On Monday night (4 August), the pro-Palestine motion unleashed a “siege on Labour”. Situated on a aspect road in south London, its social gathering headquarters is an unassuming, dusty-brown workplace block. However, surrounded by a mass of keffiyehs, flags and badges organised by the Palestinian Youth Motion, the world grew to become a cacophony of noise – and confrontation. The protesters got here bearing two key messages: that Labour is complicit within the destruction wrought on Gaza, and that David Lammy should resign as Overseas Secretary. There was a vengeful temper. A number of carried a banner studying, “Labour helps genocide,” adorned with recent, blood-red handprints.
With the parliamentary summer season recess in full circulation, there was barely anybody affiliated with the social gathering to take discover of the teams who massed at 15 of its key workplaces throughout the nation. These suited workplace employees that did occur to be current merely seemed on awkwardly via the glass frontage. The protestors did face some opposition: chants of “From the river, to the ocean…” have been met by a piercing siren purposefully set off by a disgruntled neighbour in a close-by block of flats, and lone man with a skinny mohawk and skin-tight denims additionally confirmed as much as counter-protest.
Each have been quickly crowded out by the scale and noise of the demonstration. “Historical past will decide Labour on this,” one of many occasion’s main audio system, Cat, informed me as she used her keffiyeh to cowl her hair within the early-evening drizzle. “They’ve collaborated with warfare criminals. They’ve allowed crimes in opposition to humanity to happen beneath their watch, figuring out what was occurring.” That is the voice of newly radicalised politics, one who could by no means forgive the Labour social gathering – or mainstream politics altogether.
Whereas assist for Palestine was common amongst those that turned up, there was a break up over which MPs have been adequately on the aspect of the trigger. Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana, “even the Tory, Package Malthouse” – who has strongly criticised Labour’s response to the warfare – drew reward from one protester, who cited the incoming Corbyn-Sultana social gathering for instance of “people-powered actions rising up”. However one other declared that British politics is laden with “imperialist events”, and that “we’ve by no means seen a Labour MP [truly] defend the Palestinian individuals of their resistance-struggle.” Not even Corbyn? “While you have a look at the Labour Celebration beneath Corbyn, it’s the identical [as now].” However whereas this motion has few parliamentary allies, it is aware of who its opponents are. “The Palestine liberation motion must up its recreation,” Seema, a protestor, informed me. “We are able to’t simply be doing A-to-B protests, we now have to indicate who the actual enemy is.”
This mentality was what drove a separate group of protesters to the guts of Tottenham, the place they crowded by the metallic gate that results in David Lammy’s constituency workplace. The temper was persecutory. “Down with the Labour Celebration!” was the cry once I arrived. It quickly turned to “David Lammy, be afraid / We’ll see you on the Hague.”
Within the judgement of those protestors, Lammy is a collaborator with the Israeli authorities, the personification of Labour’s feeble response to the warfare, and its half dedication to a Palestinian state. His identify got here up extra typically in my conversations with protestors than Keir Starmer, regardless of the Prime Minister’s personal missteps on the problem. There’s equal ill-feeling in direction of Wes Streeting; on the identical night because the Tottenham demonstration, protestors additionally took to the Well being Secretary’s constituency workplace in Ilford, 9 miles down the street. And whereas these protests have an emotional mood, they replicate an actual political splintering. “I feel there’s anger, however I additionally assume there’s sober evaluation. Folks have woken up,” Nihal, one in every of Palestinian Youth Motion organisers, informed me.
These protesters face a twin anxiousness: concern for the potential of non-public repercussions (seen within the ubiquity of face-coverings); and concern of the facility of the safety companies, exacerbated by the proscription of Palestine Motion in July. However these current final night time have been resolute. If the federal government bans an organisation, “new ones will simply maintain turning up”, Nihal stated. “Even with as we speak’s protest, individuals have known as it violent. They’ve known as it bullying, after we’re simply standing outdoors of a public servant’s workplace, calling for accountability in a really peaceable method. With all of the pearl-clutching, you’d assume that we’d be doing one thing that’s past the pale. That is regular protesting in a functioning democracy.”
That could be so, however it’s reflective of a restive public consciousness. Within the closing Cupboard assembly earlier than Parliament break up for the summer season, Labour’s frontbenchers fretted over the prospect of a “summer season of discontent”. From the protests outdoors asylum resorts to this very completely different show – a mass motion in opposition to British overseas coverage – that summer season is shortly coming to go. Although Lammy and key figures from Labour weren’t round to listen to this summer season’s newest remonstration, they didn’t must be. They already know – and the discontent exhibits no signal of ending.
[Further reading: Palestine Action and the distortion of terrorism]