Organisers of a major pro-Palestine march in London on Saturday have entered a standoff after the Metropolitan Police took the unprecedented step of announcing a new route for the marchers to follow – having banned a previously permitted route.
The organising coalition have insisted that they will assemble at Whitehall and have urged the Met to lift its restrictions.
This comes after the Met previously approved the route proposed by the organising coalition in November but reversed course after political pressure, with police saying last week that the route was too close to two synagogues.
Pro-Israel groups, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, MPs and peers had reportedly urged Met Commissioner Mark Rowley to order the protest to be rerouted.
On Thursday evening, the Board of Deputies of British Jews praised the Met for announcing an alternative route for the march, saying the police had listened “to both national and local Jewish representatives”.
Two hours later the coalition, which includes the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Palestinian Forum in Britain and Friends of Al-Aqsa among other groups, hit back.
“Over the past week,” it said in a joint statement, “the Metropolitan Police have imposed a series of repressive conditions to prevent us from protesting at the BBC as previously agreed.
“Last night, this reached the absurd point of the police announcing that our march would commence at Russell Square,” the coalition said.
“Grotesquely, the Board of Deputies put out a statement making clear that they had advised the police to impose this route.
“We decide where we protest, not pro-Israel organisations.”
Police u-turn after pressure
The coalition said on Friday morning that the police had accepted they could not force the march to begin at Russell Square, and called on protesters to assemble at Whitehall at noon on Saturday.
But the planned march remains banned.
Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told Middle East Eye earlier this week that the organising coalition first informed the Metropolitan Police in October that they wanted to protest outside the BBC in November.
“The police said, look, this is a very difficult day because the day you’ve chosen is one of the busiest shopping days of the year,” he said.
The PSC proposed using the route in January instead, which they said the police agreed to.
On 30 November, the coalition announced the march and route.
Then the Met reversed its decision.
Ben Jamal told MEE that in December, the police force asked them to select an alternative route.
A coalition statement said last week that the reason the police gave for the new decision was that “our march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue”.
Ben Jamal noted that the synagogue is not on the route but is 100 metres north of the BBC headquarters.
“There was no evidence of a single threat to a synagogue emerging from any of our marches… not one single incident of anyone going to a synagogue, protesting outside a synagogue, threatening a synagogue, stopping people going into a synagogue.”
London’s Met Police seek to block a Gaza ceasefire march outside the BBC after objections from a chief rabbi and MPs.
Over 700 British Jews have condemned the move, calling it an attack on political freedoms. pic.twitter.com/aZzPepnCHF
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) January 16, 2025
He said the coalition proposed starting the march at Whitehall and marching towards the BBC, reversing the route.
But last week the police said it would be unacceptable, citing several reasons that the protest organisers contested.
He added that the police proposed they hold a small protest outside the BBC on Friday evening, film it and show it to the larger crowd on Saturday.
“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that point,” Ben Jamal said.
Earlier this week nearly a thousand British Jews, including prominent legal and cultural figures and Holocaust survivors, signed an open letter urging the Met to reverse its ban.
The letter decries “an orchestrated attempt to portray the marches as a threat to those attending synagogues”, adding: “As Jews we are shocked at this brazen attempt to interfere with hard-won political freedoms by conjuring up an imaginary threat to Jewish freedom of worship.”
