“The attacks on our movement are part of a drift towards authoritarianism. And it won’t stop here. They will come for the trade union movement, for disabled people, for people on benefits, for people who are poor and hungry.”
Kate Hudson, Former General Secretary of the CND
The coalition of organisers of the national demonstrations for Palestine held a rally on Saturday to address the arrests of protesters and the wider clampdown on the right to protest. You can read an edited version of Kate Hudson‘s speech to the demonstration below.
As we meet today to defend our right to protest, at the heart of our message is our continuing solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for justice and sovereignty.
We will never give up this cause, we will never cease our protest, until Palestine is free.
It is to end the genocide and war crimes that we have taken to the streets, that we have campaigned and lobbied, for over 15 months. And it was to stop our government’s support for genocide, and demand an end to the bias of the BBC, that we met in Whitehall last Saturday, and that a delegation sought to lay flowers in memory of all those so brutally slaughtered.
Far from the genocide being over, Israel is intensifying its violence against the Palestinians in the West Bank; it has shifted its focus from Gaza to Jenin, to the communities near Nablus and Ramallah. And there can be no doubt of their intention to shift their onslaught back to Gaza. We must step up our work to prevent that.
Our work is not over, nor will it ever be until Palestine is free.
We all know the truth about protest: that it is central to the democratic process, that many of the greatest achievements in our history, the expansion of our rights, the overturning of unjust laws, the defence of our peoples, have come through protest, through collective action for change.
And now is the time to step up that protest. Our movement for Palestine is under attack, and we are not alone. The attacks on the climate movement are deeply shocking, the sentencing draconian. And these are the people who are taking action to save our planet, to ensure a future for all forms of life. And what does our government do instead? It’s sabotaging the climate and nature bill, abandoning our climate and environment targets, destroying the lives and livelihoods of untold numbers. And Labour MPs have been ordered to sink the bill.
But it’s not the climate and nature bill that needs to be sunk. It’s the Public Order Act. And we must raise that demand: repeal the Public Order Act!
This Act, as Amnesty has rightly stated, “has ushered in a dark new era for protest rights in the UK. The police have, in effect, been given licence to close down almost any protest they wish.”
And we are now seeing this unfolding.
In a world where the far right has risen exponentially, and the second Trump term is bringing ever-greater abuses, the need to protest has never been greater. When we protest on the streets in our many thousands against the rise of the far right here – as we will increasingly need to do – we will not be prevented from defending our communities, from exercising our humanity. We cannot allow the overturning of our rights. We will not allow it.
The record of the peace movement in Britain is a brave and principled one. We are proud to stand in the tradition of Aldermaston and Greenham, with the hundreds of thousands who have mobilised against nuclear weapons, and the scourge of war, whether in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq or Palestine.
The attacks on our movement are part of a drift towards authoritarianism. And it won’t stop here. They will come for the trade union movement, for disabled people, for people on benefits, for people who are poor and hungry.
All forms of resistance will face authoritarian pressures.
We need to unite, to embrace all, in an unstoppable movement: to protest against injustice, and fight for change.
This is our cause, we will fight together, we will protest together, and we will not be defeated.
- Kate Hudson is the Vice-President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). You can follow Kate on Twitter/X here.
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