On 8 October, Revolutionary Communist Group supporters joined hundreds of demonstrators protesting in solidarity with Palestine outside the Scotland vs Israel UEFA Euro Qualifier football match at Hampden Park in Glasgow. This was the second time in just over a month that the RCG, alongside a range of other anti-imperialist and anti-racist organisations and activists, took to Hampden to protest against the Israeli football team’s presence in our national stadium and the hypocrisy of these representatives of Zionism taking the knee before the match. See our 4 September protest report here
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In the days and hours leading up to the protest a concerted effort was made by the billionaire owned media and gutter press (such as The Scottish Sun, Daily Record, The Herald) to intimidate and criminalise the right to protest for Palestine. Instead of reporting on the reasons why hundreds of people were preparing to protest outside Hampden they chose to focus on attacking Irish republican solidarity organisations in Scotland and the RCG in a bid to stir up public, police and loyalist opposition to the protest.
As Samidoun’s statement of support to last night’s protest stated;
As this football match is played, there are nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails, imprisoned by the Israeli occupation regime. Over 7 million Palestinian refugees have been denied their right to return home. Every day, Palestinians face occupation, colonialism, ethnic cleansing and a brutal siege on Gaza. All of these Israeli crimes are enabled by the full economic, diplomatic, military and political support provided to the Zionist state by imperialist powers like Britain and the United States…
The Zionism is Racism (ZIR) protest callout was supported by Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Victory to the Intifada, Football Against Apartheid, Celtic Fans Against Apartheid, Glasgow FRFI, Revolutionary Communist Group – RCG / FRFI, Saoradh Scotland, Friends of IRPWA Scotland, Let Kashmir Decide – SolidariTea, Glasgow Anti-fascist Alliance, Green Anti-Capitalist Front Glasgow and Unite The Community Tayside as well as individual Palestine solidarity activists.
Unfortunately, this spirit of united resistance and solidarity was once again undermined by the sectarianism of Mick Napier, leader of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC). ZIR supporters’ offer to the SPSC to build one united democratic protest for Palestine outside Hampden was ignored. On 10 September ZIR called for a protest outside Hampden and invited all relevant groups to join including SPSC. Without responding to this invitation, the SPSC announced an online event to happen at the exact time of the protest. In response ZIR issued a statement of unity on 27 September, calling for people to join the physical protest at Hampden which had already been called. The following day, SPSC announced they would be having a physical protest at Hampden at the same time as the ZIR protest but in a different location.
On the night of the protest, in the interests of unity, ZIR activists joined with SPSC protesters rather than hold a separate demonstration. However, once there, Mick Napier refused to let us speak on the protest sound system. Later, when the SPSC’s sound system stopped working, the RCG provided our own sound system so that the Scottish Socialist Party representative could continue addressing the crowd. This spirit of co-operation was not returned as Napier attempted to physically intimidate a young female RCG comrade while she held the audio system for the mic, standing very close to her, telling her to leave, calling her a ‘creep’ and then refusing to hand back our mic until people in the crowd demanded he do so.
Other supporters of Palestine challenged the SPSC for refusing to speak out in solidarity with anti-imperialist political prisoner Dr Issam Hijjawi, whom the SPSC had previously worked with in Edinburgh, and his nine Irish republican Saoradh comrades, who are currently interned by remand in Maghaberry gaol in the occupied north of Ireland after being entrapped by MI5 and undercover agents (see here). When challenged on this silence by an RCG supporter, Palestinian Scottish activist and SPSC ally Khaled Khalil stated ‘Issam’s only one man, not the whole Palestinian people’!
After attempting to slander supporters of Palestine as ‘disrupters’ and ‘super revolutionaries’ Mick Napier called the protest to an early end, telling protesters to go home, before he left himself.
Supporters of ZIR, RCG, Aberdeen 4 Palestina, Let Kashmir Decide – SolidariTea, Saoradh Scotland and Friends of IRPWA, joined by dozens of other demonstrators, carried on the protest, holding an open mic calling for democratic unity for Palestine and continuing chants at the stadium entrance of ‘your match is covered in Palestinian blood’ as the match kicked off.
Join our online Public Meeting ‘Ireland, Palestine and the fight for socialism’, Wednesday 21 October, 7 – 9pm, register here
Free Palestine! Boycott Israel!
Black Lives and Palestinian Lives Matter!
Free Issam Hijjawi, the Saoradh 9 and all political prisoners!
Democratic unity for Palestine!
