Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France in 2017 promising to break the mould of French politics with its see-saw left-right swings. He claimed this was the best strategy for countering the rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, the Rassemblement National (‘National Rally’), formerly known as the Front National (‘National Front’).
The result has been a progressive drift towards the right, and a slow capitulation to authoritarian and nationalist policies. The…
There don’t seem to have been any Just Stop Oil (JSO), Extinction Rebellion or Insulate Britain arrests since PN last came out, in late November.
On 8 January, JSO began negotiations with the Metropolitan police over its ‘slow walking’ campaign of disrupting traffic in London.
JSO presented the Met with evidence that the government was guilty of the crime of ‘genocide by oblique intent’, by developing new oil and gas projects.
JSO offered to pause disruptive…
On 7 December, a new Palestine solidarity group, Workers for a Free Palestine, organised 1,000 trade unionists and other protesters to blockade four sites connected to the Israeli war machine: Eaton Mission Systems in Bournemouth, Dorset; the L3Harris factory in Brighton, East Sussex; BAE Systems’s Samlesbury Aerodrome just outside Blackburn in Lancashire; and the BAE Systems Govan site in Glasgow.
All four arms company sites are linked to the manufacture of the F-35 warplane…
The direct action group Palestine Action (PA) has again been generating more news than we can cover. They bumped up their acquittals total, won victories targeting suppliers of the Israeli-owned arms company Elbit Systems UK, and carried out a string of property damage actions.
Also, PA had their first known infiltrator, a journalist named Max Parry from the Daily Express, who gave information to the police that led to five arrests for ‘conspiracy to commit public nuisance’…
PN has raised over £3,800 for Medical Aid for Palestinians, selling ‘Ceasefire Now’ badges for a donation at the national Gaza marches on 25 November, 9 December and 13 January. All proceeds went to MAP.
The black-and-white design was modelled on T-shirts worn by US Jewish peace activists who occupied Grand Central Station in New York City in October.
Badge designer Erica Smith said: ‘It was really heart-warming to realise how many people wanted to support MAP – from…
At the end of December, four radical Christians were arrested protesting against the Gaza War, around Holy Innocents Day (28 December), which marks the massacre of male infants by Herod, according to biblical tradition.
On 28 December itself, two US Catholic Workers were arrested at the Pentagon in Washington DC, the Nuclear Resister reports.
The arrestees were Bill Frankel-Streit (67, from Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm in Virginia) and Kim Williams (from Norfolk…
On 22 January, Richmond and Kingston Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Kingston Peace Council and other campaigners protested outside the International Armoured Vehicles arms fair at the Twickenham rugby stadium in West London. Arms companies present included BAE Systems and Leonardo and two Israeli firms: Elbit Systems and Rafael. Palestine Action had sprayed part of the stadium front in blood red paint earlier in the day.
Last year, there was a 62 percent jump in planned spending by the defence nuclear organisation (DNO) over the next 10 years on equipment related to British nuclear weapons. That’s according a government national audit office (NAO) report published in December, comparing 10-year spending plans published in 2022 and 2023.
The DNO is responsible for most British nuclear weapons equipment acquisition, including the development of new ‘Dreadnought’ submarines to replace Trident.
…
The policing of the major Gaza ceasefire marches in London has been aggressive, hostile and ‘politicised’.
That was the charge put to the Metropolitan police in a letter on 22 January from the organisers of the national marches for Palestine in London.
The organisers are: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
The organising…
As the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) moved towards its second anniversary of ‘coming into force’, 18 US peace activists were arrested for blockading all three entrances to the US mission to the United Nations in New York City – for two hours.
The 30 November action took place as 90 countries who had signed the TPNW were gathering in New York for the second ‘meeting of states parties’ to the treaty. This conference of countries that have signed the treaty is…
On 28 October, the United Families & Friends Campaign held its annual march from Trafalgar Square to Downing Street in Central London, delivering a list of unexplained deaths in the custody of the state. The march took place just before a massive Gaza solidarity march, where BLM (Black Lives Matter) UK formed part of a bloc remembering those who have died in state custody.
