Britain’s most senior police officer has accused politicians of talking “nonsense” amid criticism over his forces’ handling of the pro-Palestinian protests in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said his officers had been “absolutely ruthless” in dealing with those who “put their foot over the line of the law” during the protests.
Asked about politicians who criticised the force for “letting things go,” Sir Mark told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips it was “all nonsense” to say police were not dealing with extremism.
“People with political instincts ... might say that we’re working to the letter of the law laid down by Parliament,” he said.
“We will robustly enforce up to the line of the law with approaching 100 arrests in these events over recent weeks.”
He added: “Where anybody puts their foot over the line of the law. We’re going to be absolutely ruthless. And we have been and you’ll see many, many more arrests over the next week or so. But we can only enforce the line of the law.”
Sir Mark repeated his call for Government to consider closing gaps in the law that he claims enable extremist groups to circumvent legislation and propagate “some pretty toxic messages”.
He co-authored a review two years ago that found extremists were able to operate with “impunity” in the UK and incite hatred because of the “gaping chasm” in the UK’s legislation. He called, then, for a new legal definition of hateful extremism that would allow people to be prosecuted for it.
Sir Mark said it was up to Parliament to decide the balance between tackling extremism and maintaining freedom of speech. “I think the balance of free speech is for parliament to decide. But things that people are saying they want to enforce, we can’t. It’s up to them to decide what they want,” he said.
Police appeared to take a more proactive approach on Saturday when dealing with the in excess of 50,000 pro-Palestinian protesters who joined a march and demonstration in central London.
After they chanted “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Mohammed will return”, a slogan harking back to the slaughter of Jews in the seventh century, police said they were investigating a hate crime and posted a picture taken from a video clip of two women officers wished to speak to.
Placard accusing Israel of genocide seized
Police also seized a placard with a swastika-style emblem on it that suggested Israel was carrying out a Nazi-style genocide in Gaza.
Sir Mark said: “This is a particularly challenging time - an overlay of threats. When you’ve got state threats from Iran, you’ve got terrorism being accelerated by the events and hate crime in communities.
“For Jewish communities, it’s now about a 14-fold increase in anti-Semitism in London and for Muslim communities, it’s nearly three fold. So this is really precarious.
“In the middle of it, we’ve got these big protests and what goes on, people do find upsetting. They find it distasteful and sometimes people give an instinctive view that it must be illegal. We’re working with CPS in our ops room. We’re doing anything we can do as soon as we see them.”
