Morality police ask: please postpone march for women out of respect for holy day
Armistice means ceasefire, you irony-immune muppets
The UK’s morality police have urged protesters planning to march on behalf of oppressed women in London this weekend to reconsider, out of respect of a weekend-long religious festival. This comes as our Supreme Leader has called the planned march “provocative” and “disrespectful” and a prominent member of the UK’s ruling council said that the planned march would “desecrate” the holy day and would risk “giving offence to millions of decent British people.”
Does that sound a bit weird? It is. But while parts of it are misleading, all of it, I would argue, is true.
Let me rewrite it for complete accuracy:
The Metropolitan Police in London has urged protesters planning to march on behalf of oppressed Palestinian women, men and children in London this weekend to reconsider, out of respect of a weekend-long festival of Armistice Remembrance. This comes as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called the planned march “provocative” and “disrespectful” and a prominent member of his Cabinet said that the planned march would “desecrate” Armistice Day and would risk “giving offence to millions of decent British people.”
If the second version seems less outrageous, it’s only because the attack on our liberties and the assertion of a kind of cultural morality has been going on so long that we can’t see the overreach of power when it is right in front of us.
Why the Met asking this is not okay
But the police asking for an urgent protest to be postponed is not just normal democracy things. It is intended to discourage those who are on the fence about attending from doing so. It is intended to sow worry and fear, doubt about legality, when really it has nothing to do with legality and everything to do with privileging the feelings of a particular group and the views of a conservative government.
It is cowardice at best and bullying at worst. Cowardice because if, as I suspect, senior police know that banning a peaceful march on any day is a violation of free speech and basic rights, then they should come out and say so, admitting that the Government is pressuring them to do so, unlawfully. And if senior cops are actually wishing they could ban protests (on this or any weekend), then sowing doubt and fear is bullying the public into staying silent while a genocide happens.
Let’s pretend the Met has not been widely criticised for brutality, racism and sexism. Let’s cut them some slack and assume they are just trying to do their jobs. They are clearly facing huge pressure from the UK’s right wing government to criminalise pro-Palestinian speech.
My sympathies. Thoughts and, indeed, prayers. But a powerful police force trying to discourage citizens from doing anything not prohibited by law is just inappropriate. The Met is not my real Dad and it cannot tell me what to do beyond issues of law and order. In the same way the police cannot urge you to vote for a certain party or arrest you for kissing someone else’s boyfriend, however immoral they may feel your actions are, so they should not ask you to avoid exercising a legal right. The fact that the right in question is the right to free speech is particularly worrying1.
Because without the right to express unpopular or contra-government speech, any claims to being a ‘free’ (or even democratic) society are laughable. And wasn’t that what we say those we remember this coming weekend were fighting for?
Why the planned march is okay
Even so, is it really necessary, some have asked, to have a march when such a large proportion of the UK poppylation (see what I did there) sees the Remembrance weekend as sacred? We have sympathy for the people of Gaza and the West Bank, they say, but Armistice Day (11 November) is too important to have a march about politics detract and distract from it.
Our answer to this must be that, even if the march for Palestine (which is calling for an end to the Occupation and for a ceasefire to stop the bombing of Gaza) was at odds with the spirit of Armistice Day, what is happening to Palestine right now should trump any sensitivities around this tradition.
Here’s one reason why:
At time of writing, the number of Palestinians Israel has killed has reached 10,022. Over ten thousand human beings, with the same hopes and feelings as you or me, have been killed in a rolling revenge attack that has seen more bombs dropped by Israel in a few weeks than the USA dropped over an entire year in its Afghanistan campaign2. The killing is happening right now, as I write, right now as you read. Children are writing their name son their hands so their bodies can be identified. Mothers are giving birth in hospitals without power or sanitary resources, and those hospitals are being bombed.
Saturday’s planned march is asking for a ceasefire. And end to the killing. What tradition could be more important than this? If faced with a choice of remembering the dead or trying to prevent further deaths, surely the latter trumps the former.
