London, 14th October 2023
A year of central London marches for Palestine
Saturday 5th October saw the 20th central London march in support of the Palestinians with 300,000 marching and the usual shit posting from the BBC, the Telegraph etc. Pro Tel Aviv Home Secretary Yvette Cooper joined in. There was of course a focus on stopping the Israeli genocide in Gaza, a ceasefire in Lebanon and a release of all hostages, those taken on October 7th and the much larger number of Palestinians held by Israel.
The marches have outraged the right-wing media and politicians. Attempts to ban them and restrict them have been regularly made. They are often characterised as ‘hate’ marches an Orwellian take on protests that invariably focused very much on peace and against war. The fact that Saturday is the 20th march in a 52 week period also underlines that rants about weekly marches are just that. There certainly are weekly protests around Britain and much of the world, but the focus on London is quite specific. It is the centre of the former imperial power in the region.
Hats Off then to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain. They, and thousands of unsung grassroots activists across the UK, have organised the longest sustained protest in British political history.
Of course the Chartists and the Suffragettes (for example) went on for some years but the campaigns had peaks and troughs not twenty very large to huge national protests in 12 month period.
The point will made as it was with the Iraq that the protests have not succeeded. There have been short term changes with the new Labour Government despite its support for Israel stopping some arms sales.
The July 4th Election also reminded those Labour activists who wrote off the impact that there were consequences at the ballot box.
But beyond the short term history is being written (as it often is) on the streets here. The impact is as yet unknown. What is known is that just as Iraq has pursued Tony Blair since 2003 to 2024 Gaza will pursue Keir Starmer for however long his political career lasts.
Whether a new left can emerge out of the protests, as it did for a time after 2003, is as often work in progress
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