Well-coordinated direct action catches the police off guard, showing the power of secure and strategic organising

~ Kevin Blowe ~

On 9 September, at around 7.30 in the morning, an advance bloc of about 150 protesters, their faces covered, suddenly appeared by London City Hall in east London, near to where Britain’s largest arms fair, Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi), was due to start at 9 o’clock.

The protest bloc walked unchallenged to the entrance, where DSEi 2025 delegates were due to arrive, and blocked it. They then successfully held the space as police tried desperately to push them to one side, while more and more protesters began to arrive at the advertised 8am assembly time. Groups of senior officers stood in huddles trying to work out what to do, while the attempts of the ‘Police Liaison’ blue bib intelligence gatherers to engage with protesters were loudly rebuffed with cries of “free, free Palestine”.

As delegates arrived, a few in military uniform but most in the industry’s favoured ‘casual suits and trainers’ combo, they were eventually diverted to another entrance, forced to run a narrow gauntlet behind a line of police officers as other groups of campaigners shouted “shame on you” and worse. The message was up close and unavoidable, and while some delegates were angrily dismissive, most looked embarrassed and deeply uncomfortable. It was magnificent.

How was it possible that the Metropolitan Police so abjectly failed to see this coming, despite the leaflets and social media calling for campaigners to “Shut DSEi Down”? Clearly, the National Police Coordination Centre’s Strategic Intelligence and Briefing (SIB) team, who compile the intelligence for police forces on protests, thought this call to action was symbolic, rather than genuine. The last DSEI protests in 2023 had been quiet and in the absence of other information, they assumed it would remain so this year.

However, SIB’s failure was fundamentally the result of decisions by protest organisers themselves. The ‘Big One’ Coalition had mobilised through trusted networks, sharing information internally based on an agreed plan of potential risks that, crucially, everyone had stuck to. At Netpol we have long argued that we can risk over-estimating how proficient the police really are at surveillance, when in fact they rely heavily on the information we carelessly share ourselves. That did not happen in advance of 9 September, and is a large part of why the police were caught by surprise.

The DSEi protest was the clearest example, for some considerable time, of what is possible when groups start to take security seriously – and at one of the most heavily surveilled events in the country too.

Later in the morning, the police turned to violence—as they often do when frustrated by protesters. At the alternate entrance for delegates, officers from the Territorial Support Group, the Met’s thuggish riot unit, along with officers from British Transport Police’s equivalent, the Operational Support Unit, were assembled and then rushed protesters, knocking people to the ground and then pointlessly kettling a small group.

One older peace campaigner from Bristol was, fortunately, helped to his feet unharmed, but another protester left the kettle in an ambulance with a broken ankle. Not long afterwards, another protester was knocked unconscious and also taken to hospital. An independent legal observer monitoring the policing of the protest also suffered a broken wrist.

Remarkably, despite the disruption and this heightened level of police aggression, only three people were arrested all morning, all for self-evidently dubious “assault on an emergency worker” allegations. The protester taken to hospital was arrested just after he was discharged, but was later told the police would take no further action against him. We hope he is already talking to lawyers about suing the Met and we have released a call-out for witnesses for all the injuries.

This is what also makes this year’s DSEi protest stand out: for showing it is possible to take powerful, decisive action against the arms industry without centring mass arrests as a core strategic aim. The contrast could not have been greater, then, with the Defend Our Juries protest against the banning of Palestine Action, which took place three days earlier in Parliament Square in central London.

There, around 1,300 people, many of them pensioners, were deliberately anticipating a terrorism arrest for holding up signs in support of a proscribed group. The early pace of arrests was slow, with groups of officers first carrying out the wheelchair users and then sign holders at the edges of the crowded square. Onlookers’ disgust and anger at the sight of grandparents, nurses and teachers treated as ‘terrorists’ led to voices raised even louder. The police became more uneasy and aggressive as they were jostled and during several of these terrorism arrests, people were pushed over and batons were drawn by some officers.

After 3pm, more demonstrators began to arrive from the Palestine Coalition’s National March for Gaza, having decided to skip the speeches in Whitehall to come and show their support. The crowd swelled, as did the tension. More and more officers were required for each arrest, as they were quickly mobbed by angry protesters, some of whom seemed ready and willing to help with de-arrests, if only that hadn’t been the exact opposite of what these particular detainees wanted.

As well as almost 900 arrested under the Terrorism Act on 6 September, which continued late into the evening, there were also 17 other arrests, mostly for “assault on an emergency worker”. Just as at DSEi, these arrests were highly questionable. The following day, senior officers leaned heavily on the “intolerable abuse” that police had received, as if they deserved praise for enforcing an unjust law. Certainly, some officers in Parliament Square appeared as demoralised as some of the delegates at DSEi, but like the arms traders, that’s the choice they have made.

The direct action of the Shut DSEi Down protesters and the civil disobedience of the sign holders represent two strands of the current movement against Israeli genocide in Gaza, alongside the regular marches through the capital (now the 30th organised since October 2023). Both, in different ways, are also trying to navigate the crackdown on the right to protest in Britain that Netpol described last year, even before Palestine Action was banned, as “state repression”.

The action at DSEi left protesters exhilarated, but those in Parliament Square who believe the government might at last listen to the mass power of moral example may have felt disheartened. The question now is whether the time and energy needed to outwit police surveillance can be replicated, persuading allies to treat security as central to their organising.