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The tenth march for Gaza took place in central London on 9th March. Around 400,000 marched to the US Embassy at Nine Elms.The crowd was diverse and peaceful. Another march will take place on March 30th. In between, many,many protests and meetings have taken place not only in the UK but around the globe.
The Times which frequently runs Editorials on protests (in the UK a bad thing, elsewhere often to be applauded) determined (29th Feb) that banning demonstrations on Palestine would be wrong. It suggested instead that protesters just stop having them.
This was a point echoed by Home Secretary James Cleverley who claimed protesters had made their point. Yet given the UK is still sending arms to Israel, and unlike some other countries,has not resumed funding UN aid to Gaza, clearly the point does still need to be made, more and more loudly.
The 9th March demo was around 400,000 strong. The largest protest in British history remains that against the Iraq War on 15th Febriary 2003. Yet while there were many protests on Iraq that march was a one off.
On Gaza since October 2023 not just London protests have taken place but many others around the country. Meeting, marches, walk-outs from workplaces and colleges have all featured.
Its a mass movement with few historical parallels given the variety and breadth of protests and the short timescale. That no doubt explains why there are increasing calls from the Islamophobic hard right for protests to be curtailed or banned. They can’t understand why people are protesting on such a scale and if they did they would oppose it.
There are of course some historical parallels but even here we are looking at a time scale of days and weeks not months. In 1848 in London in late May and early June, Chartists marched in their thousands every night in central London seeking to push forward the campaign for the vote which had been frustrated at Kennington Common in April 1848.
When we look at Suffragette protests for the vote in the early twentieth century or climate protesters now we can see sustained protest. The difference with the Gaza protests is the huge numbers consistently on the streets.
That is the real motor behind the UN Resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire passed with a US abstention on 25th March, six months too late. Israel has been ignoring UN resolutions for decades and will no doubt try to do the same here. The reality is that Netanyahu is ever more isolated particularly as the link with the US is partially fractured.
As the late Sam Cooke sang A Change is Gonna Come
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