Home secretary urges activists to cancel Palestine Action protest after Manchester attack

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The UK home secretary has urged activists not to protest the government’s ban on Palestine Action this weekend, following Thursday’s terror attack on a Manchester synagogue that killed two people.

Shabana Mahmood said she had “supported” a request from the Metropolitan Police to protest group Defend Our Juries to cancel a demonstration planned in London on Saturday.

She noted that the group still intended to hold the rally in protest of the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation earlier this year.

“I think that behaviour is unacceptable,” Mahmood told the BBC. “I would have wanted them to step back.”

Defend Our Juries has organised a series of protests in which people hold up signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”, prompting the police to make hundreds of arrests.

Support for a proscribed terrorist organisation is an offence under UK terror legislation.

The Met had warned that it would struggle to deploy officers to this weekend’s demonstration as it steps up security at synagogues in London.

However, Mahmood said it was now finding capacity to provide the necessary policing, adding that she was planning to discuss the issue further with Met commissioner Mark Rowley.

But she called on people to consider an “act of kindness” by not participating in the rally after Thursday’s attack, which occurred on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

“Imagine if that was you that had lost your father on your holiest day. Imagine it was you that was living in fear and afraid to go about your daily business,” she said.

Defend our Juries said on Thursday that “we utterly condemn” the Manchester attack and added “this is what genuine terrorism looks like”.

It responded to the Met’s request by saying the police should “choose to prioritise protecting the community, rather than arresting those peacefully holding signs in opposition to the absurd and draconian ban of a domestic direct action group”.

The group said it expected 1,500 people to attend the demonstration.

Palestine Action was proscribed by the government as a terrorist organisation in July after members broke into RAF Brize Norton to protest the UK’s military co-operation with Israel during its two-year offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

Since the proscription in July hundreds of people have been arrested, and more than a hundred charged, for showing support for the banned group.

Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said there was no legislation in place that could prevent Saturday’s event from going ahead and suggested that may need to be looked at again.

Hall said that he did not support the “vague idea” that people should be unable to march for national security reasons.

“But let’s imagine there had been further marauding attacks and police across the country were having to spread out to protect synagogues,” he told the BBC. “Is it really the case that police should have to man-mark protesters going through London in those circumstances?”

Robert Jenrick, shadow justice secretary, told the protesters to “do the decent thing and go home” in an interview on Times Radio. He criticised pro-Palestinian protests that occurred on Thursday night in response to the Israeli interception of an aid flotilla that was headed for besieged Gaza.

“I thought it was shameful, totally disrespectful that you had people out on the streets, even in Manchester, for goodness sake, on the night that this attack happened. And some of it went into violence and disruption,” he said.

Police have identified the Manchester attacker, who was shot dead at the scene, as 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent who originally came to the UK as a child.

The two people killed in the attack were Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66. Three others remain in hospital with serious injuries.

The UK has seen a sharp rise in antisemitic hate incidents since the October 7 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas.