OPINION: 7 Tangible steps the government can take to improve life for British Jews
Sympathetic words are welcome - but ultimately, action, rather than platitudes, is what is needed
The last 24 hours has seen a wide variety of statements from politicians, on both a national and regional level, deploring yesterday’s terror attack and expressing their solidarity with the Jewish community.
There are some who will say such words and expressions of sympathy are meaningless; that is a viewpoint I do not share. It is extremely important for the Government in particular to show that it stands with the Jewish community at this time of deep pain – and to its credit, there wasn’t the slightest suggestion that it would refrain from doing so.
But that is not enough – such sympathy is welcome, but action is what is needed.
I can speak only for myself. I am not a communal leader, and doubtless those leaders will be meeting with those at the highest levels of the Government in the coming days and weeks. All I can give you are a series of tangible actions which you can take which will make life – both for British Jews, but also for this country’s silent majority – immeasurably better.
1) Significantly tighten up laws around protest
Yesterday, as the Jewish community reeled from a terror attack, the Metropolitan police wrote a letter to “Defend Our Juries”, a group which continues to organise mass protest with the aim of breaking the law by expressing public support for a proscribed terror organisation, Palestine Action.
It said that following the terror attack, the police would be significantly stepping up their protection of Synagogues in the capital this weekend. It made the point that thousands of police officers who would otherwise be available for that duty would be forced to be present at Westminster due to the intention of “Defend our Juries” to organise a mass-breaking of the law. It asked “Defend Our Juries” to please consider postponing their protest to another weekend.
You can imagine the response the police received. “ACTION TO GO AHEAD AS PLANNED”, reads the tweet from the group – “Our response in short: don’t arrest us then.”
How? How has our country got to the point where the police are reduced to sending a begging letter to those who openly announce their intention to break the law and support a proscribed terrorist organisation, requesting that they consider breaking the law at a more convenient time? You don’t have to be vaguely political to understand that something is very deeply wrong in a country where that is allowed to happen. The Home Secretary has also openly stated that she does not have the power to ban this protest.
The idea that in a democracy people should have an inalienable right to routinely bring city centres to a halt is complete fallacy. France, Germany and Italy, all robust democracies, have far stricter laws on the right to protest than Britain does.
British Jews have repeatedly made it clear that the regular “anti-Israel” marches contain significant hate directed against us – not withstanding the coterie of useful idiots on the fringes of our community who join them. It is well beyond time that the police – and the Home Secretary – were given greater powers to prevent or block such protests from taking place. It is within the Government’s ability to advance legislation which would enable this to be done. Failing to do so is a choice – it is a choice which should be urgently rethought.
2) Strengthen laws on incitement and make sure police forces are trained thoroughly in their implementation
The current stance of the police, at “pro-Palestinian” protests across the country, seems to be as follows. For the most part, the most repugnant signs, speeches and other behaviours from protestors, many of which clearly incite hatred, are allowed to go ahead unchallenged.
Everyone in the Jewish community has seen videos of people – in London and Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, Bradford and Birmingham – dehumanising “Zionists” and promoting violent conduct towards them. They have also seen the police standing around doing absolutely nothing in response.
Clearly the law needs to be tougher – anyone who can reasonably be viewed as inciting violence at such a protest should be subject to arrest. And police need to be trained to follow that law without hesitation – not stand idly by while hate is allowed to fester and grow.
3) Invest significantly in the Prevent programme
The Prevent programme is designed to help identify those most at risk of being brainwashed into carrying out terror attacks. Contrary to what you might read, this programme focuses on threats posed by all different types of potential terror, including both Islamists and the far-right. Over the last few years there have been comprehensive efforts by terror-adjacent organisations to destroy the Prevent programme. On the contrary, this programme needs to be significantly strengthened.
Under the previous government, at the same time as it was talking tough on the need to support Prevent, plans were made to slash Prevent’s budget by more than half, to £2 million for the entire country as of April this year. There’s no indication that the election, and the subsequent change of government, halted these plans. £2 million, by comparison, is less than most individual councils around the country annually spend on school taxis. It’s a laughable amount to spend on a key counter-terror programme – or it would be, if it weren’t so serious. If successive governments wanted to kill this programme by slowly starving it of funds, they’ve gone the right way about it. If they want to seriously protect innocent people in this country, they might want to start by reversing all such cuts.
4) Strengthen professional consequences for hate speech
Over the last two years, certain British doctors have regularly ranted about “Jewish supremacy” in the UK and its supposed control over British society. Some have posted screeds against synagogues, Jewish schools and other centres of Jewish communal life – and they have received absolutely no comeuppance for doing so. Within the past few months, two “Jewish supremacy” rant doctors have been allowed, by a Medical Tribunal, to continue to practice medicine.
