How Northern Ireland's dark policing history looms over Palestine Action protests

 

In Derry, people are comparing the crackdowns on communities standing in solidarity with outlawed group with the policing during the Troubles

In Derry, Northern Ireland, a small group of pensioners gather with cardboard signs in the shadow of the town hall. The handwritten placards read: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”.

In July, the UK's Labour government banned the direct action group under terrorism legislation. Since then, more than 2,000 people have been arrested for displaying support for the organisation. 

The government moved to proscribe Palestine Action days after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton air base and damaged two aircraft.

Protests in London’s Parliament Square have seen hundreds holding identical signs being hauled away by lines of police – some of them drawn from Northern Ireland’s own force.

Here in Derry, officers hover at a distance and then leave. The protesters, many of them frail, leaning on walking sticks or in wheelchairs, have gathered here every Saturday to display the signs since the ban came into force.

Derry was the epicentre of the Troubles – the 30-year conflict between Republican and Unionist groups over who should control Northern Ireland – and the birthplace of the nation's civil rights movement.

Many of the people assembled at the city's Guildhall on Saturday had marched through Derry’s streets in the 1970s against the British government, which discriminated politically and economically against Catholic communities.   (more...)

How Northern Ireland's dark policing history looms over Palestine Action protests