Allowing a pro-Palestinian march to go ahead on Armistice Day will increase the risk of a terror attack, an official watchdog warned on Monday as pressure on the Met to ban the protest intensified.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said that Islamists had used a previous Remembrance Day protest as a “recruiting method” and to “de-legitimise soldiers” in conduct which was later followed by the 2013 murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
He added that the potential presence of supporters of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir – whose members have led inflammatory chants at earlier protests since the murderous Hamas attack on Israel triggered Israeli retaliation in Gaza – would also “raise a risk of serious disorder”.
Mr Hall said there was also the possibility of an “extreme Right-wing terrorist backlash” in a further stark warning about the dangers that allowing Saturday’s planned march to go ahead.
His comments came as Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley prepared to decide whether to ask Home Secretary Suella Braverman to ban Saturday’s planned march by the pro-Palestinian protesters in response to fears that it could prompt violence or be exploited by some to tarnish the Armistice Day commemorations.
Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to take part if the march goes ahead on a day in which hundreds of veterans will gather at the Cenotaph on Whitehall to lay wreaths in commemoration of Britain’s war dead and take part in the traditional nationwide two-minute silence.
Ms Braverman has already warned that anyone who damages the Cenotaph should be jailed “faster than their feet can hit the ground” and Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden has urged the Met, to think “very carefully” about whether the march could “spill over” into violence and send a hostile message to Jewish people.
The Met Commissioner, who under legislation is responsible for deciding whether to request that the Home Secretary impose a ban on the march, will decide over the coming days whether the event can take place safely and whether conditions, such as routing it away from the Cenotaph and preventing any clash of timing, would be sufficient to ensure public safety.
In his remarks, Mr Hall, whose job as independent reviewer involves examining the operation of terrorism legislation and whether it is fit to combat emerging threats, said that Scotland Yard was facing a “difficult” decision and that he saw “no evidence that the organisers of the march are trying to target Remembrance Day or the weekend.”
He said that as a result “my instinct must be that you should always err on the side of freedom of expression” by allowing the march to go ahead, but that doing so would bring a terror risk.
“There are some terrorism concerns,” Mr Hall told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “The first is that thinking back to 2010, al-Muhajiroun, which is a really dangerous terrorist organisation, saw it as a recruiting method to burn poppies outside the Royal Albert Hall on 11 November. They obviously thought that was a successful way of de-legitimising soldiers .. and of course in 2013 there was the murder of Lee Rigby. On the other hand there is also the possibility of an extreme Right-wing terrorist backlash.
“So if the march is going to go ahead, one would hope it’s going to be fairly well controlled whether that’s by making a really strong break in terms of time and starting it much later, perhaps than was intended, and making sure that it’s better policed than the earlier ones, but I can see the possibility of disorder from a terrorist perspective.”
The continuing controversy over Saturday’s planned march follows concern over anti-semitic and other inflammatory conduct at previous protests, including chants of “jihad” and “from the river to the sea”, since the murderous attack by Hamas on Israel in October led to Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza.
Dozens of arrests have been made since, including 29 arrests made after a large protest on Saturday policed by 1,300 officers. The suspects included five subsequently with alleged offences under the Public Order Act and another charged with a suspected breach of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act.
The Met, which has made earlier arrests over suspected terrorist offences at pro-Palestinian protests in London, said it was also investigating “intelligence that a pamphlet purported to support Hamas” had been on sale during Saturday’s march.
