Mark Rylance joins criticism of police ban on pro-Palestine march in London
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Protesters planned to gather outside BBC HQ, which is near a synagogue, on the Jewish holy day. Mark Rylance, the star of the BBC’s Wolf Hall, has joined the singer Charlotte Church and actor Juliet Stevenson to condemn a decision by the police to ban a pro-Palestine protest outside the corporation’s Broadcasting House headquarters.
Protesters were planning to gather in Portland Place in central London on Saturday 18 January before marching to Whitehall. A ban was imposed on Thursday by the Met, with officers citing the risk of “serious disruption” to a nearby synagogue on the Jewish holy day, as congregants attend Shabbat services.
Rylance is among more than 150 signatories, including organisations such as Liberty, Amnesty International UK and Greenpeace, to a statement issued on Friday accusing the Met of “misusing” its powers. The statement says: “The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public. The police should not be misusing public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.
“The excuse offered by the police is that the march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue which is not even on the march route. “As the Met police have acknowledged, there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the marches. Any suggestion that pro-Palestine marches are somehow hostile to Jewish people ignores the fact that Jewish people have been joining the marches in their thousands.”.
