Planned Palestine Action protest 'unacceptable' in wake of Manchester attack, says UK home secretary

Shabana Mahmood, the government's most senior Muslim, has called for Palestine Action supporters to 'step back'

Britain's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in Manchester. She has called a pro-Palestinian march in London on Saturday 'unacceptable' given the anti-Semitic terror atack. AFP

The decision to go ahead with a mass protest in London in support of a proscribed pro-Palestinian group on Saturday is “unacceptable”, the British home secretary has said following the terror attack on the Jewish community.

Shabana Mahmood is now in talks with the head of the UK's Metropolitan police on whether the demonstration by supporters of the outlawed Palestinian Action group should be banned.

Police resources are under strain after the killing of two Jewish men in Manchester on Thursday with synagogues now under protection as well as mosques in case of retaliation attacks.

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Three people remain in hospital after the attack in which the killer was shot dead by police marksmen. Three people have been arrested on suspicion of planning a terror attack in connection with the killings.

Ms Mahmood had appealed to the organisers to stop the march going ahead after 1,500 people had signed up to carry placards supporting Palestinian Action that breach antiterrorism laws and usually leads to arrests requiring up to six police officers.

Police arrest a Palestine Action protester in Liverpool. Reuters

“I think that that behaviour is unacceptable,” Ms Mahmood, the most senior Muslim in government, told the BBC. “What I would say to anybody who is thinking about going on a protest today or into the weekend, just take a step back for a minute. Imagine if that was you that had lost your father, on your holiest day, imagine it was you that was living in fear.”

Under the Public Order Act the home secretary and police have the power to prevent marches going ahead, yet given its restrictions on the British freedom to demonstrate it is very rarely used.

However, Ms Mahmood will on Friday hold a meeting with Mark Rowley, the Met Police Commissioner, to discuss if the protest should be banned.

“I will take my lead from the police,” she said. “They will tell me if there was an inability to respond and police the protest then there are powers which are available to me.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley urged campaigners to call off their protest because it will “likely create further tensions and some might say lacks sensitivity”.

But Defend Our Juries has again refused, saying in a statement: “Cancelling peaceful protests lets terror win. It’s more important than ever to defend our democracy, including our fundamental rights to peaceful protest and freedom of speech, and to take a stand tomorrow against killing and against oppression, and for peace and justice for all.”

On Thursday evening The National witnessed protesters outside parliament waving Palestinian flags before descending on Downing Street, where 40 arrests were later made after clashes with police.

However, given it was just a few hours after the Manchester terror attack carried out by Jihad Al-Shamie, whose parents came from Syria, Ms Mahmood said it was “fundamentally un-British on such a day with an anti-Semitic terrorist attack in our country”.

She added that it would have been better for people to “take a step back” and warned that people who broke the rules would “face the full force of the law”.

There was also a suggestion that Britain’s terrorism threat level could rise from “substantial” to “severe”, where an attack is highly likely. “The threat picture we face today is different to what it was a few years ago,” she said.

Ms Mahmood, whose parents were migrants from Pakistan, was also challenged about the increasingly toxic debate over migration into Britain, an issue that has led to a rise in support for the hard-right Reform party.

There have been calls from politicians for the heated debate over immigration to be dialled down but Ms Mahmood was appointed as home secretary in a reshuffle last month because of her hardline approach to it.

When challenged on the issue she argued that it was “entirely appropriate” that on migration it was necessary to “shape a debate about what our expectations are of people who come and make their lives here”.

But she made the point that the 35-year-old terrorist had come to Britain as a child and had been naturalised. She suggested that the threat had changed since the Israel-Gaza conflict with “more people self-radicalising” by accessing imagery online that put them on a “trajectory towards extremism” and ultimately terrorism.