Tensions flare over pro-Palestine activism in PM Starmer’s UK constituency

London, United Kingdom – Outraged by the onslaught on Palestinians in Gaza, a group of volunteers in the fashionable London borough of Camden urged the local council last year to stop investing in companies with ties to Israel.

The petition, led by the Camden Friends of Palestine group and signed by more than 4,200 residents, was an act of grassroots activism in one of the most symbolic constituencies in the country.

During last year’s general election, Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, held onto his seat of Holborn and St Pancras, a Labour Party stronghold which includes most of Camden.

Ultimately, the petition to divest the council’s pension funds failed to achieve its goal.

After a debate, the council referred the issue of “responsible investment” to a so-called Pension Committee, according to minutes of the meeting.

Weeks ago, tensions flared further, as the council moved to ban banners, placards, signs, and flags in council meetings – a measure understood to be aimed at taming the local pro-Palestine movement since posters reading phrases such as “Stop Genocide” have previously been raised at the Town Hall.

Sara, a Camden Friends of Palestine campaigner, told Al Jazeera that in her view, the move reflected the “undemocratic and authoritarian measures by Camden Council [which] are designed to shield them from criticism and evade accountability to their residents”.

“This is not the end,” she said. “Our solidarity with the people of Palestine is limitless, and we will continue to demand divestment from the Israeli war machine,” Sara said.

Camden Council told Al Jazeera that while petitions “must be on matters which significantly impact the borough”, delegations concerning the council’s investments are “not automatically excluded as these are matters which do potentially impact the borough”.

For more than a year, members of Camden Friends of Palestine have been meeting at a local arts and community centre every Thursday to discuss their campaigns and introduce new volunteers to their network.

A spokesperson for the group alleged that their attempts to engage with the council had been met with “extreme hostility … whether through calling police on residents, cancelling meetings [or] closing the public gallery in the council for five months”.

In May last year, the group held a meeting in front of an official building to mark Nakba Day, a commemoration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, after the public gallery was closed.

In October, Fitzrovia News, a local news outlet, reported that as Camden Friends of Palestine activists held their “Stop Genocide” signs in the public gallery in a silent protest, police were called in to remove them.

‘Communicating people’s feelings to national-level government’

In June 2024, the group organised a week of action aimed at raising awareness about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, the most recent of which has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians.

Israel’s latest war on Gaza began in October, 2023, following the Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel during which 1,139 people were killed and more than 200 taken captive.

As part of its Gaza Week initiative, speeches were given outside Kentish Town Station.

Archie, a volunteer, said their events often draw counterprotesters including “Islamophobic, sort of football hooligan types that you’d see at fascist mobilisations going back years and years”.

“Although there has been resistance, I don’t think it’s particularly representative of any larger feeling in the community,” he explained.

“People really enjoy being a part of it … they’re coming back to the meetings as much as anything because it’s a positive social space in a society where I think people are increasingly atomised and alienated.”

(Al Jazeera)

But fearing backlash from some counterprotesters, Sara and Archie requested Al Jazeera withhold their surnames.

Undeterred by the council’s response to its petition, the group has joined a London-wide campaign called “Shake the Civ” which focuses on pushing councils to divest from unethical companies.

Paul Bagguley, a political sociology professor at the University of Leeds, told Al Jazeera that pressuring local councils on global issues is a trend dating back to the 1980s.

“There [were] a lot of local protests to get councils to declare their areas nuclear-free zones as a kind of protest against nuclear weapons. So in many ways, it’s following a kind of similar sort of pattern to other kinds of protests over several decades,” he explained.

While local councils could express support for Palestinians or criticise Israeli policy, there’s “little that they can do substantively in terms of policy”, he said.

“Quite often, the consequences are really kind of symbolic. So they’re about communicating people’s feelings to national-level government. So that’s another kind of, if you like, level or form of political communication,” he said.

About seven miles northeast of Camden, activists in the borough of Waltham Forest have also taken their pro-Palestine movement to the local council.

In November 2023, residents belonging to the newly formed Waltham Forest for a Free Palestine (WFFP) group called on their MP at the time, Labour’s John Cryer, to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

In 2024, the group launched a divestment campaign akin to the Camden petition – and was successful.

In July, the council announced that it was “updating its ethical investment policy so that we can divest our pension funds from companies involved in the arms trade” – becoming the first municipality in the United Kingdom to agree to divest from arms companies that supply weapons to Israel.

“As we launched our local divestment campaign, our reach and support grew massively. We have a community of hundreds of people who have turned up to an action, written to a councillor, door-knocked, made food for meetings [and] organised outreach sessions … and over 3,500 people signed our petition within three months last year,” Jade, 31, a WFFP organiser, told Al Jazeera.

“The community of people who live, work and study in Waltham Forest has been hugely supportive. We built community power to challenge the bureaucratic violence and inaction of local politicians on key issues like ethical divestment and naming a genocide.”