While the government continues to support and assist Israeli genocide, police snatch squads attack peaceful protestors, reports Pete Webster

As Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper prepared to announce the proscription of the Palestine Action network, hundreds of supporters amassed in Trafalgar Square to show their contempt at the hypocrisy of designating PA as a terrorist organisation when the UK continues to support the apartheid Israeli state with arms supplies, spy flights over Gaza and political support. The protest had originally been planned to be outside parliament but the Metropolitan Police imposed conditions banning any demonstration from Lambeth Bridge to the top of Whitehall.

The decision to outlaw the organisation is yet another example of how state repression continues to be directed against those opposed to the ongoing genocide, starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The ban was imposed after activists managed to breach security at RAF Brize Norton and managed to spray red paint into the engines of military support aircraft and taking them out of active service.

Unsurprisingly, the relocated protest was subject to heavy police tactics and several arrests were made. This increased after a dispersal order was put in place and police lines moved to kettle those who maintained resistance. Nonetheless, the crowd remained defiant and vowed to continue the struggle.

We can expect more draconian measures from Starmer and his rotten government as Israel – the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East – instigates another war of ‘self-defence’ in the region. This follows attacks on Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Trump has joined this barbarity on Iran with US military support in the form of B-2 bombers and bunker-busting missiles. This takes the world to a very dangerous place as this escalation threatens to draw in other regional and global powers.

It is crucially important to deepen and broaden the Stop the War Coalition to halt the drive to war that we are witnessing against the backdrop of a global arms race between contending economic and political power blocs.

The Defend the Right to Protest demonstration in support of Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal needs to be massive on 7 July, who are charged under the Public Order Act after police arrested them following the 18 January demonstration for Palestine.