After last week’s massive march to London’s Israeli embassy in opposition to the Israeli state’s attack on the people of Gaza, a much smaller set of regional actions was called for Saturday 17th by the leaders of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition. In London, a rally in Trafalgar Square was followed by a “women and children only” protest at Downing Street.
However, as an eyewitness who spoke to The Commune reports, not everyone was happy with such conservative ideas of how to protest:
The rally in Trafalgar Square attracted a few thousand people. There were the usual speeches: Tony Benn called for the RAF to drop humanitarian aid over Gaza… When the women and children’s march headed for Downing Street at about 4 o’ clock we tried to go with, but a steward kept repeating “You are neither a woman nor a child!” and held me back. Around one to two thousand people were left in the square.
At the same time, a few dozen people started heading down Cockspur Street, planning to go to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington but the police ‘kettled’ them [ surrounded them] right there and told them they couldn’t leave the square. People from the rally swarmed round them, breaking the police ‘kettle’ and freeing them. There was then a contingent of about 400 people, itself surrounded by police on horseback and with dogs… but this police line was also only one deep, and another group of 200 protesters broke through.
All of us then turned back, and although the police had surrounded Trafalgar Square, they had left the south side by St-Martin’s-in-the-Fields open, and we went round them, turning up Charing Cross Road left into Piccadilly. Almost a thousand of us were running and walking through the middle of the street towards the embassy, even though it was about three miles away – the police were totally taken by surprise. There was chaos as cars trying to drive in the opposite direction were attacked, but we called on people to keep going towards the embassy. Young people smashed up several shops, including two Starbucks, and put orange roadworks barriers on Shaftesbury Avenue across the street.
On Piccadilly a police car came up but the back window was smashed in at once. The policeman got out the car wielding a baton but, seeing the crowd, got back in again and tried to drive away. Another cop by himself on a motorbike was also pursued.
We got quite far towards the embassy, but the crowd got split up as we went along. People in the group behind ours only knew the way by following the trail of destruction! Around 100 of us were finally surrounded by police at Notting Hill, just about to turn down Kensington Church Street, and penned in for two hours. Most of the people there were Muslim kids, including big groups of women. A couple of hundred made it to the embassy but were dispersed by half seven or eight as the police said they’d arrest everyone.
Everyone thought that if the organisers were not going to hold a march, then we’d have one. The police were totally incompetent, but so too did organisers’ attempts to wind things down fail, as there was a great degree of spontaneity and people wanted to march on the embassy.
Rough representation of route from Trafalgar Square to the Israeli Embassy