For a government so invested in late-stage capitalism, it seems curious they would scrub away the Banksy mural painted on the Royal Courts of Justice last week, rather than find a way to monetise it. But the image, depicting a judge brandishing a gavel over a cowering protester, their placard splattered with blood, may have cut too close to home for a government leading the country's authoritarian spiral.
The mural’s resurrection followed a weekend when over 850 people were arrested in Parliament Square for holding signs in support of banned group Palestine Action. Charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, these ongoing protests started after Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation – a move the UN’s Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk, warned “raises serious concerns that counter-terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature and risks hindering the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms across the UK”.
Instruments of state power
With most over the age of 60, perched on camping chairs and sharing picnic lunches, the group might just as easily have been at Glyndebourne Opera - until the tranquillity was shattered by police picking someone at random and seizing them for arrest.
Two police officers kneeling over a woman with white hair as she lay on her front in defiance, both were clearly on the brink of tears as the crowd chanted “shame”. Still, their mortification at such an abuse of power didn’t stop them from carrying her away to the police van.
With arrests stretching over twelve hours, protestors had ample time to ask police why they didn’t simply walk away from a job that made them instruments of state power against the vulnerable. One boasted “it’s the best job in the world” that he “got paid to stand doing nothing”. Behind him, a protestor was slowly being encircled by police, defiantly holding his banner next to the statue of suffragist Millicent Fawcett, hers reading “Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere.”
Another officer insisted we should be grateful he risked his life every day to protect the public. An argument instantly shattered by the sight of pensioners dragged from folding chairs, as the police clutch their flimsy cardboard placards like trophies.
As the state unabashedly targets the most vulnerable, in Parliament, they push through a new Crime and Policing Bill to further their powers to suppress decent. It will give police the power to search homes without a warrant, make concealing your identity at protests an arrestable offence, and those with limited right to remain could now face being deported for as little as a police caution.
This is not the first Bill of its kind and Sisters Uncut led an unprecedentedly diverse coalition activist movements, human rights organisations and unions to challenge the Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act in 2022. However, the Bill still went through, the consequences of which markedly impact how protests are policed today.
Issac Herzog’s London visit
Outside the InterContinental in Hyde Park last week, dozens protested the Israeli Prime Minister Issac Herzog, who was staying there. Herzog’s visit happened to coincide with the DESI arms fair that was displaying components for cluster munitions, banned under international law. These are the latest weapons by Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms supplier, who are close to finalising a £2billion contract with the UK government.
Soon after I arrived at the protest, an estimated 150 officers descended on us, threatening anyone who didn't leave with immediate arrest and shoving me and others from behind, for not moving quickly enough.
The 2022 Bill strengthened the police’s ability to close down exactly this type of protest.
Forming lines and charging at the group in a manner more befitting of the frontline of a battlefield, they steered protestors into the seven lanes of Hyde Park Corner, making them choose between facing the police aggression and oncoming cars.
The whole response was absurd in contrast to the small protest, which at worst, might disrupt the evening of the Israeli PM, whose remarks have been quoted in the ICJ genocide case and photographed writing “I rely on you” on a bomb to be sent to Gaza.
This type of police aggression will most likely end once again in a member of the public being seriously harmed or killed, as people simply practice their democratic right to protest.
A right enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, these laws make way for the ongoing dismantling of British democracy. Most alarmingly, this is being led by Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who advised the Northern Ireland Police Board, headed the Crown Prosecution Service, and once argued a genocide case before the ICJ. His actions suggest he is now using his expertise to get the job done quicker, whilst using nationalism to distract.
As political street art is removed from state buildings, Keir Starmer expressed support for those flying the St George’s Cross as it was painted across England, while protests erupted outside hotels housing refugees and 100,000 people took to the streets of London in a far-right demonstration.
The white supremacy, racism, and Islamophobia underpinning these acts are not incidental but central to a government who are strategically dismantling the welfare state. They are removing funding from public infrastructure as they pursue political and economic interests that drive the genocide of Palestinians and fuel wars in surrounding countries. All whilst criminalising and disrupting the very communities and organising structures that might resist.
At a recent cultural workers' march against complicity in genocide and censorship in London, Palestinian filmmaker and activist, Saeed Taji Farouky highlighted “The ideology that we saw in this country's streets yesterday, is the same ideology threatening Palestinians in Palestine and is the same ideology shared with the politicians sitting in government in the UK”, stressing that solidarity is important, “[n]ot only for the future of Palestine but for the future of democracy in Britain”.
Connecting how both Israel and Britain's agendas rely on the silencing of artistic voices that challenge them, he emphasised “this is why we insist that the production of culture is also a form of resistance… we are insisting on our continuity as a people, we are asserting our refusal to disappear.”
‘It doesn’t make sense’
Receiving far less coverage than the mass arrests in the UK, were the over 1,500 Palestinians in Tulkarem who Israeli soldiers had rounded up at gunpoint and taken away. In the videos, I search for the young artist I work with who lives there, who had stopped answering his phone. Israel had previously threatened him with arrest and to target his family unless he stopped writing songs, poetry and books.
Not arrested this time, when we spoke, he reflects, “I have arrived at the point that I understand everything, but I can’t find sense in any of it”.
A profound statement for a 21-year-old, it speaks not only to what he endures, but to the rage and despair of watching every system and person standing against these atrocities and for equity, justice, and human rights - be targeted, arrested, deported, killed, dismantled, or destroyed by those around the world who prioritise profit.
From protest and human rights groups being proscribed as terrorists, to UN agencies defending Palestinian refugee rights being defunded; from ICC judges being sanctioned, to Hamas leaders engaging in ceasefire talks being bombed; from students occupying academic spaces being barred from education, to journalists reporting the truth being assassinated - across Palestine, Britain, and the world, the list goes on.
The censorship of artists is no exception to the rule, and neither is the removal of Banksy’s mural. Yet perhaps no clearer metaphor exists than the permanent stain on a building that pertains to uphold justice, left behind by a government that treats truth and accountability as something they can simply scrub away.
Zoe Lafferty is associate director at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp, Palestine where she is currently collaborating on the global solidarity project ‘The Revolution’s Promise’ and virtual reality film ‘In A Thousand Silences’.
Follow Zoe on Twitter/X: @zoe_lafferty
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.