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keir starmer
UK Grants Police New Powers to Crush Peaceful Protests as Palestine Action Demonstrations Continue
"Just because you have freedom doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day," said Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood after hundreds of peaceful demonstrators were arrested.
Oct 06, 2025
After the British government's ban on the group Palestine Action earlier this year failed to silence demonstrations against the genocide in Gaza, the UK's Home Office announced Sunday that it would give police sweeping new powers to crush peaceful protests.
Police arrested nearly 500 more pro-Palestine demonstrators on Saturday—including many Jewish activists—who participated in a protest calling for the government to "Lift the Ban" on the protest group Palestine Action, which was outlawed under Britain's anti-terrorism law in July.
Those arrested included an 83-year-old Anglican priest, the 79-year-old daughter of a Holocaust survivor, and a 79-year-old Jewish man with terminal illness, among hundreds of others who held signs in opposition to the ban as part of a "silent vigil."
That ban was instituted after members of Palestine Action were accused of vandalizing planes at a military base and has been widely criticized, including by former members of the Labour government that passed it. Even the UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Center acknowledged in a leaked March report revealed last month by the New York Times that the vast majority of the protest group's actions “would not be classified as terrorism.”
Prior to Saturday, more than 2,000 people had already been arrested since the ban went into effect for voicing support for the outlawed organization. Despite this, the demonstrations have continued, and the Home Office, which handles matters of public safety, announced Sunday that more drastic measures would be taken.
It said police forces would be given new powers under the UK's existing policing law, the Public Order Act, to put new conditions on "repeat protests" and allow senior police authorities to relocate or "to ban protests outright" based on their "cumulative impact."
"The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear," said Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. "Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated, and scared to leave their homes. This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days."
In the wake of the deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue last week, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had called on the group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) to call off Saturday's demonstration in order to "respect the grief of British Jews this week.”
But DOJ organizers said in a statement Friday that "many Jewish supporters of Defend Our Juries have warned that postponing tomorrow’s action would risk conflating the actions of the state of Israel with Jewish people around the world, as [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu seeks to do, who bear no responsibility for Israel’s crimes, which could fuel antisemitic hatred and prejudice."
Other leading Jewish figures in Britain have denounced the UK's criminalization of Palestine Action. In August, more than 300 of them, including Jenny Manson, chairperson of Jewish Voice for Labour, signed a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper denouncing the ban as “illegitimate and unethical.”
According to a poll by YouGov in July, 37% of British people said that in the Israel-Palestine conflict, they sympathized more with the Palestinians, while just 15% said they sympathized more with the Israelis. Others said they sympathized with both equally or were unsure.
In a widely circulated BBC News interview on Sunday, Mahmood defended the Home Office's new restrictions on the basis that it was distasteful for DOJ to protest against Israel at a time when Jewish people were in mourning and that police should have the ability to intervene in such protests.
"I don't think it's offensive to ask people to show a little humanity towards a community that's suffered a terrible tragedy. That's the first loss of Jewish life, simply for being Jewish, on British soil in centuries," she said. "Just because you have a freedom doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day."
DOJ responded in a post on X: "This is what the home secretary thinks of democracy. Your freedoms are only freedoms within a specific timeframe, a designated location, and only if permitted to be used by Shabana Mahmood. We are fighting for all our freedoms. We will not be deterred." The group has said it will only continue to escalate its protests and called for more demonstrations in November.
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'Particularly Heinous': UN Chief Condemns Manchester Yom Kippur Synagogue Attack
The head of Amnesty International UK implored public figures to "not stoke hatred and division but focus on the solidarity and humanity that connects us all."
Oct 02, 2025
Human rights defenders including United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres condemned Thursday's deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester, England on the holiest of Jewish holidays.
Two people were killed and four others seriously wounded when a man plowed his vehicle into a crowd and then stabbed worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in Crumpsall on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and repentance. The killer was subsequently shot dead by police, who are calling the attack an act of terrorism.
“Houses of worship are sacred places where people can go to find peace,” Guterres said in a statement. “Targeting a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is particularly heinous.”
Sacha Deshmukh, CEO of Amnesty International UK, said that the organization is "deeply saddened" by Thursday's attack.
"Acts of violence have no place in our society and only serve to deepen division among communities," Deshmukh added. "Now more than ever, it is crucial to stand in solidarity with one another and recognize that our strength lies in our diversity. It is therefore essential that politicians and the media ensure their language and actions in the coming days do not stoke hatred and division but focus on the solidarity and humanity that connects us all."
While UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed that the attacker targeted "Jews because they are Jews," the killer's motives are yet unknown. The attack came as Israel continues its genocidal assault and starvation of Gaza, which have left more than 244,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Critics—including Jewish people—have long warned that Israel's actions endanger Jews around the world, although violent antisemitism is a scourge that was on the rise even before the genocide began in October 2023, according to groups that monitor hate.
While accepting an award from the Human Rights Campaign, actor Hannah Einbinder used her speech to strongly condemn the genocide in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/EsOaeYk7Mo
— AJ+ (@ajplus) March 24, 2025
Jewish Voice for Labour, a progressive UK group, said early during the genocide: "Israel claims to be protecting Jewish lives and accuses its critics of antisemitism. But in fact it is actually endangering Jews worldwide by associating all Jews with the deadly siege of Gaza; the illegal colonization of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights; and the continuing exile of more than 6 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East and beyond."
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman—a Jew and longtime staunch supporter of Israel—wrote in June that "the way Israel is fighting the war in Gaza today is laying the groundwork for a fundamental recasting of how Israel and Jews will be seen the world over."
"It won’t be good," he added. "Police cars and private security at synagogues and Jewish institutions will increasingly become the norm; Israel, instead of being seen by Jews as a safe haven from antisemitism, will be seen as a new engine generating it."
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This Ridiculous, Dangerous Antifa Order Is McCarthyism All Over Again—Possibly Worse
The Trump administration is abusing federal power to silence dissenting voices in a manner that has not been seen in over 70 years. The country survived Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but will it survive what Trump has wrought?
Sep 23, 2025
Free speech stole the show last week during the joint press conference between US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer after a British reporter asked point-blank the Yankee wannabe dictator whether free speech is more under attack in Britain or in America, following Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension over Charlie Kirk comments.
At this historical juncture, both Britain and America are at a new low when it comes to freedom of expression. In fact, free speech is under serious attack in most Western societies.
Britain has no equivalent to the First Amendment, but the current draconian speech laws are so outrageous that even traditional liberties are vanishing. British police are arresting people for offensive online speech at record numbers while the right to protest has been severely curtailed.
In Germany, the situation is just as bad, if not worse. Long before recent efforts to stifle pro-Palestinian voices, the country’s laws on freedom of expression stood on tenuous grounds. As the late German jurist Weinfried Brugger noted nearly a quarter of a century ago in a study comparing German and American law on hate speech, if a protester was to shout on the steps of the US Capitol “our President is a pig” and even held painted pictures of the president as a pig “engaged in sexual conduct with another pig in a judge’s robe;” or that “all our soldiers are murders;” or that “the Holocaust never happened,” none of these allegations would lead to criminal prosecution as the First Amendment would protect them. However, criminal law would apply to all of the above messages if the protester made the speech on the steps of the German Bundestag. As further elucidated by Brugger, freedom of speech in Germany is not a “preferred right” and does not deserve “absolute protection.”
For the duration of Trump 2.0, we must be prepared for a barrage of further anti-democratic actions taking aim at any individual, group, or organization whose ideas, beliefs, and actions threaten the ego of the “beloved leader” or simply irritate his idiotic whims
In this sense, conservatives in the US, like Vice President JD Vance, are not totally wrong when they criticize Europe over free speech, even though they are complete hypocrites. Indeed, the problem with Vance and the rest of the MAGA Republicans who are seemingly disturbed by the backsliding of free expression in Europe is that they are not interested in free speech as such; they are interested in controlling it. They only want to protect speech that is aligned with their own ideological beliefs and values. Thus, in his speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, where he scolded Europeans for their failings on free speech, Vance not only spread a lie when he claimed that the Scottish government had sent letters to citizens instructing them that “even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law” but kept silent about UK government anti-protest legislation, which, as British academic Eric Heinze astutely noted, targets exactly the kind or protests that Trump fears.
Trump returned to the White House with a promise to protect free speech from government censorship. Indeed, just a few hours after his second inauguration, Trump signed Executive Order 14149, titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” But Trump is a master of doublespeak. His administration has, in turn, carried out a wide-ranging crackdown on universities, student protesters, journalists, lawyers, and the press. The wannabe dictator has accused the press on multiple occasions of being “the enemy of the American people” and has filed personal lawsuits against several news organizations. Under his administration, we are also witnessing the intrusion of the military into civilian life. This type of government action is tantamount to dictatorship, as it constitutes an all-out assault on democracy and the rule of law.
