Is it possible that we’ll finally see an end to “Palestine” marches through the streets of our cities? That’s what Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood appears to be suggesting today. She has already announced one change, so that police can take into account the cumulative disruption caused by marches taking place week after week, rather than treating each one like a separate event.
But in addition to this, she told Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “And I will be reviewing our wider protest legislation as well, to make sure the arrangements we have can meet the scale of the challenge that we face, which is protecting the right to protest, but ensuring that our communities can go about their daily business without feeling intimidated and also that public order can be maintained.”
The point about ensuring people can “go about their daily business without feeling intimidated” is key. Because the marches we have seen on the streets of our cities are indeed intimidating, and it sounds like the Home Secretary has concluded that they shouldn’t be indulged any longer.
I know that those who take part would object to the idea that they intimidate anyone. And there’s no doubt that all sorts of different people attend for all sorts of reasons.
Some want peace in the Middle East. That might include an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza and the creation of an independent, viable Palestinian state where the Palestinian people are able to live in peace and govern themselves.
Good for them. I agree with them.
Others make at best a token effort to hide their support for extreme acts of terror or violence, for example, by expressing support for “the resistance” – which is a reference to the misogynist Government in Iran and its proxies, including terror group Hamas (the Palestinians do have a Government, which is not Hamas, but they rarely get a mention).
People who cover their faces or call to “globalise the intifada” – to bring some of the violence we see in the Middle East to other parts of the world – are indeed intimidating. And it looks like the Government might have had enough.
Ms Mahmood has long supported Palestinian statehood and once took part in a demonstration that forced a Birmingham Sainsbury’s to close. But there are people who want peace and people who just want “their side” to win an horrific and bloody war, and she’s always wanted peace. Perhaps she’s just the person to tell the warmongers to go home.