Protests grow over arrest at Quaker Meeting House in Westminster.

 

The Trump administration in the U.S.  have been critical about the way in which the British government and the police have been cracking down on free speech in Britain. At a recent meeting that took place at the White House in Washington, the Labour Prime Minister, 'Free Gear' Sir Keir Starmer, denied that this was the case.

While we're told that Britain isn't a police state, what we are seeing in Britain, under Starmer's squalid Labour government, is the increasing use of the police and state power to crackdown on peaceful protest and free speech which is said to be the cornerstone of any truly democratic society. Although Britain isn't a politically violent country compared to many other countries and most people are politically passive, some critics believe that this is a deliberate policy to intimidate and silence protestors. There have been numerous cases where people have been arrested and charged for comments made on social media. Some have even been imprisoned.

On Thursday, March 27, 2025, 30 Metropolitan Police Officers, some armed with stun guns, smashed down the front door of the Grade II-listed Quaker Meeting House in Westminster, where six young women from the group 'Youth Demand,' were holding a meeting. The women, mostly students, were there to share opinions about climate change and the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza where tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, have been slaughtered by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). The group are calling for a trade embargo on Israel. On the table in the meeting room were cups of tea, ginger biscuits and a selection of vegan cheese straws. Although the meeting had been publicly advertised on Instagram, leaflets and posters, and the room at the Friends Meeting House had been hired, the young women were arrested on "suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance." Some of the women were 'rear stacked', hands cuffed behind their back and held against a wall. The police confiscated laptops, mobile phones, Oyster cards and even a French book on grammar.

One of the activists, Lia-Anjali Lazarus, a 20-year-old politics and languages student from UCL, said the raid was "a traumatic experience" and described the police's response as "outrageous" and felt it was akin to "thought policing."

The accusation of "conspiracy" is one that particularly jars with the young women who describe their meetings as "a weekly welcome talk." They say that if the police raid was "intelligence led", as the Met claims, then the police ought to have known that the meetings are not that well attended to justify a raid by thirty armed police officers and that the activists posed no threat to them.

Mal Woolford, an eyewitness to the police raid and an elder at the Westminster Quaker Meeting House, said the "gathering had looked like an innocuous meeting of drama students." He described the police response as "ridiculously heavy handed." Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain said no one in living memory had been arrested at a Quaker meeting house.

After their arrest, five of the women were released on bail pending further inquiries and one faced no further action. Since the police raid at the Quaker Meeting House in March, there have been complaints made by religious leaders and groups, politicians as well as protests. Carla Denyer, the Green Party co-leader and the MP for Bristol Central said: "This isn't just a single incident, this is about an increasing stamping down on the right to peaceful protest in this country."

When expressing moral concerns about genocide or existential threats to the climate are treated as intent by the police or potential crimes, then we ought to be rightly worried and concerned. Similarly, when armed British police go for the Quakers and smash down the front door to a Quaker Meeting House, then we might well be justified in asking if Britain has become a Stasi-like police state.