Holocaust survivors, MPs, artists demand Met reverse decision favouring fascist march over Nakba
More than a hundred MPs, holocaust survivors, artists, authors and performers — many of them Jewish — have presented a letter to the Met Police condemning the force’s — no doubt political — decision to deny the annual Nakba Day march its usual route so that a fascist march can dominate central London.
The 16 May march will commemorate the Nakba (catastrophe) of around 800,000 Palestinians being violently driven from their homes and land to create the ‘state’ of Israel. The Met has refused to sign off on its route application. Instead it is giving priority to a “hate march called by racist thug ‘Tommy Robinson'” in opposition to the Nakba commemoration.
The letter reads:
Public Letter
The Metropolitan police must not favour the far right over Palestine.We are appalled to hear that the Metropolitan Police have refused permission for the Palestine movement to march to commemorate Nakba day on 16 May on its proposed route and instead given over the political centre of London to a hate march called by racist thug ‘Tommy Robinson’ in response
The far right has targeted the Palestine movement before. They have done so aggressively with verbal and physical violence directed at the movement and the police.
The Palestine movement marches on the nearest Saturday to Nakba day every year, and they informed the police of their intention to hold the 16 May march in central London on 18 December 2025. While the police have refused their route, Tommy Robinson’s demonstration has been granted Kingsway, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square.
We call on the police to immediately reverse this shameful decision. We call on everyone of good conscience to join us for Palestine on 16 May. We will march.Signed by:
As well as Palestine solidarity campaigners, MPs and union leaders, the letter is signed by Holocaust survivors Stephen Kapos and Agnes Kory, as well as many leading Jewish and non-Jewish figures, including:
Alexei Sayle, writer and comedian
Andrea Kapos, filmmaker
Andrew Feinstein, author and former ANC MP
Arthur Neslen, journalist
Brian Eno, artist and musician
Francesca Martinez, writer and comedian
Gideon Mendel, photographer
Jen Brister, comedian
Juliet Stevenson, actor
Karishma Patel, journalist
Khalid Abdalla, actor
Matt Black, musician
Maxine Peake, actor
Michael Rosen, author
Mike Leigh, filmmaker
Miriam Margolyes, actor
Misan Harriman, photographer
Norma Cohen, actor and writer
Paloma Faith, musician
Prof Anne Karpf, writer and academic
Rachael Clyne, writer
Taj Ali, writer photographer and filmmaker
Stop the War’s Chris Nineham and MP John McDonnell gave their view on the Met’s move and the Starmer regime’s war on pro-Palestine protest:
In a statement on its Instagram page, the coalition of anti-apartheid groups organising the march also said that it rejected the Met’s decision and called for an immediate change:
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Featured image via RedPepper
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Years ago some of us warned about USA lumpen Far Right billionaires funding Far Right groups & individuals around the world (the latter are Far Right wannabes who want to be on the Far Right Gravy Train) and this is what it has come to.
These Lumpen Far Right are actually wage slaves too but in their efforts to divide diverse
working class people they aid the rich plus are the “Useful idiots” of capitalism & as someone once argued they are its “Emergency committee.”
And this is what you get in an interregnum.
Oh and they use emotive issues like sex abuse of minors to draw naive w class people in though according to the Dept of Justice (2023, England & Wales) abuse by Asian men was 4.5% (4,750) and by white men was 90% (103,000).
Oh and the Far Right’s latest manifestation is to try to con citizens through religion (a la the Religious Right in the USA).
But oh the irony; if this Jesus & Mary et al existed which a significant number believe then they would have had BROWN SKINS despite Western churches & their booklets etc presenting them as WHITE, funny that?
We need to unite the diverse working class; we are the many, they are the few.
DIVERSITY ENRICHES HUMANITY.
Do you have a source for your statistics from the Dept. of Justice? My search resulted in nothing like that but a Factually report: “Official reviews underline serious limitations in available data — ethnicity is often unrecorded or inconsistently recorded, and study methodologies differ, which weakens claims that any one ethnic group is uniquely predisposed to this offending. Government responses referenced the need for national scrutiny and better data collection rather than attributing causation to ethnicity alone.”
A1979.
I got the percentages from Govt stats on Males Prosecuted in England and Wales for child sex offences (2023) but I was the first to extrapolate the exact figures from the percentages:
Asian Men (4.5%) 4,750.
Black (2%) 2,000.
Mixed Race (2%) 2,000.
Other (1%) 1,000.
White Men (90%) 103,000.
Sources: Department of Justice & see http://www.govt.uk
Of course tragically as sociologists argue child sex abuse is in all social classes & ethnic groups and is often found within the family or the perpetrators are known to them.
Someone recently made a brilliant comment:
“The Right is good on emotion but poor on facts, the Left is very good on facts but poor on emotion” so we need to up our game on emotion (and draw from our humanity) eg:
The best speech I ever heard in a community setting was by an elderly Sikh man; he told the diverse audience that he was the first Asian Engineer at a large engineering firm in my city & on his first day at work all the white engineering workers walked out.
Now he is retired he told us that they now ring him up and ask how he is and they tell him “We miss you.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience.
Life is about stories indeed.