I stayed the last two weekends in Vauxhall. On both the Saturdays I was there, at about half past midday, I set off towards points further north in London from a place near Vauxhall Park:
Each time, when I got beyond the park, I started to notice blocked-off streets and large numbers of policemen and police cars and vans. On the first occasion, when I reached Vauxhall Bridge, a tall, dark-bearded policeman crossed in front of me. The policeman was carrying a stack of orange cones.
"What are you all doing," a man near me asked the policeman. "Preparing for the demonstration," he replied. "What demonstration?" I asked. "The pro-Palestinian one," he said.
When I reached the other end of the bridge, I saw yet more policemen and vehicles. There were more, presumably, deployed all along the march's route.
In a corner, confined within a mass of temporary fencing, I also saw a crowd of people, many of whom were carrying Israeli flags. They were being prevented from moving about outside of the small fenced area the police had allotted them.
Up until then I had believed the pro-Palestine protests that happen each weekend in London should be allowed, even though since the Ramallah lynching in 2000 I have not supported the Palestinian cause at all. My reason for believing the protests should go ahead was because I did not want freedom to be curtailed. However, seeing the arrangements that the authorities seem to believe are needed in order to allow the protests, I am now wondering about what precisely freedom means in this situation.
Leaving aside the question of who is being protected from whom, (are the demonstrators dangerously violent when confronted with people who don't agree with them - because, if they are, they forfeit the right to be given free run of the streets to air their views), I began to wonder about the right of Londoners to enjoy their own streets in freedom. In this context, I was struck by how unnecessarily the police were using their power to inconvenience people - they seemed to be relishing insisting that people couldn't cross certain roads nowhere near the route of the march. An elderly couple were told to stagger on up to the next crossing, "only about a hundred and fifty yards further up" and when the couple asked why they couldn't cross where they were, they were told: "It's up to us to decide, and we have decided it is safer for you not to cross here."
I also wondered about the freedom of ratepayers - have they ever been asked if they mind subsidising the marchers to the tune of the Met's no doubt vast overtime bill each Saturday? And, above all, what about the freedom of those who wish to support Israel? Why aren't Israeli supporters allowed to wander about freely, while Palestine supporters are?
Of course, the second weekend I witnessed all these preparations, just after the release of the Bibas children's bodies, I also found myself unable to believe the great hordes of Palestine supporters would be out in force again. After having discovered that their own people had strangled in absolute cold blood, quite deliberately, two small boys, placing their hands round their necks and squeezing the life out of them - and then followed up by turning the return of the poor children's bodies into one of the most graceless spectacles ever created - I assumed they would give up and stay at home.
But there they were, streaming down from Westminster and over the bridge as if nothing had happened. It turned out they didn't care at all.
The first Saturday I was in Vauxhall, I should add, my reason for going north was to get to Marylebone Theatre to see a play called What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. At least one big London theatre was too afraid to stage it, in case they were besieged by Palestine supporters who don't like Jews. What price freedom?
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