I spoke out for Palestine – then came the police interrogation

The letter from the police arrived when I was out. 

It was early March and I happened to be at a meeting of actors and artists to discuss what more we could do together to protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza. I came out of the meeting to multiple missed calls. 

My wife had opened the letter and the start of a months-long terrifying ordeal for my family began. 

Six weeks earlier, on January 18, I had spoken at a Palestine Solidarity protest. It was the day before the temporary ceasefire came into effect, and two days before Trump’s inauguration. 

From the moment I left Westminster station I encountered police being more heavy-handed than I had ever seen at a peaceful protest in the UK, reminding me of my experiences under Egypt’s military dictatorship. 

But I had no idea I would eventually be summoned to an interview under caution by the police. 

The police had not allowed our march to go ahead as planned, and placed a series of complicated and confusing restrictions on the protest, relying on new protest laws some of which have since been ruled illegal in the Supreme Court. 

But as we reached Trafalgar Square that day, carrying flowers, to protest against these restrictions, and how we felt they targeted the Palestine Solidarity movement, we were confronted by a line of police officers and told to ‘filter through’. 

Despite peacefully complying, some arrests followed on the day, and I was later sent a letter summoning me to an interview under caution by the police.

Upon reading the letter, my immediate reaction was outrage, and sadness. It was painful to feel that this might be the kind of country Britain was becoming. 

Not only had I done nothing wrong, I believe I was trying to stop a genocide. Amongst those summoned for interrogation alongside me was Stephen Kapos, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. 

The absurdity in this apparent abuse of police power was so clear to me so I became determined to turn what felt like an attempt to intimidate me and my fellow protesters into the exact opposite: I needed it to become inspiring. 

I decided to be open about the experience, seeking solidarity. I shared an Instagram post, and thousands of people across the world reached out, revealing their outrage at what we were facing. 

In it, I said, ‘The right to protest is under attack in this country and it requires us all to defend it. While there is an alarming rise in attempts to censor voices that stand up for Palestine, even as it faces open calls for ethnic cleansing, it will not work. The days of silencing after intimidation are gone.’

In the weeks before my interrogation, people would show gestures of support, even a brief thumbs up on public transport. 

The stress on my family was significant. Outside my kid’s school, other parents didn’t know whether to say anything to me, because they didn’t know whether we had told our children. For me, this is an experience that goes back generations. 

My father and grandfather were both political prisoners on the left in Egypt, and one of my father’s earliest memories is going to visit his dad in prison when he was three. I worried my own children would face a dark echo of that experience. 

By the time I faced my police interrogation, the ceasefire had just broken, and yet again, hundreds of people were being killed. Palestinians were facing the threat of full ethnic cleansing and Trump’s scheme to turn Gaza into a new Riviera. 

As I walked across Trafalgar Square to my interrogation at Charing Cross police station, I recorded a video calling this a ‘canary in the coal’ mine moment, fearful of what it meant for the right to protest in the UK. 

When I received news three weeks ago that police would not be pressing charges, I barely felt relief. 

The whole process felt like an assault, another way to distract from what has happened in Gaza since January – thousands killed, an entire people pushed to the edge of starvation, shot at while collecting food. 

But when you look at the figures from Greenpeace, showing a massive rise in ‘nuisance’ arrests at protests, with a tiny proportion resulting in convictions, it is clear how my experience is part of a wider pattern of intimidating campaigners, whether they are standing up against racism, about climate change, or for disability rights, and the NHS. 

I opposed the recent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and was shocked to see the arrest of an 83-year-old priest for allegedly. supporting that cause. 

If you draw a line between my treatment and hers, it points in a chilling direction.

This is about all of us.

We are facing a world of overlapping crises, with rising authoritarianism and massive inequality, where corporate power and a billionaire class are eroding our democracies. 

This means people end up having to go out and protest because our politicians are failing us, with ever more grave consequences. 

The rights and freedoms we hold dear in Britain, and across the world, were all won by movements for whom protest was a fundamental tool in the process of meaningful change. If our children are to inherit a better world than this one, we are going to need to fight for it now, and that is why we need to defend the magnificent tradition of protest in this country – not criminalise it.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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