More evidence refutes Met’s claim marcher’s ‘forced’ through police line

Film-maker’s footage and testimony undermines even further the Establishment’s attempt to criminalise peaceful marchers

The Metropolitan Police and its boss Mark Rowley have been heavily criticised for their decision to restrict, to appease pro-Israel pressure groups, last Saturday’s national march against Israel’s genocide in Gaza – a decision that Rowley boasted about in a presentation to one of the pressure groups, the so-called ‘Board of Deputies’.

The police smeared the peaceful protesters by claiming that they – including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell – had ‘forced’ through a police line to reach Trafalgar Square. The Met arrested around seventy people, some of them with considerable violence, interviewed Corbyn and McDonnell ‘under caution’ and have charged at least ten people under the Public Order Act with entering an off-limits area, even though some came to Trafalgar Square from the opposite direction and did not even cross the police line.

Video evidence quickly emerged, showing from different angles that the marchers on Whitehall accessed Trafalgar Square invited and facilitated by Met Police officers, but despite the exposure of their claims as false, the Met and CPS have not dropped the charges.

But footage and testimony published by film-maker and British documentary photographer of the year 2023 Jamie Bellinger (reproduced below in case Instagram deletes it) appears to drive yet another stake through the heart of the Establishment lie, showing that the Met not only encouraged the marchers into Trafalgar Square but then ‘kettled’ them there and prevented them leaving – all while posting on its social media that it would arrest anyone who refused to disperse:

Bellinger wrote:

Wanted to elaborate on what I saw at the 25th PSC Demo in London on Saturday, where 77 people were arrested in strange circumstances. Important to emphasise that I am only one person, with one set of eyes (and three cameras). This is a brief summary of what I saw, not a complete overview of events, and I can’t claim to have the full picture. However, at least one statement made by the Met in their press release goes directly against what I saw first-hand. From what I saw on the ground, it seemed to me that:

1. The Police allowed and encouraged the group to move up Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square, at around 3pm.
2. Once in the Trafalgar Square area, participants found their exits blocked by police to the north, east and west. Those at the front could not realistically return south to Whitehall either, because of the thousands coming behind them, trapping them in Trafalgar Square.
3. Those who tried to leave through police lines were turned away and told to return to the Square.
4. At around 4.20pm, a large group was kettled (surrounded) by a huge number of officers just south of Trafalgar Square. This was about ten minutes before the dispersal requirement came into force at 4.30pm. It seems those people were therefore forced to break that condition. Most were arrested and at least 65 have been charged with breaching conditions.

I know various groups are compiling the masses of video evidence available on what happened and my body camera footage has been shared for this purpose too. The sight of the word ‘breached’ in the Met’s statement shocked me, as an unusually flagrant misrepresentation of the facts. We watch closely to see what comes out in the next few weeks on this. Certainly PSC and their allies will not be deterred, and it’s a shame that 15 months of peaceful marches have been turned sour by policing decisions here.

The Starmer regime, steeped in culpability in Israel’s mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, is waging an ever-escalating ‘lawfare’ war of arrest, raids, harassment, intimidation and criminalisation against journalists and anti-genocide activists who expose and resist Israel’s crimes and the UK’s collusion in them.

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