The Trump administration is abusing federal power to silence dissenting voices in a manner that has not been seen since the McCarthy era. Democrats and Republicans alike played the Red Card back in the 1940s and throughout the 1950s in order to silence critics and quash dissent. Trump is doing the same thing by trying to create a climate of fear and suspicion across the country with the boogeyman of the so-called “far left,” especially in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing.
To be sure, there should be no illusions about the evolution of free speech in the United States. The current situation is by no means unique, and the First Amendment has never been as sacred as people seem to think. Despite its exalted status, the First Amendment has been “a dead letter for much of American history” and did not come to life until the early 20th century. And when it did, freedom of expression suffered some major blows, thanks to World War I, which created a wave of jingoism, and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which gave rise in turn to an anti-communist alarm known as the Red Scare. In Debs v United States, the Supreme Court upheld Deb’s conviction under the Espionage Act of 1917. Eugene Debs, a leading member of the Socialist Party of America, was convicted for his outspoken opposition to US involvement in World War I and sentenced to ten years in federal prison.
Throughout the 1940s and the 1950s, the First Amendment was censored in the shadows as the suppression of political and social views became a widespread occurrence, spearheaded by a second Red Scare and the rise of McCarthyism. The Smith Act, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Roosevelt on June 28, 1940, was used to monitor immigrants and prosecute members of the Communist Party. In 1951, in a 6-2 decision, the Supreme Court delivered a massive blow to the First Amendment by upholding the constitutionality of the Smith Act in Dennis v United States. In 1947, the Truman administration initiated a loyalty program aimed at rooting out “subversives” and getting rid of homosexuals. Such programs were also established for employment in the private sector as well.
It was only in the 1960s, thanks to growing opposition to the Vietnam War and government attempts to curb protests, that the First Amendment entered mass public consciousness in the United States. When a group of students in Des Moines, Iowa, was suspended for wearing black armbands to school in protest of the Vietnam War and in support of a Christmas truce, the students’ parents challenged the suspensions as a violation of free speech. In a landmark victory for student rights and the First Amendment, in a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v Des Moines (1969) that schools are not “enclaves of totalitarianism” and that “neither students nor teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate.” The Pentagon Papers case defended further the right of free speech, although subsequent US administrations, from Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama to Donald Trump, indicted scores of people “for leaking secrets to the press,” as Lincoln Caplan has underscored in an essay for the Harvard Law Bulletin.
The democratic left has stood up for free speech rights throughout its history. It should remain steadfast in its commitment to freedom of expression and fully and unconditionally reject “cancel culture.”
We are not exactly sure who made the remark that “while history doesn’t repeat itself, it often rhymes,” but it surely applies to the free speech case in the United States. We are now in the midst of a new McCarthy era, and possibly worse. In forcing a comedian and television host like Jimmy Kimmel off the airwaves (Disney reinstated his show after five days of suspension), Trump and his goon FCC Chairman Brendan Carr are following in the footsteps of Nazi minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels who, in 1939, as the New York Times reported, banned five German entertainers because they “made witticisms about the Nazi regime.”
Thus, for the duration of Trump 2.0, we must be prepared for a barrage of further anti-democratic actions taking aim at any individual, group, or organization whose ideas, beliefs, and actions threaten the ego of the “beloved leader” or simply irritate his idiotic whims. The so-called "radical left" will surely be the main target. In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, Trump described the left-wing activist group Antifa a “sick, dangerous, radical left disaster” and signed an executive order designating it a “domestic terrorist organization.”
Antifa (shorthand for “antifascist”) exists around the world but is not a unified organization and has no leader. As such, it is not clear how the US government plans to prosecute Antifa activists. Either way, this is yet another orchestrated attack on political dissent and freedom of speech by the emerging dictatorial regime in Washington, D.C., under the reign of Donald J. Trump.
The democratic left has stood up for free speech rights throughout its history. It should remain steadfast in its commitment to freedom of expression and fully and unconditionally reject “cancel culture.” Censorship of speech is the first step toward political repression, which is precisely why Trump and his goons are now threatening to punish anyone who speaks ill of their newfound martyr, Charlie Kirk.
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