Pro-Palestine March

Pro-Palestine March

 

Last weekend (4^th and 5^th November) I caught  a snatch of an interview on BBC Radio 4 with one of  the organisers of the Pro-Palestine march in London on the coming weekend.  The organiser sounded balanced and rational (about the pros and cons of holding the march: not the pros and cons of the Arab-Israeli conflict – that wasn’t the topic).  The route had been agreed perfectly amicably with the police, who seemed happy with it, it didn’t go anywhere near the Cenotaph and in any case the Remembrance Proceedings at the Cenotaph would be over, as the march wasn‘t scheduled to start until the afternoon.

The organiser argued that there was therefore no justification for the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to claim that the march was “provocative and disrespectful.”  (I think those were the words, but I didn’t write them down and my memory isn’t what it was.)

Since then a veritable phalanx of Troy bigwigs has joined the chorus of indignation that the UK’s annual holy moment should be disrupted by such a disreputable activity.

Happily the Metropolitan Police Commissioner agrees with the organiser and has so far refused to ban the march.  Good for him.

However, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that all this publicity about the possibility of disruption and vandalism will actually promote it. If the perpetrators of disorder hadn’t already thought of it I’m sure they will already be thinking of means by which they can daub some slogan on the Cenotaph. (It shouldn’t take too many policemen to guard against that.  But what else might imaginative minds come up with?)

I suspect that the Tories will not be disappointed if the ”disrespectful” behaviour the claim to abhor actually occurs.

 

*At the time of the broadcast I assumed that the  march was to be on Sunday12th, the same day as the National Remembrance Service, around the Cenotaph with the National  Two Minutes’ Silence at 11am.  It  appears that the march is to be on the  Saturday 11^th which the British Legion have now adopted as an additional commemoration of the Armistice.

 

In my view the British Legion have got it right, and we should have the ”Official” Act of Remembrance on the actual Armistice Day, as it is in France.  However, I think two are unnecessary.  We should choose one and stick with it.

 Correction:  the call for Armistice Day itself to by observed as well as Remembrance Sunday comes not from the British Legion, but from the Western Front Association, which seek to recognise the particular horrors of the sacrifices in the trenches in the First World War.