The United Kingdom‘s Metropolitan Police has said a pro-Palestine protest planned in central London this weekend following an attack on a synagogue in Manchester should not go ahead, raising concerns over the allocation of police resources at a volatile time for the British capital’s communities.
Protest group Defend Our Juries plans to hold a demonstration on Saturday in Trafalgar Square. The call from police, seemingly connecting the attack and peaceful protests to stop Israel’s genocidal war is raising questions and concerns.
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In a statement published on X on Friday, the Met said: “The horrific terrorist attack that took place in Manchester yesterday will have caused significant fear and concern in communities across the UK, including here in London.
“Yet at a time when we want to be deploying every available officer to ensure the safety of those communities, we are instead having to plan for a gathering of more than 1,000 people in Trafalgar Square on Saturday in support of a terrorist organisation.
“By choosing to encourage mass law-breaking on this scale, Defend Our Juries are drawing resources away from the communities of London at a time when they are needed most.
“We urge them to do the responsible thing and delay or cancel their plans.”
The Metropolitan Police also wrote to the group overnight, raising concerns about the amount of police resources the protest would divert at a time when “visible reassurance and protective security” is needed in communities across London.
But Defend Our Juries, which has led demonstrations in support of proscribed group Palestine Action, said it planned to go ahead with the march.
The group also responded to the Met’s post on X: “Don’t arrest us then… We are peacefully protesting against UK complicity in genocide. Deal with actual terrorism.”
Don’t arrest us then 🤷
We are causing no obstruction.
We are committing no act of violence.
We are making no noise.
We are breaching no peace.
We are using nonviolent language.
We are peacefully protesting against UK complicity in genocide.Deal with actual terrorism. https://t.co/rQ705NDiPO
— Defend Our Juries (@DefendourJuries) October 3, 2025
The planned protest is due to take place two days after police shot dead a man they said was responsible for deadly car ramming and stabbing attacks in which two victims from the Jewish community were killed close to a synagogue in Manchester, in northwest England.
British police say one of the two victims may have been killed by a bullet fired by a police officer.
Greater Manchester Police chief Stephen Watson said on Friday that a forensic examination has provisionally determined that the victim had “a wound consistent with a gunshot injury”. He said the attacker did not have a gun and that the only shots fired were by police.
The Metropolitan Police’s statement urging Defend Our Juries to call off their protest echoed earlier statements made by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
“As far as I am concerned, I would have wanted to see people in this country step back from protesting for at least a few days, just to give the Jewish community here a chance to process what has happened and to begin the grieving process as well,” Mahmood told media company GB News.
“I am very disappointed that some of the organisers haven’t heeded the call to step back.
“I would still call on people to show some love and some solidarity to the families of those who have been murdered and to our Jewish community.”
Mahmood also said she was “very disappointed” by protests that took place on Thursday night in the wake of the attack.
“I think that behaviour is fundamentally un-British. I think it’s dishonourable.”
Some 40 people were arrested in the course of a large protest outside Downing Street, six of whom were arrested for assaults on police officers, according to the Met.
Chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said many people in the Jewish community “and well beyond it” wonder why marches in support of Palestine Action are allowed to take place.
Mirvis claimed to the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Some of them contain outright anti-Semitism, outright support for Hamas … You cannot separate the words on our streets, the actions of people in this way, and what inevitably results, which was yesterday’s terrorist attack.
“The two are directly linked and therefore we call on the Government yet again, we’ve been doing so continuously, and yet again we say get a grip on these demonstrations, they are dangerous,” he claimed.
However, hundreds of thousands of people, including many Jews, in the UK have peacefully protested weekly against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza for the last two years. There is no evidence of any violent intent or support for Hamas.
In those two years of intense Israeli bombardment, and now a ground invasion of Gaza City – the destroyed enclave’s largest urban centre – more than 66,000 people have been killed and 168,346 wounded.
In August, more than 300 leading British Jewish figures, including Jenny Manson, chairperson of Jewish Voice for Labour, signed a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper denouncing the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation in July under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The letter also called for urgent government action against Israel over its conduct of the war in the besieged and bombarded Gaza Strip and over escalating violence engulfing the occupied West Bank.
The series of largely peaceful rallies in support of Palestine Action have been met by a heavy-handed police response and mass arrests.
