Shabana Mahmood said that while there is a ‘fundamental freedom’ to protest in Britain, some protests are leaving religious communities feeling ‘unsafe, intimidated and scared’
Police forces will be granted new powers to stop protestors repeatedly holding demonstrations in the same site and to arrest those who breach the conditions.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced the clamp down after almost 500 people were arrested at a pro-Palestine march in London over the weekend.
The Cabinet minister said that while the right to protest is a “fundamental freedom” in Britain, some protests are leaving religious communities feeling “unsafe, intimidated and scared”.
“This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days,” she said.
READ MORE: Palestine protests RECAP: Arrests made as marches go ahead after Manchester horror
It comes after Ms Mahmood on Friday branded pro-Palestine protesters “un-British” for demonstrating hours after two people were killed in an attack on a synagogue in Manchester .
On Saturday, nearly 500 people were arrested in central London at protests mostly in support of Palestine Action, which the Government has controversially proscribed as a terror group.
Speaking about the protests on Friday, the UK’s chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, said: “Some of them contain outright antisemitism, outright support for Hamas. Not every single person, however there is so much of this, which certainly is dangerous to many within our society….
“You cannot separate the words on our streets, the actions of people in this way and what inevitably results … The two are directly linked and therefore we call on the government yet again to get a grip on these demonstrations as they are dangerous.”
But Zoe Cohen, a member of Defend Our Juries, which organised Saturday’s protest, said as a Jewish person she is “grieving after the appalling synagogue attack” but also “grieving for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been murdered, displaced and starved in Gaza”.
Under the Government’s latest protest clampdown, police forces will be granted new powers to put conditions on repeat protests.
It will mean officers will have the power to instruct organisers to hold their protest somewhere else if a demonstration has taken place at the same site for weeks on end and has caused “repeated disorder”, the Home Office said. Anyone who breaches the conditions will risk arrest and prosecution.
Changes will be made to the Public Order Act 1986 to explicitly allow the police to take account of the cumulative impact of frequent protests on local areas. The new powers will be brought forward as soon as possible.
Ms Mahmood said: “The right to protest is a fundamental freedom in our country. However, this freedom must be balanced with the freedom of their neighbours to live their lives without fear.
“Large, repeated protests can leave sections of our country, particularly religious communities, feeling unsafe, intimidated and scared to leave their homes.
“This has been particularly evident in relation to the considerable fear within the Jewish community, which has been expressed to me on many occasions in these recent difficult days.
“These changes mark an important step in ensuring we protect the right to protest while ensuring all feel safe in this country.”
The Home Secretary will also review existing legislation to ensure that powers are sufficient and being consistently applied. This will include powers to ban protests outright, and will also include provisions in the Crime and Policing Bill, which is currently going through Parliament.
Following the terrorist attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary Steve Reed has written to local authorities encouraging them to use their existing resources and powers to ensure Jewish communities are protected in the coming days and weeks, including limiting protest activity as much as possible.
All police forces in England and Wales are working with the Community Security Trust to reassure and offer additional support to the 538 different synagogues and Jewish community sites across the country.
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