Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi describes experience after almost 900 arrested for peacefully holding anti-proscription placards
The Met Police have smeared Saturday’s ‘Defend Our Juries’ (DOJ) protest – against the proscription of Palestine Action, a non-violent direct action group as a terrorist organisation for its sabotage of Israeli and Israel-linked arms factories – as violent and abusive, despite an apparently complete lack of evidence in the public domain, among hundreds of hours of footage circulating on social media, of any such behaviour by protesters.
This was in contrast to the actions of some police officers, who appeared to ‘snap’ as protesters shouted “Shame on you” as officers arrested demonstrators, many of them elderly and/or disabled, often pushing protesters who were non-violent and injuring some.
Police overreach and their readiness to use underhand tactics to try to cope were evident – an impression reinforced by comments from Jewish activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who was arrestee number 851 on Saturday – out of almost nine hundred – at the demo about her experience after her arrest, which she and others described to Skwawkbox:
I’ll start by saying that the Met’s accusation of violence by the DOJ protesters towards police is completely without foundation. I was arrestee number 851, there for 9.5 hours before finally being carted off to one of the vans. Every single DOJ protester was 100% non-violent. There was anger, along with some hostile words from a very few pro-Pal protesters who came to offer welcome support and became understandably irate as one quiet, peaceable anti-genocide protester after another was carted away.
But the state clearly overreached on Saturday – the strategy of mass resistance works! Cops had clear strategy of trying to get people to accept street bail. 3 tactics:
• Arresting officer being overly friendly with ‘prisoner’, establishing ‘buddy’ relationship, suggesting that it would be much quicker and easier for all concerned to volunteer name, address and DOB and accept street bail
• Plain clothes cops coming up and down the processing line, enticing people to jump the queue and get a quick exit if they volunteered their details
• Cops spreading rumours that London custody stations were becoming very full, and that people who didn’t volunteer info quickly could be taken to stations in Gloucestershire, Wales, even Scotland and have to find their own way back to London.In my own case one of the four plain clothes officers who processed me at Millbank repeatedly alluded to me being transported to Bournemouth if I refused to confirm my address. I ended up in Brixton.
The police were clearly logistically overwhelmed by the task and many officers were disgruntled about what they were being asked to do and the way they were being assigned and treated.
After arrest, I was in the processing queue along Millbank from 10pm to 3am. My arrest was one of the last, so by that stage there were far more cops than prisoners, loads of them hanging about with little to do apart from chat in small groups.
As they were tired and had let their guard down the chat was very revealing. Many resented being asked to arrest people protesters as terrorists – I heard some saying they should be arresting real criminals. They complained about the long hours (one mentioned being on shift more than 25 hours), leave being cancelled, not be allowed to go home, mandatory overtime, not enough coffee available, being expected to be back on shift after less than 11-hour rest period, and the general chaos. They talked about the unprecedented scale of the event and how they’d never experienced anything like it before.
• The state expected their strategy of expediting street bail to work – the Welsh cops were not expected to be so long in London and I overheard conversations about them having to find emergency hotel accommodation for them – to the obvious resentment of some of the Met!
• I was then in a stationary cop van at Millbank from 3am–6am before being taken to Brixton.In the van, their operational radio was on constantly and was relaying exchanges between cops in vans to and from each other and their control room. It was obvious that they were struggling to find enough places in custody stations, and were taking people as far out as Bromley, Harrow, Colindale, Barking, Heathrow etc…
They also didn’t have enough drivers to get the arresting officers back to their home bases from the custody stations – into the early hours in particular, they kept requesting those officers who had completed the arrests at the custody stations and were finishing their shifts to stay on and do extra hours ferrying other officers back home from custody stations.
They called this task ‘welfare’. They couldn’t get enough volunteers for welfare, so ended up abandoning it and asking all sergeants to tell arresting officers that they’d have to arrange for their own teams/units/areas to arrange transport back to home base. They also appeared to be struggling with control room shifts ending and not having enough people to keep specific channels operational. In in all, every indication of chaos…
The arrestee’s experience is mirrored in that of other victims on Saturday – and in analysis from journalist Jonathan Cook, who wrote, in an article about the Met’s smears against protesters:
I was at the protest from its start till 5.20pm, about the time this claim was issued by the police. For much of that period, I should have been in a position to see examples of such violence because the police had made remarkably few arrests by then. Most came later.
