Rowley Announced that ‘Globalise the Intifada’ is Now A Crime – That’s Why I Repeated It Twice in My Speech Today Without Any Police Interference
The attack
on Jews at a Chanukah celebration in Australia has become the pretext for a
further crackdown on civil liberties and democratic rights in Britain. Mark
Rowley, Metropolitan Police Commissioner is in the vanguard of those calling
for the suppression of the Palestine solidarity movement.
Sir Mark Rowley
It is instructive that Rowley, in his efforts to use British Jews as the Trojan horse for new police powers, has repeatedly refused to meet with anti-Zionist Jews or the Palestine Coalition whilst meeting with Zionist groups. For him, anti-racist Jews are as much a part of the enemy as Palestinians.
Written
evidence by Palestine Solidarity Campaign states that
The MPS has so far refused repeated requests
for an in-person meeting with representatives of the Jewish bloc and on at
least two occasions the police have sought to prevent them joining the march on
the grounds that, being Jewish, they were assumed to be counter demonstrators.
When people
call out the racism of the Metropolitan Police we should remember that it began
with colonial policing of the Irish, moved onto Jews and is now manifested in
its anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism.
On Sunday
at midday I shall be one of 3 Jewish speakers at a webinar Scottish PSC is
holding on the reaction to the killings in Australia. London’s racist Police
Commissioner Rowley, alongside his Manchester understudy Stephen Watson, announced that the chant ‘Globalise
the Intifada’ was now an arrestable offence. In response I penned an open
letter to Rowley.
Dear Mark
Rowley,
You issued a statement recently which said that ‘Antisemitic hate crime has surged, protests have intensified, and online abuse has grown since 2023.’ Your concern about racism is touching, even novel, given that you have turned a blind eye to it for so long within the MPS.In February 2025 you told the BBC's Today programme: "The public can have confidence in us." But that was a lie. The very police station whose racism and sexism led to the sacking of your predecessor, Cressida Dick, was the subject of a Panorama programmeUndercover in the Police and what they found confirmed that you were a liar. Racism and misogyny were everywhere.
As long as the Metropolitan
Police are led by a racist what hope is there? You have made it obviously clear
that the only racism you are interested in is ‘anti-Semitism’ – which is a form
of prejudice not racism. Attacks on Mosques and Muslims and Black people are no
concern of you. It is a form of ‘racism’ against privileged White people that
is your concern.
The
implication of your remarks above is clear. That protests against genocide have
resulted in the growth of anti-Semitism and on-line abuse. Such a sleight of
hand is indicative of nothing so much as your own dishonesty.
There is no
evidence of a growth of anti-Semitism, unless you redefine it as opposition to Zionism,
ethnic cleansing and genocide. But let us assume I am wrong and there is a growth
in anti-Semitism, why is that?
The Israeli
government and the Zionist movement have branded all opposition to the genocide
in Gaza as ‘anti-Semitism’. The Board of Deputies has done their best to
conflate Jews with Israeli war crimes. It is no wonder that some people believe
them and then turn on Jews.
No
one knows better than you the racist and sexist history of the Metropolitan
Police. From the murder
of Stephen Lawrence to the murder
and rape of Sarah Everard and the canteen culture of
Charing Cross Police, to say nothing of all the Black people you have murdered in
the line of duty (Roger Sylvester, Mark Duggan, Chris Kaba et al.).
Senior
Police officers even agreed
to the police spying on the Stephen Lawrence Defence Campaign. A fish rots from
the head down and the precondition of the Metropolitan Police reforming is the
replacement of the present leadership, yourself included.
When anti-Semitism
was a genuine form of racism in the 1930s anti-Semitism was
rife amongst the Police. Today when Jews are the moral alibi and the
pretext for support by the British ruling class for Israel then ‘anti-Semitism’
is suddenly a concern of the Police.
When I
asked Google’s AI ‘were the Metropolitan police antisemitic during the 1930s
and sympathetic to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists ’,
which was led by Sir Oswald Moseley, the results were instructive and shed a
light on your concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ now.
It is also instructive
to refer to Daniel Sonabend’s book ‘We
Fight Fascists’ about the fight of the mainly Jewish Anti-Fascist 43 Group
after 1945 and the anti-Semitism of the Metropolitan Police.
