Effects on Jewish community may lead to future protests ban
AN OFFICIAL review will urge a change in the law to let the police ban pro-Palestinian marches because of their effect on the Jewish community, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, said that British Jews were facing an “emergency” because of an “explosion” in anti-Semitic incidents directly linked to the marches.
John Woodcock is a former Labour MP who was ennobled as Lord Walney in 2020. He resigned from Labour to sit as an independent MP in 2018 in protest at the anti-Semitism scandal that engulfed the party under Jeremy Corbyn, and in 2021 was asked by Boris Johnson to lead a review into political violence and disruption.
Lord Walney was on the cusp of submitting his review, but following Hamas’s Oct 7 attacks, he has agreed with the Home Office to update it. The crossbench peer told The Telegraph
that he would be specifically
“looking at the threshold for the police to ban a march”.
Currently, the police can apply for a public procession to be banned under the Public Order Act if there is a risk of serious public disorder. However, Lord Walney said the bar was too high because it did not consider the wider effects of demonstrations on vulnerable groups.
“I think the atmosphere that’s grown in London since October 7 is showing that the current framework is not set right,” he said. “It can’t take into account the effect that these marches are having on Jewish people and across the UK.”
He said he was “hugely sympathetic” to an argument from the Community Security Trust that this weekend’s demonstrations should have been called off because the protests have fostered anti-Semitic incidents.
“Now the current framework doesn’t allow that,” he said. “The Met has got to make an evidence based decision on the probability of serious violence on the day, but it is obvious that the marches are at the very least a factor in raising tension, increasing the number of anti-Semitic attacks and the culture of fear and intimidation to which Jewish people are being subjected.
“At the moment … that is not sufficient to trigger a call for a ban.
“So I am minded to put in a recommendation into my review which will be handed to the Prime Minister and Home Secretary shortly to urgently revise that framework.”
The Telegraph understands that Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, is sympathetic to the proposed change.
Lord Walney said that he would submit his review before Christmas. He said that the situation facing British Jews was “heartbreaking”.
“The scale of threat to which they are being subjected and perceiving as they go out and about is not something that we should ever think is a price worth paying for anything in Britain,” he said. “It is in direct contravention of the British values that we seek to uphold.
“They are frightened to go into central London, they’re not using public transport and when they do they find themselves being confronted and singled out. They are being forced to hide their Jewish identity as they go round.”