Lin Webb

Police hired a private bus to help cart away scores of peaceful protesters defying the ban on Palestine Action outside the US embassy in London on Saturday. Around 400 people – many of them elderly – held signs expressing support for the proscribed group at the rally, which aimed to draw attention to Donald Trump’s alleged role in the ban. Despite bringing dozens of police vans to the protest, officers also used a privately hired vehicle from Kent-based bus operator GoBus to transport arrestees. “There were so many people defying the ban they had to bring in a bus to take more people to the police station – something we've never seen before,” a spokesperson for protest organisers Defend Our Juries said. Some protesters sang the nursery rhyme the Wheels on the Bus as police carried people into the vehicle. The Metropolitan police said Saturday evening that at least 139 people had been arrested and arrests were still ongoing. The DOJ spokesperson said that, as a result of Saturday’s demonstration, the total number of people arrested for supporting Palestine Action since July 2025 has exceeded 4,000. One woman was arrested Saturday for holding a placard repeating the words of writer Sarah Helm, the wife of national security advisor Jonathan Powell. Helm wrote, “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action” in a post on X on 15 October. Two days later, the Met said the post “did not meet the criminal threshold” – and yet on Saturday its officers arrested a protester for using the same phrase, except that the word “authors” had been substituted for “retirees”. Police made no arrests at a simultaneous protest outside the US consulate in Edinburgh. The DOJ spokesperson said these inconsistencies in the policing of the two protests made a “mockery” of the ban: “You can be arrested for defying it in England but not Scotland.” “How can Andy Burnham possibly justify arrests today for holding up words which, just weeks ago, were deemed to be below the criminal threshold when expressed by the wife of his own national security advisor?” the group added in a statement. “This makes a further mockery of the proscription, which becomes more impossible to sustain by the day.” (Read the full article at novaramedia.com.)