Calling Gaza protesters extremist risks dividing UK, says government adviser

A UK government adviser on social cohesion has described attempts to portray protesters on pro-Palestinian marches as extremist as “outrageous” and dangerous.

Dame Sara Khan, who is carrying out a review of the resilience of the UK’s democracy for Michael Gove, said such claims risked further dividing the country.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been regularly massing on the streets of London to protest against the bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces.

The former home secretary Suella Braverman has described the demonstrations as “hate marches” and the government’s commissioner for counter-extremism, Robin Simcox, wrote in the Daily Telegraph on Friday that London had been “permitted to be turned into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend”.

Speaking to the Guardian, before Simcox’s comments were published, Khan said she believed the UK had a problem with extremism but that people should be careful in their language.

Khan, who was Simcox’s predecessor as the government’s counter-extremism commissioner, said: “I think it’s really important that we don’t conflate those protesters, somehow saying or portraying them as somehow as being all extremists.

“What I’ve been really uncomfortable with over the last couple of weeks is the kind of argument that they’re all Islamist extremists on these demonstrations. I think that’s actually outrageous.

“Some are not even pro-Palestinian people, just anti-war. There are clearly Jewish people there, there’s a whole range of people there, and to try to frame these demonstrations as Islamist extremism is completely far-fetched and untrue.”

Khan was appointed as an independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience in 2022 and is expected to complete her review this month.

The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has not gone as far as some within the Conservative party in criticising the marches in London but he has recently warned against “mob rule”.

In a speech last Friday on the steps of Downing Street, Sunak further claimed the protests had “descended into intimidation, threats, and planned acts of violence”, and called on those demonstrating not to “let the extremists hijack your marches”.

In his article for the Telegraph, Simcox said the government and its agencies had powers to combat extremism but had failed to tackle groups that “lurked” just below the threshold of counter-terrorism legislation.

“We will not have become an authoritarian state if London is no longer permitted to be turned into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend”, Simcox wrote.

Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, warned, however, against attempts to curtail freedom of expression and assembly on the basis that it might make some parts of society unhappy.

He said: “There is an irony, if Jews were a lot more disorderly and went in and did violent counter protests, you probably could say that the conduct of the protesters was liable to lead to public disorder, and therefore invoke that as a reason for limiting marches. And that’s not the case.

“When you’re thinking about something as important as the right to protest, there doesn’t seem to be a solid enough basis for curtailing that because I think we can all think of causes very personal to us that we would want to protest an awful lot and that will make some people very, very unhappy indeed.”

Next week, ministers are expected to announce a new definition of extremism, determining the organisations that Whitehall will be prohibited from engaging with.

According to leaked drafts, it will include groups active in “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on intolerance, hatred or violence that aims to undermine the rights or freedoms of others”, including “those who seek to undermine or overturn the UK’s liberal system of democracy and democratic rights”.

Hall, who saw an early version of the draft definition but who has not been further consulted this year, said he agreed with his predecessor as reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, who had been critical of previous attempts to define extremism on the basis of British values.

Hall told the Guardian: “If you say a touchstone of British values is, for example, tolerance towards gay people then you end up saying that people who are religiously committed to saying that homosexuality is a sin are extremists,” he said.

“Then you end up creating a situation in which the UK’s … famously pluralist tolerance towards different belief systems is not tolerant towards that belief system. So it’s really hard to try and work out what are the touchstones for British values.”