Mass arrests at Parliament Square — is change finally arriving?
by Tabitha Troughton, reposted from Freedom News
August 2025
Up through Westminster tube station, onto the bustling, sun-drenched street, and a smell of stale fat, over to the golden facade of the House of Commons, propped up in one corner by scaffolding. Inside, the UK government continues to support and arm a genocide.
Outside, on Parliament Square, hundreds of people are peacefully preparing to be arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Following the call from Defend Our Juries, they are sitting with placards reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”—the anti-genocide direct action group recently proscribed in the UK as “terrorists”, alongside the “Maniacs Murder Cult”.
During the 2010 student protests, the Metropolitan police, charging and truncheoning unarmed students in the same square, were protected by balaclavas, full body armour and general indifference. This time, in shirt sleeves, they looked embarrassed to be there. “They were lovely, actually” said one 84 year old, after he’d been released on bail.
Even the brief outbursts of police violence looked more like panic. Since among those being arrested were nurses, doctors, Quakers, an 81 year old with Parkinsons, former Commando regiment colonel Chris Romberg and a blind person in a wheel chair, it was hardly surprising.
But as the sun moved on, the grim, grey business of dragging off protestor after protestor continued. It was eerie, it was polite, it was inhuman in its methodical absurdity. “Shame on you” chanted supporters at the police, while behind them the centre of shame, Parliament, pulsed out a deathly cold over the baking heat of the grass. Why had business there been allowed to go on as usual? Why had those MPs who also oppose this genocide not locked on in the chamber and refused to leave?
These and other questions remain. “Why did the West collectively destroy the entire system of international law for a self-avowed supremacist regime in Israel?”, people were asking on social media. Answers ranged from blackmail to geo-political self-interest, from personal greed to the fact that Western governments are trying to preserve their tattered shreds of impunity after centuries of their own colonial horrors. “There will be many reasons given, of which none will be valid, naturally” one comment concluded.
Meanwhile, the UK government had been issuing strongly worded statements, which do nothing, and fool no-one. “Who do you serve?” supporters were chanting, as the police shame-facedly removed a poet, or dragged a woman from the statue of suffragette Millicent Fawcett, with its inconvenient inscription of “Courage Calls To Courage Everywhere.”
Ella Baron
The action, which had started at one o’clock, was supposed to last an hour. By two o’clock, police had been unable to arrest more than a tenth of the protestors; some then walked away, to grateful cheers.
But hundreds remained sitting, with arrests under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act continuing until the evening.
Stroud local Val is arrested for peaceful protest
Monika Petrasova
Last week, in a partial victory for sense and civil rights, and despite hints from the Home Secretary of secret but “disturbing” information, Palestine Action were allowed a judicial review, to be heard in the High Court in November.
Eventually, all 521 people arrested during this “Lift the ban” action, including someone arrested for holding a sign saying “I don’t support Palestine Inaction” would be released without charge.
Josh Halliday
Most seem to have been bailed on the condition that they never attend another Palestine Action protest again; some of the 200 previous arrestees, like Audrey White, have been placed under virtual house arrest.
Incoherent, a chilling attempt to suppress free speech and peaceful protest, and potentially illegal, the government’s flailing attempts have, at least, focussed attention back onto the fact that the vast majority of the country continue to oppose them. Down the road, hundreds of thousands of people were marching again through London, against the continuing genocide, against the deliberate starvation of Gaza, against the complicity of the UK government: for Palestine.
The immeasurably shameful lack of UK media coverage for these huge, peaceful London marches, or the international marches, or the workers blockading weapons shipments, or the resistance in Israel itself, continues, even as Germany suspends arms shipments over the ruins of Gaza, and former heads of Shin Bet, Mossad and the IDF call on the Israeli government to stop.
Maha Hussaini
In response, the Israeli government murdered the entire Al Jazeera Gaza press team.
Back in Parliament Square, by mid-afternoon, protestors were still sitting silently, battered by the sun, waiting to be arrested.
Something is turning, people around the square were saying. Something is changing.
Everyone knows it is too late: it has always been too late, and there will eventually be a reckoning, which will be too late, also.
But if anything can be salvaged, it’s the knowledge that the people, united, have always been against this.
Ben Quinn
They are showing no signs of backing down; rather, they are demonstrating, boycotting, marching, insisting, with increasing bravery and determination. These are no fragments with which to shore up the devastated ruins. This is the reality to build on.
Tabitha Troughton is a writer and journalist, specialising in politics & democracy and has written for Byline Times, the Constitution Society and The Independent.
This article is cross posted from a piece Tabitha wrote on Freedomnews
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