Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters, many of them university students, gathered in several U.K. cities on Tuesday, despite a plea from Prime Minister Keir Starmer to call off the marches, which he described as “un-British” for taking place on the second anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
On the campus of King’s College London, Palestinian flags waved as organizers on megaphones led the crowd of a few hundred through several chants. They demanded a free Palestine and denounced Israel as a terrorist state.
A few dozen police officers looked on, along with students taking an afternoon break from classes.
“I think all these people have plenty of reasons to protest. Telling someone to not fight for what they believe in is silly,” said Vincent Ge, a second-year computer science student who turned up to show his support for Gaza and the protesters.
“This country has been built off of how many different cultures? Unless [Starmer] can clearly define what it means to be un-British, then I don’t think he should say something like that.”
Pro-Palestinian rallies frequently attract several thousand people in central London with diverse crowds turning up to protest Israel’s war, which according to Gaza’s Health Ministry has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the region to rubble.
The protests have also become a domestic political flashpoint that’s grown more intense after last Thursday’s terror attack on a synagogue in Manchester.
Police say Jihad Al-Shamie, 35, a British man of Syrian descent, launched the rampage on Yom Kippur at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue. Two Jewish men died in the car ramming and stabbing attack, including one who was killed by police gunfire as officers shot and killed the suspect.
The attack led to an outpouring of grief, along with accusations that Britain’s Labour government hasn’t done enough to clamp down on antisemitism, which has grown in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Rise in antisemitism
According to the British Charity, Community Service Trust, which focuses on antisemitism and increasing security for the Jewish community, more than 1,500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first half of 2025.
When Britain’s deputy prime minister took part in a vigil for the victims in Manchester on Friday, he was jeered by some in the crowd. One woman shouted that he “allowed this to happen,” while others joined in chanting “shame.”
Crowd members shouted at Britain’s David Lammy on Friday, accusing the government of not doing enough to protect members of the Jewish community.
Britain’s government has vowed to do everything it can to protect the Jewish community, including stepping up security at synagogues. It is also poised to curtail protests that have “caused repeated disorder” by granting police additional powers.
In an interview with the BBC on Oct. 3, Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called for people protesting the war in Gaza to “take a step back” and allow time for the Jewish community to grieve, saying that “carrying on this way was un-British.”
She and other government officials had asked organizers to cancel a march planned in London for this past Saturday at Trafalgar Square. The rally went ahead, and the Metropolitan Police says nearly 500 people on site were arrested for showing their support for Palestine Action, a group banned by the U.K. government in the summer after being deemed a terrorist organization.
In a commentary published Monday evening in The Times, Starmer wrote about how “the day-to-day acceptance of antisemitism has permeated” society. He went out to denounce the protests planned for Oct. 7, writing this is “not who we are as a country. It is un-British to have so little respect for others.”
Rallies across U.K.
Several rallies and vigils were planned for Tuesday in the U.K., including one organized by the Justice for Palestine Society at Glasgow University.
An online promotional poster for the event said it was to “Honour our resistance, honour our martyrs.”
Isaac Zarfati, the executive director of StandWithUs UK, a charity that supports Jewish students, says the ongoing Palestinian protests have led to “hatred spilling out” into the streets and wants the government to take a harder line by arresting those who support “terror” and call for Israel’s destruction.
At the London event on Tuesday afternoon, several of the participants had their faces partially obscured by scarves and weren’t interested in speaking to CBC News or other media.
Marc Etkind stood out in the mostly younger crowd. Not only is he in his early 60s, but he was wearing a sign saying he is the son of a Holocaust survivor and that he wants to stop “the genocide in Gaza.”
Etkind’s father, Michael, survived imprisonment in Poland during the Second World War, and Marc felt compelled to join the protest on Tuesday because he didn’t appreciate the U.K. government discouraging the rallies just because they came in the wake of the Manchester attack and on the Oct. 7 anniversary.
“I just do not share that logic,” Etkind told CBC News. “I feel for people who die on any side in any war. What we need to do is to stop wars.”
In fact, he believes it is extremely “British” to speak out against the deplorable situation in Gaza.
Colin Davis, a professor of psychology at the University of Bristol, told CBC News he believed it’s “irresponsible” for leaders to be promoting language that describes people and activities as being un-British.
“Protest has a long and proud history in this country, and we often celebrate protests of the past,” Davis said in an email to CBC News, after publishing commentary on the subject online. “It is common for governments to seek to delegitimize protest, but the accusation of it being ‘un-British’ is a new approach.”
Davis said that perhaps the government’s recent statements have been an effort to try and control the narrative at a time of shifting public opinion.
A recent September survey by YouGov, a market research and data analytics firm, found that two years into the war in Gaza, around a third of Britons have no sympathy at all with Israel.
