London’s police were too slow to arrest at the endless series of Palestine protests that followed the October 7th terror attacks on Israel last year and would act more quickly now, a senior officer has said.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner with responsibility for public order Matt Twist told think tank Policy Exchange his officers had been too slow in confronting extremists at Palestine protests and claimed they act much faster now. As previously reported at length, the position of London police appeared to be to allow these protests to continue unmolested, and then only to attempt to arrest certain individuals long after everyone had dispersed.
Instances included individuals using the protests to call for ‘Jihad’ — holy war — people glorifying terrorism and genocide. Twist insisted things were now changing. He said, as quoted in a report by Policy Exchange:
When we look back at the policing of protests over the last eight months, we know we didn’t get everything right – particularly in the early stages in October.
We’ve developed our tactics since then, becoming faster and more decisive. On occasion we did not move quickly to make arrests, for example the man chanting for ‘Jihad’ which was a decision made following fast time advice from lawyers and the CPS.
We are now much more focussed on identifying reasonable grounds for arrest, acting where needed, and then investigating, so in these circumstances its very likely arrests would be made more quickly now.
The senior officer further remarked, in an interview with the organisation that took place in May, that while the force had made more use of the 1986 Public Order Act to impose conditions on these Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests than at any other time since the law was passed in the Thatcher Era, nevertheless it remains even now “a very real policing challenge … no doubt the cumulative impact causes significant concern within the Jewish community in London”.
Twist’s May remarks also seemed to prefigure by several weeks a wider national discussion that emerged out of the anti-child-stabbing and anti-mass-migration protests of the Summer, where “two-tier policing” became a matter of some debate. The visible differential cited by critics between the velvet glove approach by police during pro-Gaza demos compared to the iron fist rolled out for right-wing protesters led to accusations the police were less afraid to strike fast when facing off against white communities.
Twist had said of the official police position on these matters: “In public order policing we are neutral as to the cause that is being protested. We base policing tactics on the threat, harm and risk based on the information and intelligence available to us. In that sense there is no such thing as ‘two-tier or differential policing’ – there are in fact an infinite number of tiers of policing, depending on the threat, harm and risk.”
The report criticised the police for using the term “peaceful” to describe Palestine protests in London, using a definition of the word that would be alien to the majority of normal people:
There have been calls for ‘Jihad’ and to ‘Globalise the Intifada’; antisemitic placards have been seen at countless protests. Between October 2023 and April 2024 415 individuals were arrested. Fifteen individuals were arrested for terrorism offences – something the Metropolitan Police states is “unheard of previously” with the majority “on suspicion of support for proscribed organisations, namely Hamas”. In at least one case, members of a large breakaway group fired fireworks at police officers.
It found that police had been reluctant to attempt to arrest activists at protests for several reasons, including a lack of manpower — stating that snatching one rogue protester even from an otherwise peaceful crowd could take 30 officers, and risked injury to the subject, passers-by, and the officers themselves — but also a risk of repercussions for the officers involved. It stated:
…police officers are increasingly fearful of being subject to lengthy complaint investigation, independent inquiries and, potentially, prosecution as a result of a system of accountability which the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service has described as being “slow, unfair and ineffective”.
Sir Mark Rowley has said that officers “fear that acting with the best intent could leave their lives upturned for years” with proactive policing, as measured by the use of stop and search, having “halved, from almost 20,000 stops in January 2022 to just over 9,000 in December 2023” apparently because officers are reluctant to use their powers due to potential repercussions.
Making recommendations for more effective policing in the future, the report stated the police should “take all possible steps” to arrest people during marches in future, rather than attempting to find them with appeals several days later. It also said police chiefs should be compelled by law to protect sites of critical national infrastructure from protests, not for this to be an operational decision, and that forces should be forced to publish records of all discussions they have with protest organisers before the marches take place.
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