I want to share a screed posted by one of those two doctors yesterday, which should prove my point. Responding to news that hospitals across Manchester were ‘on lockdown, with people told not to attend A&E’ after the Synagogue terror attack, she said:
“This is extremely concerning. A hospital is a pillar of civic society, a sanctuary of care that must remain universally accessible. When the State commands these institutions to close their doors to all but the most critically injured, it weaponizes public health and safety. It effectively places a specific community’s security above the healthcare of the entire population, creating a dangerous and discriminatory precedent. This is not just about policing. It is about the state demonstrating a willingness to suspend a fundamental duty of care to its citizens. It tells the British public that their routine medical needs: a scheduled chemotherapy session, a potential broken bone, or a worrying infection are suddenly negotiable.
“This action frames an entire group or community as so separate, so uniquely threatened or threatening, that the normal functioning of society must be halted for them. This is highly divisive and erodes the very principle of universal public provision that the National Health Service was founded upon. The sinister nature of this act lies not in the intention to provide security, but in the method: sacrificing the healthcare of the many to create a fortress for a few. Open our British hospitals for our British public.”
That tweet remains up, even though she herself later acknowledged that “this is for A&E. Hospital appointments are apparently going ahead as normal unless patients are told otherwise.”
The regulator – the GMC – is utterly toothless. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service appears to be hopelessly compromised, if its utterly deranged ‘judgements’ are anything to go on. The government could – and should – be legislating to give powers to a Health Secretary to intervene in cases such as these, where it is overwhelmingly obvious that such bigots should not be practicing medicine, or be anywhere close to vulnerable Jewish patients.
5) Change the law to end the “Judicial Review” culture
We currently have two different cases in which deeply odious individuals are using the judicial review process to attempt to try and overturn the government’s proscription of terrorist organisations. One is in regard to Palestine Action. The other is an ongoing case relating to Hamas itself.
The Judicial Review culture in this country has profoundly and negatively affected Britain. In January the government announced it would seek to end “challenge culture” with regards to the countless infrastructure projects which have been held up by people endlessly using the judicial review progress to block developments. The same should be instituted with regards to deeply tendentious efforts to overturn terrorism proscriptions.
Any organisation which has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation has received this designation after the Home Office has made a case to Parliament, whereupon our elected MPs have had the choice whether to proscribe said organisation or not. The courts should not be allowed to overturn Parliament’s decision in this regard – and government should legislate to make it clear that such proscriptions cannot be overturned by a judicial decision.
6) Clamp down on your own MPs expressing support for the hate marches and opposing proscription of a terrorist group
This is probably the simplest one of the lot. There are, unfortunately, a significant number of Labour MPs who have expressed opposition to the proscription of Palestine Action (some of whom have falsely claimed that it is a ‘non-violent’ organisation, which might come as a surprise to the police officers hospitalised by some of its activists in the past).
Likewise, watching Labour MPs join marches which have contained despicable examples of antisemitic behaviour sends an appalling message to many British Jews. Presumably the presence of any Labour MP at the recent Tommy Robinson-aligned “Unite the Kingdom” protest would not have been tolerated – why should this be any different?
Labour may pride itself on being a broad church, but perhaps it’s time to make clear that there are limits on just how broad it is prepared to be.
7) Urgently fix the broken culture at the Crown Prosecution Service
In 2022, in what has become a notorious case for the UK Jewish community, a convoy of cars flying Palestinian flags drove through north London. One of the cars had someone on a loudspeaker, and among the disgusting comments videos by passersby was a call to “F*** the Jews, rape their daughters.”
The CPS ultimately dropped charges against all four of the people who were in that vehicle.
This is far from the only time that the CPS has dropped charges when antisemitism has been involved. The Campaign Against Antisemitism has had significant success in private prosecutions it has brought against those who promote the most vile Jew-hate – but it should not have had to bring such cases at all. The reason it has felt the need to do so is because the CPS has so consistently dropped the ball.
Just last week, we learned that the terror charge against a member of Kneecap was to be dropped. Not because it had emerged that he was innocent of the charge of supporting Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist group. No, it transpired that the CPS had six months in which to officially receive approval from the Attorney General, and had sent him the requisite approval request on the final day of that six months, meaning that approval was not received in time and the case was thrown out. It is hard to think of a more obvious example of what is – at best – abject incompetence.
Our Prime Minister was previously director of Public Prosecutions at the CPS (not when any of the above cases were with the organisation). The CPS is separate from the Government – the Attorney General has nominal responsibility for its work but has no proper oversight power. It cannot be right that the CPS is not answerable to any outside authority – we have ample proof of the failures which have no doubt in part resulted due to that failure of proper oversight. At the very least the Government should legislate to require the CPS to be accountable to both the AG and to a cross-party group of Parliamentarians – the latter so as to preclude charges of government tampering. Not just British Jews, but all communities, deserve to see justice properly done.
These are just a few key areas in which the Government could – and should – act to improve life in Britain. The alternative is to preside over the current gradual slide into anarchy, and what could well be a mass-exodus of British Jews over the coming decades.
The government has the power to reverse this, to right many wrongs and to protect its minorities more effectively. Leading politicians could commit to some of the above steps – or they can mouth platitudes. The choice is theirs.
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