Protesters gathered outside King’s College London. On the street, a number of police vans waited.
At 2pm, the advertised start of the demo, a young man began shouting into a megaphone. “From the river to the sea,” he called out.
The chant is considered by many as a highly offensive, antisemitic call for the destruction of Israel. To these protesters, it’s a legitimate call for a free Palestine.
Many in the crowd of a couple of hundred were wearing face coverings. Few were willing to speak to us, or give us their names.
They’d gathered in spite of a call from the prime minister to students asking them not to attend planned protests on October 7, the second anniversary of the killing of around 1,200 people by Hamas.
Some I spoke to were angry about the language used by Sir Keir Starmer, who said it was “un-British” to have so little respect.
“It’s not un-British to exercise our right to freedom of expression,” one young woman said. I asked her if she condemned the Hamas killings on October 7. She declined to answer.
“Of course you have to mourn the death of people,” another young woman told me. But she added that “I don’t agree with how Keir Starmer defines ‘British'”.
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I tried asking another protester about the prime minister’s view. She replied: “We’re not going to give comment to the Zionist media.”
“We’re not antisemitic,” one young man insisted. “We hate Zionists,” he added, though.
At one point, over the noise of the protest, the angry shouts of a man could be heard.
“The war could stop today but Hamas have refused” he called out, adding that the demo “shouldn’t be allowed”.
He told me he was a member of the Jewish community and doesn’t feel safe in London at the moment.
“These people should be under arrest for incitement,” he said, gesturing at the crowd.
As the protest moved through London, more people had joined. It’s difficult to estimate numbers – our best guess was around 400 people.
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Palestinian flags waving, they filled the pavement as they made their way along the street.
It was peaceful. Was it un-British?
If that’s the view of the British government, they’ll have to find another way to stop this because simply urging people not to turn up didn’t work.
