ACR has supported the struggle to free Palestine since our inception and in particular has welcomed the mushrooming of the solidarity movement since October 2023 in Britain and across the globe. With different emphases and tactics, that movement has not only raised voices of support with the Palestinian people but also placed demands on their own governments and institutions in many countries to end their complicity with the genocide being carried out in Gaza – and increasingly in the West Bank.

The international solidarity movement, including that here in Britain, therefore poses a threat to those who defend Israel’s actions – even where sometimes they might raise a completely inadequate word of criticism. Repression of the movement has been taking place in different ways across the world. In North America and Europe, the weaponisation of antisemitism – including against jews organizing to say ‘not in our name’ – has been a central element. So too has been the exclusion or attempted exclusion of pro-Palestinian activists from colleges, universities, and from public sector workplaces

Here in Britain, the tempo of attacks has picked up since the beginning of this year with significant arrests following the January 18 national demonstration. In the last month or so there have been news stories several times a day exposing this repression by the state and police – including the proscribing of an organisation, interventions from police forces from Scotland to Canterbury via Lancashire suggesting that any support for Palestine can be outlawed under Terrorism legislation, the freezing of bank accounts and possibly new elements or forms of repression while we have been writing this statement.

And of course these are not the only attempts to limit the right to protest. The climate movement in particular has also been targeted and activists given heavy jail sentences and disabled campaigners have  been arrested for apparently being in the wrong place at the wrong time. All this is doing in many localities is forging stronger bonds between different threads of movements for freedom and justice.

This is part of the context in which we continue to say Free Palestine, Defend the democratic right to protest

NB Featured image: Crowd carrying large red signs saying BDS. Photo: Steve Eason