Yesterday marked one of the most shameful days in the history of the Metropolitan Police as they arrested peaceful protesters including a blind man in a wheelchair, an 81-year-old woman with Parkinson’s, a former British army officer, and a bunch of, um, Quakers. All of them were protesting against two things: the UK’s ongoing participation in the Gaza genocide and the proscription of Palestine Action. All of them were arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Imagine being the police officer whose job it was to wheel this man away. You can see the shame in his face as he lowers his head. These officers must know history is not going to judge them kindly, but they must also know just following orders is not okay. If I was a police officer, I would not have made those arrests, even if it cost me my job. Doing the right thing is infinitely more important than just following orders.
Yesterday police made twice the number of counter-terrorism arrests than they did in all of 2023 and one-fifth of those arrested were over 70. One police officer was wearing a hat that suggested he came from a Welsh police force. Remember this when police say they can’t send any officers out after you’ve been burgled. Police are dealing with the real criminals now, and the real criminals include quakers. Yes, quakers were arrested.
But they weren’t arrested for showing blank pieces of paper. They were arrested after they wrote things on them.
Were they? That wasn’t clear to me. It sounded like they were arrested for planning to maybe write something.
From the article:
So I don’t know why you would think they were arrested for this.
So it’s unclear. Which is what I said.
You didn’t seem to think it was unclear when you wrote:
The only reason you had for saying that people in the UK were arrested for showing blank pieces of paper was a statement that said it was “unclear if anyone had been.”
So just to make this very clear, you’ve turned “It is unclear that X” into “X evidently happened”, and when I said that it didn’t you’ve said that you said it was “unclear.”
There have been plenty of reports of people being arrested for displaying the slogan “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action,” and no reports of people being arrested for holding blank pieces of paper, so it’s actually quite clear what happened - the random internet guy got a bee in his bonnet about the factual description of people making sure they made it to the demonstration in order to be arrested en masse (rather than in a trickle) and decided to use weasel words to make it sound like people got arrested for something ridiculous, and you took the bait.
To be clear I misunderstood when I made my initial comment. But from the article it’s not clear. I’m just asking if you know for a fact it didn’t happen and it sounds like you don’t know any more than the author does.
OK fair enough.
I’d say I know enough to dismiss what the commentator said as idle speculation in aid of a narrative. We can’t categorically rule it out, but I would expect to actually have been reported on, not merely speculated upon, had it actually happened.
During the anti-monarchy protests, when Charlie got his hat on, there was.
If you’re referring to Paul Powlesland, he was told he’d be arrested if he wrote a certain slogan on it; he wasn’t arrested.