LONDON: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Britain is descending into “mob rule” because of the pressures created by protests against the Israel-Hamas war — words criticised as alarmist by a human rights group.
Sunak told a meeting of police leaders on Wednesday that there was a ”pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behaviour” that’s intended to “shout down free debate and stop elected representatives doing their job.”
“There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule,” he said, according to a transcript released by the prime minister’s office. “And we’ve got to collectively, all of us, change that urgently.”
Tom Southerden of Amnesty International said Thursday that talk of mob rule “wildly exaggerates the issue and risks delegitimizing the rights of peaceful protest.”
Mass protests have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to central London almost weekly to call for a ceasefire.
The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful, though there have been dozens of arrests over signs and chants allegedly supporting Hamas, a banned organization in Britain. Jewish organizations and many lawmakers say the mass marches have created an intimidating atmosphere for Jewish Londoners — though members of the Jewish community have been among those on pro-cease-fire marches.
Divisions over the conflict in Gaza have convulsed British politics, with some lawmakers saying they fear for their safety after receiving threats over their positions on the war. Reports of both antisemitic and anti-Muslim abuse in Britain have soared since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which triggered Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
A debate last week in the House of Commons on whether to call for a cease-fire descended into chaos amid allegations the speaker of the house had bent parliamentary rules in response to pressure from pro-Palestinian activists.
During the debate, protesters projected “ From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a slogan some see as calling for the destruction of Israel — onto Parliament’s Big Ben clocktower.
The prime minister met police chiefs after announcing a 31-million-pound ($40-million) fund to step up security for lawmakers after politicians reported threats and intimidation connected to the war.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the government told police chiefs that protests at politicians’ homes “should generally be considered to be intimidatory.”
Sunak told officers to take a “robust approach … to protect our democratic processes from intimidation, disruption, from subversion.”
British lawmakers have a tradition of meeting regularly with constituents in their local communities, but security has been tightened after several attacks in the last decade. In 2016, Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was killed by a far-right extremist, and Conservative David Amess was murdered in 2021 by an attacker inspired by the Islamic State (Daesh) terror group.