If this claim from the police is true, they need to produce the evidence from the body cams all the officers there were wearing. Punches thrown at the ranks of police would be clear in such footage.
What I saw was what the police are terming “verbal abuse”: that is, every time a group of 10 or so officers were dispatched to arrest one of the silent protesters sitting on the green in Parliament Square, many of them elderly or infirm, other protesters who were observing the proceedings would gather around the arresting officers and try to shame them.
Chants of “Shame on you!”, “You’re on the wrong side of history!” and “What will you tell your grandchildren?” were intended to make the task of carrying out the arrests as difficult as possible for the officers involved.
It was clear that many of those officers were struggling emotionally with the task of arresting peaceful pensioners. Most looked down at the ground or at the chests of the chanting protesters, but refused to meet our gaze.
A few looked like they were cracking under the pressure. I noticed one male officer who was pale, sweating profusely and his eyes darting around erratically. Shortly afterwards he started lashing out, trying to push the chanting protesters over.
From what I could see, most of the “scuffles” in video footage are examples of something similar: incidents in which one or more police officers “explode”, releasing pent-up frustrations at the protesters for reminding them of how illegitimate and demeaning the job of arresting silent pensioners trying to stop a genocide was.
Cook concludes that he has no sympathy for the overwrought police:
If the police are not happy about being made to enforce Palestine Action’s proscription because so many people reject it as an abuse of state power, then they can make their feelings known – very strongly, if they wish – to the government. They have many private and public channels to communicate their view that are not available to us.
But that is precisely the opposite of what the police command is doing at the moment.
The police are, as so often, acting as the ready and even eager enforcement arm of a state elbow-deep in collaboration with Israel’s slaughter of innocent Palestinians in Gaza – approaching half a million in almost two years of Israel’s genocide so far – and engaged in a ‘lawfare’ war against the rights of UK citizens and their freedoms of speech and assembly.
Well done, Naomi – all those hours of witness. Thankyou for your reporting, Jonathan
Yes indeed. I know of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi through the excellent JVL website and she is an inspiration. I am a little younger than she, but I know that ordeal would have made me quite ill. Such cowardly behaviour from the Met picking on the elderly.
I did see some of the younger police look somewhat shamefaced (showing my age here but as the old expression they looked about 15…) but like Jonathan Cook, have no sympathy with the plods expected to do the State’s heavy work. Who would choose such a career in Starmer’s Police State. Never mind what will they tell their children, what will they tell their grannies and grandads!
IF the rank and file bovver boys of the plod think it’s a waste of time, an embarrassment, then who is making the decision to put the vast resources into making such a meal of a well-behaved crowd of mainly old folk, literally old enough to be the grannies and great grannies of those “officers?”
Jack Straw reckoned back in 1999 (Hansard December 14th) that no Home Secretary, no Chief Officer could make such a decision without the decision coming from the DPP. (currently Stephen Parkinson). I think the national media need to investigate……………….
The “national media’ – controlled as it is by an Establishment oligarchy – won’t even report the news that the United Nations General Assembly has voted to hold meetings concerning the situation in the Gaza/West Bank area of Palestine out of New York. Moving meetings on the issue to Geneva because the mardy arses in Washington won’t issue visa’s even to the largely neutered corrupt compradors of the Palestine Authority.
Or, that they are seeking to bypass the veto to send protective force troops into the area to protect the remainder of the populace from becoming extinct at the hands of the occupying Zionists in the land of Palestine on behalf of their Western sponsors.
Nor that serious consideration is being given to move the Headquarters of the United Nations out of New York to somewhere else – possibly Shanghai?
