British police will be given powers to restrict repeat protests in the same place, the UK government said on Sunday after the latest pro-Palestinian demonstration went ahead despite requests to cancel it in the wake of a deadly attack at a synagogue.
The new powers will allow senior police officers to consider the cumulative impact of previous protests on a local community, the home secretary Shabana Mahmood said.
“The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country,” Mahmood said. “However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.”
Mahmood is also due to review the police’s existing powers to ensure they are sufficient and consistently applied, including powers to ban protests outright.
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“Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes,” Mahmood said.
“This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.”
Two people were killed in Manchester on Thursday on Yom Kippur, the holiest day for Jews, and police shot dead the assailant, a British man of Syrian descent who officials said may have been inspired by extremist Islamist ideology.
On Saturday, police arrested almost 500 people in central London in a latest protest in support of Palestine Action, a group that was banned in July after members broke into an airbase and damaged military planes.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer had urged the protest’s organisers to call it off out of respect for the grief of British Jews. - Reuters
