Who are you marching with?

On Sunday 19 November I joined the annual AJEX parade to commemorate Jewish servicemen and women who gave their lives for Britain in both world wars and numerous other conflicts, including the Korean War. I marched with a group of old friends from university days. One wore his father’s medals, which included the Croix de Guerre. His father had served with the RAF on dangerous bombing raids over Germany. Another friend wore his father’s medals from the Italian campaign and his daughter wore her other grandfather’s medals for his service during the Second World War.

There was a good turn out and it was deeply moving to march with veterans from all over the country and to see how respectful and peaceful everyone was. There was no chanting, no slogans. When we got to the Cenotaph, the Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, led the service. Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, one of Britain’s leading Masorti rabbis, said the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. We then sang the National Anthem. The police lined the streets. They were friendly and kept us safe. I thanked many of them for their kindness.

The following Sunday was a March against Antisemitism through central London. There was a huge number of people marching in solidarity, mostly but not all Jews. Estimates vary between 60,000 (according to the police) and 105,000 (according to the organisers). Again, the atmosphere was friendly and good-humoured. The police officers were polite and extremely efficient. Not at all heavy-handed. There was no trouble. Just two arrests: Tommy Robinson and a single antisemite.

I joined some of the same friends from the previous Sunday and we discussed the appalling TV News coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. We agreed that not one presenter or reporter had enhanced their reputations during the previous few weeks. We all agreed on who had done the worst job, letting down their viewers and their colleagues: Mark Stone and Dominic Waghorn, Yalda Hakim and Anna Botting at Sky News; Mishal Husain, John Simpson, Jon Donnison and Christian Fraser, Ben Thompson and Lucy Hockings at BBC News. All had been either biased or too strident and rude in their interviewing.

There were a number of well-known people at the march, including Eddie Marsan, Rachel Riley, Rob Rinder, Vanessa Feltz, Tracy-Ann Oberman, David  Baddiel and Maureen Lipman.

There were also numerous politicians including Lord (John) Mann, Lord (Ian) Austin, Boris Johnson, Peter Kyle (Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology), Robert Jenrick (Minister for Immigration), security minister Tom Tugendhat and several others. Sadly, no party leaders were there, no leading figures from the Cabinet and only one member of the Shadow Cabinet. The contrast with the recent march in Paris against antisemitism, led by former French presidents Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy and the French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne, is telling.

The contrast between the two marches on successive Sundays – peaceful, reflective, friendly – and the recent “hate marches” in London on several Saturdays could not be more revealing. As Daniel Johnson wrote in TheArticle here, “The marches for Palestine that have taken place every Saturday since the Hamas pogrom on October 7 have turned central London into a no-go area at weekends, especially for Jewish families but also for many others. These marches are accompanied by anti-Semitic chants and placards, bloodcurdling war cries, intimidation and violence. To millions of Londoners, they feel more like a bid to take over the streets than a genuine protest.”

Of course, many joined these “Free Palestine” marches in good conscience, protesting against the killing of so many civilians in Gaza. However, there is no justification for the number of young men who chose to dress up as Hamas terrorists. What does that have to do with peace or solidarity with ordinary Palestinian civilians? Second, the chants of “From the river to the sea” is a call for genocide, pure and simple. It means no Jews between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean — in other words, no Israel. Third, too many marchers waved Hamas flags and found it impossible to support peace in Gaza and on the West Bank without supporting Hamas. Fourth, ask any police officer which demonstration was easier to police and I have no doubt they would say the two Jewish marches were more polite, more orderly, more law-abiding, perhaps in part because so many were middle-aged or elderly rather than young people in their Teens and Twenties, eager to climb over monuments commemorating the war dead, or looking for trouble. Fifth, this wasn’t just about the marches themselves, which are organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, various Muslim groups and the far-Left Stop The War Coalition. There were numerous scenes of young people chanting and intimidating fellow passengers on tube trains and at railway stations. How did that feel to others?

Finally, one of these Saturday marches took place on Remembrance weekend, despite the concerns expressed by so many British people for whom this weekend is a time for reflection and mourning. It was not a time for young men, hipped on testosterone and rage, to show their disdain for the war dead. They seemed completely ignorant of what the words of John Maxwell Edmonds mean to so many of their fellow citizens,

“When you go home, tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow, we gave our today.”

Surrounding and intimidating elderly people selling poppies at railway stations was obscene and all our political leaders should have said what so many British people felt that weekend.

These “hate marches” were not about peace and they were not about remembering the dead, here or in Gaza. To many people in Britain they were about a rising sense of public disorder and raised worrying questions about the success of multiculturalism in this country, questions which it seemed impossible to voice in Parliament or on the BBC, and which the head of the Met, the Mayor of London and leading politicians in all parties failed to respond to.

Whenever I attended CND or ANL marches in the past I always sought out the Quakers to be with. They were unfailingly kind and decent, people with good values, who were never interested in making trouble. Last month, more people should have asked themselves: why are you marching with people calling for genocide and listening to speeches by the likes of John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn? Who are you marching with and why?

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