who officially join will be asked to sign an online pledge that says: “I am committed to attending the mass-participation sign-holding action on 6 September 2025” and “I understand that joining this action comes with risk of arrest and other legal consequences.”
They will also be asked to confirm they have read an action document that advises protesters not to comply with the “charade” of street bail, where people are processed on the side of the road, bailed and told to attend a police station on another day after handing over their details and ID.
Instead, it is instructing participants not to provide any details, which means officers will have to transport them to a police station in order to carry out the arrest. In a briefing to be given to those who commit to attending, participants will be told that “had more people insisted on the right to be taken to a police station, which ensures the provision of immediate legal advice, the police would not have been able to complete so many arrests”.
Tim Crosland, a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, said: “The police were only able to arrest as many people as they did because of their trick of using ‘street bail’ on a mass scale, meaning people arrested of terrorism offences were denied the free legal advice they are entitled to when taken to a police station.
“If 1,000 people sign the pledge to take part on 6 September, ensuring we have the critical mass we need for the action, and hundreds of them insist on their right to receive immediate free legal advice at a police station, the charade will be exposed.
“It will be practically impossible for the police to arrest 1,000 people taking part. Any law that is so obviously wrong that it meets mass public opposition quickly becomes unenforceable, as it was with the poll tax in 1990, and the government will have to scrap it.”
The most recent demonstration was planned to last for an hour but Defend Our Juries said next month’s protest will last indefinitely. The briefing given to pledgees will say “for as long as police are arresting people, we ask you to remain in place, until arrested, to maintain the collectivity of the group … Please come prepared to stay for as long as it takes.”
On Monday, a poll carried out by Survation for LabourList found seven in 10 Labour members believed the government was wrong to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group. The direct action group was proscribed after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and defaced two military aircraft with spray paint.
Last week, the former cabinet minister Peter Hain said the UK government was “digging itself into a hole” over Palestine Action and that fellow Labour peers and MPs were regretting voting to ban the group. He was one of three Labour members of the Lords to vote against banning the group in July.
Hain co-wrote a piece for the Guardian on Monday with the Labour MP Stella Creasy, who had voted in favour of banning the group. They said they “both agree what is happening now neither protects protest nor makes protest policeable”.
Crosland said: “The government’s monumental waste of policing resources to criminalise cardboard sign-holding against genocide has already been widely condemned by politicians and public figures across the political spectrum. Now the Labour party has turned against the ban, with more than 70% of its members opposed to it, and MPs are claiming to have been tricked by [Yvette] Cooper.”
