11th January
Contact London Socialist Historians Convenor Dr Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
The London Socialist Historians Group has added its voice to calls for a Met Police ban on a Palestine demonstration starting from the BBC on 18th January to be reversed.
The starting point for the protest at Broadcasting House is designed to bring a focus on BBC bias in reporting on events in Gaza, with statements by the Israeli Government simply broadcast with little fact checking to see if they are in fact true.
The last Tory Government brought in a series of laws to restrict the right to protest which Labour has yet to reverse, despite voting against some of the measures when in Opposition.
The historians say that the right to protest has been hard won in Britain from Peterloo in Manchester in 1819, where soldiers killed 16 people protesting for the vote to much more recent events such as the death at police hands of anti-fascist protester Blair Peach at Southall in 1979.
London Socialist Historians Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, the recent official view of protest has been that civil disobedience and direct action are not acceptable and are often punished by draconian jail terms. Its clear that this was just the start of an effort in criminalising all protest including on this occasion a peaceful march designed to highlight the on-going genocide in Gaza and the BBC’s reluctance to report it. We back calls for the Met Police’s decision to be reversed.
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