Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham was violently arrested a fortnight ago at a national march for Palestine.
Huge mobilisations in solidarity with the Palestinians have been taking place for 15 months, since Israel’s invasion of Gaza began. Early on, there were efforts to ban them from then home secretary Suella Braverman, but these backfired — she was forced to resign after summoning a far-right mob that attacked the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. Why the sudden crackdown now?
“From the very start of this cycle of protest, there have been unprecedented restrictions put in our way,” Nineham says.
“Restrictions imposed from the very beginning. We’ve had politicians openly calling for the police to get tough with us, which I don’t remember from previous waves of protest.
“We now have arrests of some leaders of the movement and MPs getting called in for police interviews for having been on a peaceful protest. And the police increasingly assert they can tell us where we are allowed to demonstrate rather than this being a negotiated process.
“It’s definitely a departure from the norm. Something has changed in the last few months. Maybe they saw the imminent ceasefire as likely to demobilise the movement and thought it would be easier to break. The police talk of the cumulative impact of demonstrations being unacceptable, which is an odd idea because it means a protest movement is effectively being criminalised for being successful and sustained.
“The government are in a difficult situation over Palestine. The British Establishment is determined to continue to support Israel under virtually any circumstances — it’s important, by the way, to note that that’s not primarily down to any Israel lobby, its because support for Israel is a crucial element of Western strategy for control of the Middle East.
“So it’s a central plank of foreign policy that isn’t easy to change, but it’s become more and more unpopular, and there’s huge public anxiety over the fact that Britain has continued to arm and back Israel during a genocide.
“So a more repressive stance towards the Palestine movement makes sense, but it’s also part of a more general drift towards authoritarianism. We called last weekend for repeal of the Public Order Act which has been used to place heavy restrictions on protest, but there’s a whole number of other laws brought in in the last decade, the Counter-terrorism and Security Act, the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Act, the Spycops Act …
“It’s all part of a repressive response to a the fact they feel in their bones there are growing problems of legitimacy for British institutions, widespread discontent and anger at ruling elites. They’re trying to create a climate of fear where people feel they can’t even mention the word Palestine in workplaces… one reason our movement is so important is that we have to redemocratise public life, restore basic freedom of speech.”
London Mayor Sadiq Khan says the Palestine movement doesn’t need to keep marching now there is a ceasefire.
“I think that’s shocking.
“A child can see that the ceasefire is precarious, that forces on the right of Israeli society will do their best to make sure it doesn’t hold, that violence continues in the West Bank.
“So it’s absolutely premature to say this movement can demobilise, but it’s also about more than a ceasefire, which doesn’t get to the root of the issue which is one of national liberation. Freedom for a people under occupation and siege. A cause recognised by the United Nations.”
One reason the British state is so keen to see the movement dispersed is because it has shifted public opinion, both here and internationally.
“The movement in Britain and beyond has been crucial to winning the positions that we have seen taken by the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice.
“Israel is isolated now. It is a pariah state. They have committed monstrous military acts in the region, huge destruction, caused unimaginable suffering, but even militarily they haven’t achieved all their goals, and politically this has been catastrophic for Israel. Its legitimacy is gone, and I can’t see that coming back. It’s seen across the world as a terror state.”
But what about Donald Trump? Now we have a US government talking about “cleaning out” Gaza’s “one-and-a-half million people” to facilitate its settlement by Israelis and development into some sort of coastal resort. In his first term, Trump had some success in trying to normalise relations between Arab states and Israel, and the Arab dictatorships have betrayed Palestine many times before.
“Whether that kind of solution can be imposed on the Middle East … Trump is unpredictable, but his aims of normalising Israel-Arab relations and kicking the Palestinians out of Gaza will run up against each other.
“Even the Arab dictatorships have to worry about public opinion, and the level of anger at Israel’s conduct and support for the Palestinians is internationally higher than ever. It seems to me if there were a serious effort to clear out the population of the Gaza Strip there would be pandemonium around the globe, causing huge problems for governments across the Middle East and frankly in Britain and the United States as well.
“There has been a change at the grassroots here. The shock factor of British and Western support for Israel through a televised genocide has been a wake-up call about the nature of the Establishment and its political parties. That has wider implications for other areas of government policy, especially foreign policy. Trust in government has been eroded over the last 25 years, including by crimes like the Iraq war, but it is draining away faster than ever.”
But will the left be the beneficiary? The hard right are, internationally, on the rise. Support for Israel seems to have become part of the patchwork of far-right identity.
“There’s certainly what can only be called a rather unprincipled alliance of far-right people and some zionists.
“But how many people are signed up to the actual programme of the far right? Opinion polls show most people are closer to the left than the right on most issues, including peace.
“The big problem here is the Labour Party, which is not just disappointing, but enraging millions of people with its attacks on their living standards.
“So the left needs to not just campaign over Palestine but over domestic issues, to make it clear that we are the real opposition.
“I think part of the reason the Palestine movement was able to mobilise so quickly is a product of the Corbyn years, years that brought a lot of activists together and popularised left-wing positions. Corbynism was itself the product of the mass protests against the Iraq War and over austerity.
“Corbyn’s defeat was intensely demoralising, but these people haven’t gone away, either the hundreds of thousands of activists or the millions who voted for a Corbyn government — almost 13 million people in 2017, far more than ever voted for this government — knowing that the guy was pro-Palestine, anti-war. I mean, nobody could have been ignorant of it, given the scale of the media attacks on him for those positions.
“That laid the basis for this movement, and the movement helped ensure at the last election the biggest left of Labour vote ever, as I understand it, both in the independents and Greens who won seats and in the number of candidates who almost won, or did unusually well.
“Can the Palestine movement be a launchpad for a revived left-wing mass movement? There’s nothing automatic about it, it would take a lot of work, but I think it will happen.
“It is crucial that we keep the Palestine movement in the streets. But for me another key strategic question is whether we can ‘do a Palestine’ over the cost-of-living crisis, whether we’re on the streets to defend the NHS, teachers, university staff. That’s vital in itself, but it’s also going to be a key element in beating the far right.”
Chris Nineham faces his first court hearing at Westminster magistrate’s court on February 13 at 12.30pm. His supporters are calling for protests outside: everyone’s welcome.
Source: Morning Star