Enfield residents Ann Field, Lynda Brennan and Sarah Doyle were among those arrested last month at a protest against the proscription of Palestine Action – here they explain why they took part

Lynda and Sarah were among nearly 900 people arrested at the Parliament Square protest last month (credit Alex Day)

We knew it was likely to be a long day with, possibly, an abrupt end – and so it was!

The occasion was the public demonstration in Parliament Square on Saturday, 6^th September, when several thousand people gathered to protest against the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act.

The group’s members have been targeting companies and organisations associated with providing support to Israel in the onslaught on the Palestinian people in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and, above all, the genocidal destruction taking place in Gaza.

These protests have been organised by Palestine Action for some time, but when they broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed paint on two military planes the government very quickly got MPs to approve the banning order.

Hundreds of people took part in the Parliament Square event last month, including many older protesters like us who are only too aware of the danger of restricting the fundamental civil liberty of the right to protest.

What makes this particularly crucial is the effectiveness of protest. If governments don’t listen to demands for progress or in defence of people under attack, then stepping up action to press the case becomes a duty and is an essential civil right and liberty.

Centuries of struggle for freedom and safety from repression, servility, slavery, false imprisonment, torture and murder have given us the right to protest. It is these rights which are being challenged and undermined by this and previous governments.

And so it was that on Saturday, 6th September, nine members of Enfield Palestine Solidarity Campaign (EPSC) pitched up alongside more than 1,500 other people with the same purpose in mind – we were all there to protest about the banning of another protest group.

Organised and co-ordinated by Defend Our Juries, a civil liberties campaigning group, we were there to make a serious, silent and disciplined gesture of protest against the proscription of the Palestine Action group.

Three of our group sat down (those of us who could) and at 1pm we displayed our protest placards. Meanwhile, the main regular march through London was taking place. Involving an estimated 200,000 demonstrators, it went virtually unreported.

We sat there for hours, young and old, some very old, waiting for the police to come to arrest us for daring to challenge the Terrorism Act. For that – ‘terrorism’ – is what this challenge, this protest, is being called.

We waited and waited for five hours; no mean feat when you are getting on a bit, can’t sit for long or can’t walk more than a few yards without a walking frame on wheels and a carer. That was Sarah Doyle, who is retired from a career in special education and suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy which prevents her from walking more than a few yards.

Sarah has lived in Enfield for more than 30 years, becoming active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign two years ago. Sarah was accompanied by Lynda Brennan, a retired teacher who created the Enfield People’s Theatre, a community theatre group which fights for social justice. Alongside them was Ann Field, a newcomer to Enfield but a long-standing supporter of Palestinian rights and retired trade union official.

During those five hours we watched the police gradually arresting people with their placards. If it wasn’t so serious, it would be hilarious to watch silently defiant and principled pensioners being hoisted in mid-air each by four or five burly police officers. We were arrested just after 6pm, within minutes of each other, and conveyed to police vans parked round the corner.

There were many hundreds of police and too many vans to count waiting in the side streets to take arrested protesters to a holding area on Victoria Embankment. We waited there in a lengthening line of detainees, each with their arresting officer – a massive burden on police resources caused entirely by the misconceived proscription of Palestine Action.

It was another four hours by the time we were marched into a tented area to undergo a preliminary interview with police. Two of us agreed to provide a name, address and date of birth in street bail, the third of our intrepid trio refused until taken to a police station. She languished in a police cell until 4.30am, when she was released with a conditional pre-charge bail.

We will know in November if we are to be charged with terrorism offences.

At the same time as this placard protest was going on in London and Edinburgh, we were all very conscious of the continual systematic destruction of Gaza by the Israelis. The Palestinians have no army, air force or navy, so are literally defenceless. Humanitarian aid supplied by the United Nations has been stopped by Israel, whose military forces control all of Gaza’s land borders and coastline. Gazans are even forbidden to fish in the sea.

Their homes are destroyed, with their schools, hospitals, electricity, gas and water supplies. Reported deaths from Israeli bombs number 65,000, rising every day. Currently a tower block every day in Gaza City is blown up. Malnutrition has deepened into starvation. The pictures tell the stories – a defenceless population watch their entire lives and communities being ground to dust.

This horror must be stopped.

Explaining her decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act in July, then-home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “National security is the first duty of any government, we will always take the action needed to protect our democracy and national security against different threats […] The right to protest and the right to free speech are the cornerstone of our democracy and there are countless campaign groups that freely exercise those rights. Violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protests.”

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