Illegitimate Concerns

There is a growing violent far-right movement in the UK which senior politicians and media organisations are now not only seeking to justify, but are actively encouraging

Far right thugs gather outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping

Last weekend a retired headteacher named Jon Farley was arrested under the false suspicion of being a terrorist.

Bundled into a police van by officers, Farley was held in a cell for six hours and interrogated by anti-terror police.

His alleged crime? Carrying the below placard showing an excerpt from the satirical magazine Private Eye, which criticises the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

He wasn’t the only one. Across the country more than a hundred people, many of them pensioners like Farley, have been arrested for the alleged crime of taking part in other peaceful protests in support of the banned pro-Palestinian campaign group Palestine Action.

If found guilty they face being imprisoned for up to 14 years.

Yet while the arrests of these peaceful protesters have been condemned by the United Nation’s human rights chief as a “disturbing” misuse of anti-terror laws and a potential breach of international law, they have received barely a whisper of condemnation from the vast majority of the British political and media establishment.

Compare this to the growing attempts to justify the actions of the violent far right thugs who have spent recent days attempting to storm a hotel housing asylum seekers in Epping.