Over the last two months, Palestine Action (PA) has continued its direct action campaign against Elbit Systems UK, the British subsidiary of the Israeli drone manufacturer. PA has also opened up a US branch (which has taken action in Massachussetts and New Hampshire), supported several activists on trial (still ongoing at the time of going to press) and taken action in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
On 5 October, PA added to its acquittals score when one of its activists was…
The National Alternative Remembrance Ceremony, organised by the Peace Pledge Union and friends, was held in Tavistock Square, Central London, on 12 November. Over 200 participants observed two minutes’ silence and laid white poppy wreaths in memory of all victims of war. There were three speeches, focused on Palestine.
Richard Kuper of Jews for Justice for Palestinians said: ‘Yesterday saw one of the biggest demonstrations in the United Kingdom against the conflict in the Middle East…
Don’t Extradite Assange (DEA) is still recruiting people for a mass protest at 9am at the high court in Central London on ‘Day X’, when Julian Assange faces his last chance in a British court to stop his extradition to the US for exposing US war crimes. He could face up to 175 years in prison.
Meanwhile, on 8 November, 16 Democratic and Republican members of the US congress wrote to US president Joe Biden asking him to withdraw the US extradition request against Assange.
The…
On 17 October, Shell CEO Wael Sawan was unable to get into a major oil and gas conference in London because activists were blockading the luxury hotel hosting the event. Sawan was forced to deliver his keynote speech online instead. We shut the Oil & Money summit down!
This was the result of Fossil Free London’s biggest mobilisation to date: ‘Oily Money Out.’ As the biggest names in the fossil fuel industry, banking and politics gathered for the exclusive Oil & Money summit (…
An anarchist group was refused permission to have a stall at this year’s Anarchist Bookfair in London (ABiL) not because of the Anarchist Communist Group’s stand on trans issues, which the ABiL thinks is now okay, but because the ACG has not expelled members who hold views that the ABiL thinks are unacceptable.
The ‘Anarchist Bookfair in London’ was created after the implosion of the London Anarchist Bookfair in 2017 due to conflicts over trans issues (see…
At the time of writing, a four-day truce is taking place in Gaza. With Israeli leaders stating their full intention to intensify their attacks immediately thereafter, anti-war protests have continued, including a national march of 200,000 in London on 25 November.
Within days of Hamas’s 7 October attack, as Israel’s immediate retaliatory bombardment began the destruction of Gaza, local vigils for the people of Gaza were held across the UK.
On 14 October, tens of thousands of…
Here are some of the climate actions that have taken place in the UK since our last issue. The major event was the acquittal, on 16 November, of the HSBC Nine: XR women prosecuted for £500,000 damage done to windows at the headquarters of HSBC bank in London in 2021.
The other major event has been the continuing Just Stop Oil (JSO) slow walk campaign in London, mostly marching from Trafalgar Square to Whitehall.
JSO claim there have been 612 arrests between 30 October and 22…
Hundreds of British lawyers have signed two Open Letters to the government (on 26 October and 9 November) detailing Israeli war crimes – and calling for a ceasefire, an end to the Israeli siege of Gaza and a halt to British arms exports to Israel.
The first Open Letter was signed by over 250 lawyers including a former head of the Criminal Bar Association and a former counsel general for Wales. The follow-up was signed by 830 lawyers, including 60 KCs.
The lawyers said that…
16 November: The repeating Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza are beyond my own comprehension. For at least 10 of the last 40 days, missiles have rained down on the most densely populated refugee camp in all of Gaza.
And it is not just the days; it is also the nights. The bombing is done in the dark, when the power is off and the only light is from the fires that burn. It is done when the internet is cut, when the journalists are shot dead to hide the crimes, the…