But this is not a choice between protest and Remembrance. That dichotomy is false — propaganda by a Government that wants its citizens to believe that to support Palestine or even to want Palestinians to stop dying is somehow disloyal to Britain. But it is not. And even in purely practical terms, supporting the protest march is not in conflict with honouring the Armistice.
Organisers of the march have agreed to keep the demonstration away from the Cenotaph and official Armistice events happening on Saturday. The majority of Remembrance events are, of course, happening on Remembrance Sunday, a day after the march. So even if ‘breakaway groups’ might cause unrest away from the main march (all of the previous weeks’ marches having been more peaceful than gatherings of comparable size), there is no reason to presume a threat to the day most Britons set aside to remember the sacrifice of their troops.
Why objecting to a march on this day is stupid
The most maddening thing about all of the doublespeak around this issue is how stupid it is. Armistice means ceasefire. The reason we venerate 11/11/11 is because that was when the guns stopped. The celebration of Armistice was, before war-hawks co-opted it as a celebration of military might, a time to mourn the dead and pray for peace. To hope for a world where war would cease to claim the lives of any people.
Our leaders would like us to forget this. To mourn only certain lives and hope for a world where only certain types of people die by bullet and bomb.
As a follower of Christ I can’t deny that the question of violence in the cause of justice is complicated. But I can say with absolute confidence that there is nothing about calling for a ceasefire now that is at odds with following Christ. And there is nothing more fitting for Armistice Day than calling for Armistice now in the Holy Land.
What is disrespectful, what is a desecration, is the cynical deployment of a nation’s honouring of military sacrifice to silence the freedom for which that sacrifice was often made. What is unconscionable is trying to demonise those calling for an end to killing on a day we commemorate that very blessing.
I can’t predict with certainty whether the march this Saturday will be peaceful as the previous ones have been, but I know that if I were Palestinian, I would want it to go ahead. It would be the least I would ask.
The end bit
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There are limits, of course. Causing public disorder, hate speech, etc, are things the police are entitled to crack down on, to protect people from harm. And, while the current government continues to push the UK towards its own special brand of fascism, the right to express political opinions the government dislikes is still, for the moment, enshrined in our law.
In the first six days of what western media and too many churches are still calling a ‘war’ (as if the civilian population being killed can fight back against missiles and jets), Israel admitted to dropping 6,000 bombs on Gaza, the US having dropped about 7,500 on Afghanistan in 2019. Israel has been bombing the much smaller and more densely populated Gaza strip for over a month now.
Heeey you’re at the end. Hi. I tried writing this one about three times but it never quite felt right. Still doesn’t, honestly, but I wanted to say something before people made up their minds based on spurious nonsense from the Tories (and Labour probably). I hope you are doing okay and not feeling too alone. Thank you to the person last week who told me these newsletters made them feel less alone (and thank you also for your kind gift). We aren’t alone. There are many people wanting an end to the bloodshed and injustice. I hope more and more of us have the courage to speak out. J
Thanks J. Tis indeed a victory for our democracy that the Met Police have now said that banning this peace march is beyond their remit. No doubt they will come under increasing pressure from an increasingly right-wing government and some 'newspapers' who are rabidly right-wing. I say all this as a proud supporter of Poppy Day/Remembrance Sunday. After all, my grandpa was gassed in the trenches, my wife's Great Uncle was killed in the little-known Macedonian campaign in WW1. We should not forget that many veterans of these conflicts opposed the subsequent erection of war memorials and threw away their war medals, because they knew the gruesome reality of war.
Hi. Interesting comments. Thanks. However, I've been astonished to hear that there has been trouble at some pro Palestinian demonstrations. In Edinburgh, an elderly poppy seller was punched and kicked as the demonstration got underway at Waverly Station. Can you say why this has happened? What issue do the demonstrators have with the poppy appeal?
If any demonstrations that are planned for remembrance day are peaceful and not close to where the remembrance events are, then I don't see an issue. But surely if there's a threat of disorder and violence then they will need to be moved, or stopped. I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Thanks.