It is, of course, no accident of timing that this Wednesday – the third anniversary of Hamas’s 7 October terrorist atrocities in Israel – pro-Palestinian student protestors plan to march through central London. 

The Metropolitan Police have bent over backwards in their efforts to be accommodating to the protest’s organisers. Last week, senior officers asked that the group responsible, the ‘University of London Coalition’, move the date of the protest. This week the assistant commissioner responsible for public order policing in the capital has written in the Times urging the would-be marchers to ‘reflect on the impact and distress’ marching on this date will cause. 

Based on the previous actions of other pro-Palestinian groups, it is unlikely that we will see protestors responding in-kind to the Met’s reasonableness. Indeed, it is worth remembering that, as Policy Exchange revealed previously, it took less than eight hours from Hamas starting their terrorist attacks on 7 October 2023 – and well before the Israeli government could mount any substantive response – for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to submit their application to the Met for their first large-scale protest.

Under section 12 of Public Order Act 1986, the police can impose conditions on a protest march – including specifying the start and finish times or limiting the protest to specific locations. 

The power to ban a march is available only in very limited circumstances: section 13 of the Public Order Act 1986 requires that the police reasonably believe that there is a risk of ‘serious public disorder’ which conditions under section 12 cannot manage. If that threshold is met, the police must then apply for a ban to the home secretary, who is responsible for making the final decision. In such circumstances, it is likely that the march would be turned by the........

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