The only circumstances in which the “national media” would investigate in the way suggested will be after a clear out of all the dead wood not only in the fifth column which passes as the so called ‘fourth estate’ but right through the Establishment order which controls that media, the equally bought and paid for political class, and the PMC bureaucracy which is hell-bent on eliminating anyone and everyone who fails to bend the knee to this minority of sociopaths.
I noticed one male officer who was pale, sweating profusely and his eyes darting around erratically. Shortly afterwards he started lashing out
Well im guessing he could afford a bag of ‘flake’ instead of ‘bash ‘with all that overtime… 😤😤😤
Those who are willing to be arrested are very brave citizens and I wondered if they could have taken the police officers numbers then made a citizens arrest on them with the charge of ‘Complicity in Genocide.’ (?)
Healey Right Wing Lab boot boy was spouting Goebells propaganda on this on Sunday morning TV.
When you have to lie you are losing the arguments.
The Labour Cabinet & previous Tory Cabinet should be in front of the ICJ.
Guilty on 4 counts; selling arms to Israel to be used in Gaza, using RAF spy planes to aid the IDF in Gaza, allowing Israeli companies to manufacture arms in the UK to be used in Gaza, and trading with a Genocide perpetrator. ⚖️
“Gain and hold territories that possess the largest supplies of the basic raw materials. Establish naval bases around the world to control the sea and commerce lanes. Blockade and starve into submission any nation or group of nations that opposes this empire control program.”
– British statesman and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Quoted in Knuth, E.C. “Empire of the City,” 1946, p. 57)
The present iteration of yet another Genocide and famine is but the latest in a long line of similar crimes perpetuated over several centuries by successive chosen front politicians for the UK Oligarchy and the proxies of the City of London:
https://alexkrainer.substack.com/p/of-empires-and-famines
“In April 1974, Henry Kissinger, then Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Adviser sent out a classified memo to select cabinet officials. The title of the memo was, “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests,” and it was commissioned on the recommendation of John D. Rockefeller III and came to be called, more famously, NSSM 200, for National Security Study Memorandum 200.
In it, Kissinger addressed the difficulty of controlling resource rich areas of the world against the social pressures borne of growing world populations and went on to suggest the kinds of coercive measures the US should consider. He bluntly stated that food aid should be considered as “an instrument of national power,” and that the US should ration food aid to “help people who can’t or won’t control their population growth.”
The NSSM 200 made depopulation in foreign developing countries an explicit, if secret, national security priority of the United States for the first time. In that, the policy of the British Empire was simply grafted onto the US foreign policy. If anything changed between Disraeli and Kissinger, it’s the slick framing of policy goals: “rationing food” to “help people” is the sanitized version of “starving them into submission.” But the language amounted to recommending genocide, at least as defined under the UN Convention of 1948.”
From India to Ireland, Kenya to Somalia and Ethiopia and now Palestine the DNA of this process moves seamlessly from the base of it’s beating heart in the CoL through its middle men Minder’s in Washington to its comprador proxies in Tel Aviv, Kiev, and elsewhere throughout the globe where ever people who are defined by the self-identifying chosen superior people from the “Garden” as inferiors from the “Jungle” start to get uppity and refuse to bend the knee/cry ‘Uncle’.
“I do not admit that any great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America,
or the black people of Australia by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race has come in and taken its place”
– Winston Churchill
Putting the latest generation of frontmen on trial in this way is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient. Only when the Global Majority, wherever they happen to live and reside, has eliminated the adherents and practitioners of this parasitic sickness and dismantled their system and legacy will it be possible to make any progress as a species.
Disraeli, kissinger, Churchill…
Two out of three ain’t bad.
This story, It’s Starmer’s Live Facial Recognition Technology (LFRT) that’s enabling the Met’s mass “arrest spree” against Palestine supporters.
Last Story, it’s Starmer’s £41,700 earnings threshold (dressed-up as ‘rules change’) that’s making c 200 TfL staff candidates for deportation.
And yet Paul Nowak, the General Secretary of the TUC, repeats his line at the 157th annual TUC Congress (yesterday) that “the Labour government has the interests of working people at heart”.
Wake Up at the back Nowak!
Starmer – and the McSweeney trilateral gang he’s fronting – are the problem.