NONE of us are free until the Palestinians are free. Nelson Mandela’s celebrated statement of solidarity has never been more apposite.
Indeed, the longer the Palestinians remain unfree the greater the pressure on our freedoms here in Britain.
The foreign policy of British imperialism and the clampdown on our own liberties are united in the political/police response to the pro-Palestine march in London last Saturday.
There can be little doubt that the mass arrests, the seizing of chief steward Chris Nineham by the police, the charging of both him and Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal for breaching police orders, which they both contest, and the hauling in for questioning of left MPs Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell clearly represents a turning point towards repression.
It is a turning point orchestrated from the very top. None of these events, starting with the banning of the march from approaching the BBC’s headquarters, could have occurred without government direction.
It is rooted in the fact of the immense Palestine solidarity movement which has developed over the last 15 months, and the reality that it speaks for the great majority of the British people on this issue.
There has been no shortage of pro-Israel propaganda from the right, the far right and the liberal-social democratic centre.
All of it has wilted in the face of the reality of the live-streamed genocide in Gaza, the shattered bodies, the weeping parents, the bombarded tent cities, the burnt-out hospitals, the wasteland of destruction.
The sustained movement against Israel’s warmongering and apartheid racism strategically threatens the Establishment.
By pressing the government to break with Israel, it threatens the all-important alliance with Washington, now in Donald Trump’s hands.
Nothing is more important to Keir Starmer. If there is a hill he would die on, it is the Nato-Israel-Trident triad, each of them manifestations of the imperialist “special relationship.”
The potency of the movement was established in the July election, when four independent candidates were elected on an explicitly pro-Gaza platform.
Others came close, and leading Labour alumni like Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood are feeling the heat. Even Starmer’s position is shaky in his own Camden constituency.
Thus this government is driven to go where the previous one baulked, costing then-home secretary Suella Braverman her job, and seek to drive the movement off the streets as far as possible.
It has enlisted those leading elements within the Jewish community with an overweening commitment to Israel’s ambitions to provide a cover for their crackdown. The pretexts offered from protecting the BBC from protest are so thin as to warrant little further consideration.
We can be sure that Saturday’s measures will only be the start if they are left without serious challenge. Defending the right to peacefully protest without police interference is clearly the starting point.
Oppressive legislation introduced by the Tories but kept on the statute book by Labour should be repealed.
But the left needs to go far deeper. This menacing episode lays bare the connection between imperialism and state repression.
There can be no lasting guarantee of any of our rights at home while the British state sits near the heart of the global power structures of imperialist power.
So any serious defence of civil liberties cannot ignore British government support for Israel, its own armed interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the consequences of the prolonged and misbegotten “war on terror.”
The defence of freedom can only be partial without the defeat of imperialism. Nelson Mandela understood that truth, and the day that the Palestinians are free will be a victory for our own liberties too.
