The New Dark Age

Members of the London Assembly, the elected body that scrutinises the activities of London Mayor Sadiq Khan, are planning to hold hearings on public order policing in October.

This follows almost a year of Palestine solidarity protests in the capital. Netpol’s “In Our Millions” report in May 2024 heavily criticises the London Metropolitan Police for their handling of the protests and details multiple instances of racist, islamophobic and politically-driven policing that infringes the right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

The investigation will be led by the Police and Crime Committee, which normally looks at the work of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. Incredibly, however, their inquiry is not interested in whether the Metropolitan Police has protected the right to protest, but only on the “pressures policing protests and other large scale events have on the Met”. The Committee wants to explore the impact on “local neighbourhood teams… officer wellbeing and [the] financial impact on Met budgets and resources”.

In a letter to the Committee, Netpol has declined an offer to participate in a hearing next month because “the underlying assumption of [the] investigation is that protests are primarily a nuisance”.

The remit adopted by the Committee accepts without question that “the most pressing concerns about the state of public order policing in London are how well individual officers are trained, and how well-funded the Met is overall, to deal with the perceived inconvenience of protesters”.

Protest is not a ‘nuisance’

However, the right to freedom of assembly is not simply a nuisance or an inconvenience – it provides an essential function for expressing opinions within a supposedly democratic society. The investigation’s terms of reference mention, in passing, “protecting the democratic right to protest” but there is currently little opportunity to address equally pressing concerns about the negative impact of policing on the exercise of fundamental human rights.

Netpol has argued for expanding the investigation to look at the Metropolitan Police’s legal obligations precisely because it is repeatedly failing to comply with them. We have also called on the Committee to use our Charter for Freedom of Assembly Rights as a benchmark for measuring success or failure. However, without an explicit intent to explore human rights issues, Netpol is concerned the investigation’s request for feedback on how the Met can “change the way it polices protests to better serve all Londoners” will immediately exclude ‘all protesters’”.

Over-policing Palestine demonstrations

The Committee seems particularly interested in the impact of “abstraction” – the redeployment of officers from local neighbourhood police teams to central London for public order policing duties at Palestine solidarity marches.

Based on the research we undertook for our report “In Our Millions”, Netpol argues abstraction was a choice made by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner “to placate demands from the media and government ministers for an aggressive response to so-called ‘hate marches’” and that this continued long after it had become obvious these marches posed little meaningful threat of disorder. Netpol told the Committee:

“Netpol argues that the Commissioner chose to abstract officers from local boroughs to protect the Metropolitan Police’s reputation from criticism, not because it was necessary. Once again, this is why the lack of focus on human rights obligations in your investigation’s remit hampers the Committee’s deliberations – the Metropolitan Police Commissioner must justify not only the costs and impact of abstraction but why these choices were made and whether they were reasonable and proportionate.”

Supporters in London can tell the Police and Crime Committee it needs to address the Metropolitan Police’s human rights failures in a survey form the London Assembly has set up.

You can read our letter to the London Assembly here.