In the wake of a knife attack by a lone individual in a north London suburb, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has seized the opportunity to announce that the government is seriously considering a ban on the right to protest the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians. It is a chilling preview of an authoritarian future where solidarity with the oppressed is treated as a crime and the rights of assembly are revoked on the basis of a single violent incident.
On Wednesday 29 April, a 45-year-old man with a known history of mental illness and violent behaviour stabbed three men in Golders Green. The police immediately designated it a terrorist incident. But what Prime Minister Starmer has done in response is to turn this into a pretext for a far wider war on political dissent. While one man has been charged with attempted murder, the government is instead training its sights on the tens of thousands of peaceful protesters who have marched month after month to demand an end to the Israeli military’s extermination of the Palestinian people. Within hours, the UK terror threat level was raised from “substantial“ to ”severe.” Meanwhile, the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, explicitly demanded a “moratorium” on new pro-Palestine protests, citing the unacceptable burden of monitoring them.
Speaking to the BBC on Saturday morning, Starmer did not hide his intentions. “I’m a big defender of freedom of expression, peaceful protests,” he claimed, before immediately contradicting himself. “But when there are chants like ‘globalise the Intifada,’ that’s completely off limits.” Asked if he would support a blanket ban on future marches if the “cumulative effect” on the Jewish community was too severe, Starmer replied: “I think there are instances for the latter”. This is a profoundly dangerous gamble. The prime minister is cynically conflating a spontaneous act of random street violence with a mass, organised political movement. In doing so, he plays directly into the hands of groups like the Conservative opposition, whose leader Kemi Badenoch immediately demanded an outright ban, arguing the protests are a “cover for promoting violence and intimidation against Jews”.
As details of the Golders Green incident emerged, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley made the incendiary claim that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was specifically “setting out with an intent to march near synagogues.” This was swiftly and categorically refuted by the organisers themselves. Ryvka Bernard, deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, called the remarks “dishonest and frankly dangerous” and “shocking” at a moment when police should be focused on public safety, not spreading misinformation. Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star that the claims about targeting synagogues are “entirely false”. The movement has always been explicitly multi-faith and includes Holocaust survivors. By staging this moral panic, the government is cracking down on a community that is exercising its democratic right to hold power to account for the siege and starvation of Gaza.