It
describes how the head of 'G' Division, Superintendent Charles Satterthwaite
shouted 'Fucking Jew bastard!' at a Jewish
anti-fascist Murry Silver as he repeatedly
beat him, whilst two of his officers held Silver against the wall. Satterthwaite was described by one member of
the 43 Group, Lennie Rolnick as a 'first class
anti-Semite who would have done well at Belsen (concentration camp)’.
Historian
Dave Renton found that anti-fascists were three times as likely to get arrested
as fascists. Sonabend asked why this was
and his answer was ‘Widespread anti-Semitism
in the Metropolitan Police force’. Nor was Satterthwaite the only officer who
made regular reference to the faith of the anti-fascist disruptors he was
arresting. Two young Group members from the East End, a hairdresser's assistant
called Vidal Sassoon and his friend Mo Levy, had a particularly nasty run-in with
the law, which Sassoon described in his autobiography.
One evening in Kilburn, we chased the fascists into a
pub and were ourselves chased by the police. They arrested three of us. It took
a long time to get to the police station which was only a few streets away. Two
policemen held one of my comrades, Mo Levy, while a sergeant pounded him, beating
him everywhere but the face, at the same time calling us 'dirty Jew bastards',
'fucking Yids who Hitler missed' and 'sons of foreign whores'.
Sonabend
writes that
Knowing they were dealing with an institutionally
anti Semitic organisation, the 43 Group's leadership were keen not to provoke
the police. In fact, they went out of their way to be cooperative.’
Have the Police changed? Yes in the sense they are no longer anti-Semitic,
because the Jews are no longer on the left nor are they working class. Note
that Sonabend describes the Met as ‘institutionally
anti-Semitic’ just as Black people in the 1980s and 1990s were to describe
the Met as institutionally racist.
Jews have changed and the focus of
the Met’s racism has changed but that is all. The Metropolitan Police have
changed the target of their racism but they are still the same old racists.
Today support for Israel and Zionism is
a political rationale for their Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism. Israel is the most anti-Muslim
country in the world and has formed an effective alliance with anti-Muslim
racists such as Tommy Robinson who was an Israeli
government guest as well as individuals such as the Dutch fascist, Geert Wilders.
In your statement Sir Mark you said
that ‘Our thoughts are with those who
lost their lives, their families and those injured,’ referring to Jewish victims of the Australian attack. Over 100,000 have been killed and hundreds
of thousands injured in Gaza. Children
have been starved
to death . Yet you haven’t even acknowledged the death
and destruction in Gaza. Your thoughts
are with Australian Jews but not Palestinian children. What other explanation for this is there
other than yours and Watson’s racism. Palestinian lives don’t matter because
they are an indigenous people, the victims of western colonialism.
In your pathetic statement
you say of Jewish people that
Jewish
children attend schools behind fences, guarded by security and routine police patrols.
No community should have to live like this. That must change.’
Really? This is nonsense. It is in your interest to
pretend that Jews are under siege. Indeed I would go so far as saying that you
would like this to be the case so that you can justify increased repression.
You say ‘Current laws are inadequate’. No they are far too repressive already and if
you have your way we will be in a police state where people like you dictate
the political agenda. And speaking of
dictating the political agenda you have all but outlawed chants
such as “globalise the intifada”. Rest assured that we will not allow you to
dictate what we are allowed to say and not say. You are paid to implement the
law not to make the law.
We refuse to be stampeded into a
police state by those who use Jews as the pretext for abolishing freedom of
speech. When the Police decide what we are allowed to say and not say then we
are already on the road to dictatorship.
That is why today at a demonstration
in Hove outside the offices of Vile Kyle MP, I repeated the slogan ‘Globalise the Intifada’ to make it clear
that we, not you, will decide what we say.
The Intifada is an Uprising against an Illegal Occupation. It has
nothing to do with British Jews, much as you would like to lay the blame for Israel’s
genocide on Jews.
It is time to move on Mark Rowley.
You belong in a museum. As long as you are head of the Metropolitan Police we
can expect a continuation of the anti-Muslim and anti-Black racism that is the
successor to the police anti-Semitism of yesterday.
Tony Greenstein