Palestine will be getting a bill.
The Metropolitan Police has said 43 arrests were made on Saturday during an enormous £4.5m police operation to keep demonstrators at two rival London protests apart.
More than 4,000 police officers were deployed to the capital to manage a so-called “sterile zone” between a rally organised by far-right figure Tommy Robinson, and a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
Tourists trying to navigate major central London landmarks were left bemused by the operation.
Nelson’s Column was surrounded by metal barriers. Police officers from Wales in riot uniforms prevented anyone getting from the National Gallery to Pall Mall and Regent Street. Police vehicles lined The Mall from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace.
On the steps above Churchill War Rooms, a two-metre-high metal barrier blocked the road past the Foreign Office towards Whitehall.
But there were no serious clashes between protesters on the different marches.
Every year, pro-Palestinian protesters hold a march on the weekend closest to 15 May to mark the Nakba, the displacement of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948-49.
But when organisers started talking to the Metropolitan Police about this year’s march, they discovered 16 May had already been booked by anti-Islam campaigner Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, for one of his Unite the Kingdom marches.
After negotiations, it was agreed that both marches could go ahead, but it meant a huge security headache for the police force. Not only were there two rival marches, but the FA Cup Final at Wembley also fell on Saturday.
It meant the Met had to stage one of its most significant public order policing operations since the May Day riots of the early 2000s.
The operation’s aim was to maintain the principle of freedom of speech – that people should be allowed to express their political views, so long as hate speech laws were not broken.
But officers’ concerns were high because the last time Robinson staged a march, an estimated 150.000 turned up. A few of his supporters had running battles with the police as they tried to get close to anti-racism campaigners at the other end of Whitehall.
It is ridiculous that these rallies or marchet about issues in other countries are allowed to take place on the streets of England. The Unite The Kingdom march had every right, the Palestinian one did not. Go away and march somewhere else, We ar not interested, it usually ends in violence of some sort, they get completely hysterical and extremist and we cetainly don’t want to pay for them.
