Labour-party run Camden Council tried to ban a book launch and censor support for the Palestinian resistance – so we brought the book launch to the Town Hall. Scroll down for a PFLP report on the protest.
On the evening of 26 February, Camden Council’s attempt to shut down a Palestine book launch backfired spectacularly when protesters led by the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and supporters of our newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! marched into Camden Town Hall, occupied the building’s lobby for over an hour and delivered speeches expressing support for the Palestinian armed resistance. This followed a decision by the council-funded charity King’s Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association (KCBNA) to cancel our booking for a public launch of the book Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings which was due to take place that evening in the Chadswell Healthy Living Centre, a community venue run by KCBNA.
The Labour Party-run Camden Council, the local borough of Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is the freeholder of Chadswell and one of KCBNA’s key funders. On the day of the meeting, we received a call from Labour Councillor and KCBNA Executive Director Nasim Ali who warned that he had been under pressure from Camden Council to cancel the booking due to concerns over the advertised guest speakers at the event: Dr Louis Brehony, one of the book’s editors; and Charlotte Kates, co-ordinator of Samidoun, the Palestine Prisoner Solidarity Network.
Online trolls including the notorious Zionist X/Twitter account @Habibi_UK had demanded the police and Camden Council intervene to stop the event, claiming falsely that ‘Samidoun is a front for the PFLP terrorist group’. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Ghassan Kanafani was a member, is not a proscribed terrorist organisation in Britain.
This was only the latest attempt to censor us. In Newcastle on 10 February an RCG launch meeting for the same book was cancelled by the Venerable Bede Church, at the behest of the same Zionist online trolls. Another venue for our London book launch meeting, owned by Greenpeace in Islington, also cancelled our booking after a visit from the police who warned they would post officers ‘outside the book launch to monitor the situation’. Collaboration between police and Zionists is part of the broader criminalisation of Palestine solidarity in Britain which has escalated under the Labour government.
An email seen by the RCG, from Camden’s Director of Equalities and Community Strength Hanad Mohamed to Nasim Ali, threatened to pull the plug on KCBNA’s funding:
‘We have been made aware of an event being planned for this evening with guest speakers Louis Brehony and Charlotte Kates.
‘We are writing to you to request that this event does not go ahead this evening.
‘As a Council, we have a statutory obligation to ensure good relations between our ethnic and religious groups.
‘Based on research, we believe there is a significant risk that speakers this evening may say something that will be contrary to our statutory obligations and our values. We look for the organisations that we fund to share these values with us.’
The insinuation that the book launch would endanger ‘good relations between our ethnic and religious groups’ amounts to a defence of the racist Zionist state concealed behind a supposed concern to combat anti-Semitism. We have been here before: Nasim Ali was also pressured by Camden Council over an RCG meeting at the same venue in 2018 about Labour’s adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has been used to shut down free speech on Palestine. We defeated the Council then; and we were not about to take their latest assault lying down.
After Ali informed us he had cancelled our booking (in his words, ‘we can’t risk our grant’) we gathered the book launch attendees at the KCBNA venue and marched with banners and Palestine flags to Camden Town Hall chanting pro-Palestine slogans. We entered the Town Hall lobby and noisily occupied it for over an hour in protest, disrupting a scheduled Camden Council Cabinet meeting.
The crowd of around 40 protestors was addressed by Louis Brehony and Charlotte Kates over video link on a PA system hooked up to a laptop. As Brehony noted in his address, ‘Ghassan Kanafani was murdered 52 and a half years ago, but still it’s remarkable that [his] message continues to be an object of erasure and silence’. Kates spoke against censorship: ‘they want to divide us by listing Palestinian resistance organisations as so-called “terrorist organisations” …in Britain today the Terrorism Act is being used to impose state terror on the population so people will be silenced and frightened of speaking in solidarity with the Palestinian people.’ The crowd cheered as Kates announced that 620 Palestinian prisoners were being released on the same night as the book launch in a prisoner exchange deal between the Israeli state and the Palestinian resistance.
Camden Council’s censorship comes in the context of deepening state repression against the Palestine solidarity movement. The subject matter of the book, the political thought of a key historical Palestinian resistance figure, as well as Samidoun’s work which legitimises the struggle of Palestinian prisoners against the Zionist occupation, is deeply threatening to the interests of the British ruling class and the imperialist Labour Party which unconditionally supports the genocidal Zionist state. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has refused to call the slaughter of at least 50,000 Palestinians ‘genocide’.
We sent a message to all who attempt to censor support for the Palestinian resistance and take away our right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech: if you try to silence us, we will bring the voices of resistance right to your doorstep. In the face of repression, supporters of Palestinian liberation must escalate and fight back.
Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings (2024) is published by Pluto Press and is edited by Louis Brehony and Tahrir Hamdi.
FRFI received the following report on the protest from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Protest and Occupation of Camden Council Building Against UK Government’s Suppression of Pro-Palestine Activities
Al-Hadaf – London
The Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG) and its newspaper Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! organised the launch event for the book Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Writings, edited by Dr. Louis Brehony, a specialist in Palestinian political culture and author of Palestinian Music in Exile, and Dr. Tahrir Hamdi, a professor of resistance literature at the Arab Open University and author of Imagining Palestine.
This event took place in the context of escalating repression against pro-Palestinian activities in Britain. Organisers were forced to change the venue after the original location canceled the event due to Zionist pressure on social media.
This ongoing campaign reflects efforts to silence voices supporting the Palestinian cause, underscoring the importance of disseminating the works of the martyred novelist Ghassan Kanafani, which continue to inspire resistance and national liberation.
The event was relocated to Chadswell Centre in Camden, but the local council—dominated by the Labour Party—canceled it again under pressure.
In response to this repression, the Revolutionary Communist Group organised a bold protest, including the occupation of the inside and outside of Camden Council’s hall. During the protest, opening speeches were broadcast through the group’s loudspeakers, addressing the legacy of the martyred writer Ghassan Kanafani and Palestinian resistance.
More than 50 people participated in the protest, while a small group of three Zionists attempted to organise a counter-protest but were forced to retreat under pressure from the comrades.
The speeches delivered during the event widely praised Ghassan Kanafani and highlighted the suffering of Palestinian prisoners. Speakers also condemned the British government and local councils’ attempts to silence pro-Palestinian voices.
Despite the restrictions, the event received significant support from attendees, with many copies of Ghassan Kanafani’s books sold, reflecting continued interest in his ideas and revolutionary legacy.
Notably, Camden is the constituency of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, known for his support of “Israel,” adding further symbolic significance to the protest, which directly challenged the UK government’s policies.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
