Condemned… for condemning Hamas

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell was arrested at the Palestine Solidarity protest in London on 17 May 2025, for holding a placard that read: “STOP Israel genocide! STOP Hamas executions! Odai Al-Rubai, aged 22, executed by Hamas! RIP!”

Peter has said: “According to the police, Palestine march stewards told them I shouted ‘Hamas are terrorists’. I never shouted anything. This was a crude smear by stewards to get the police to remove me from the march. Even if someone said those words, they have a right to do so under the laws protecting freedom of speech and the right to protest.

“I support the Palestine Solidarity Campaign but it has questions to answer: Did its stewards collude with the police to have me arrested? Is it the official policy of the PSC that supporters of Palestine are banned from criticising Hamas on its marches?”

Under the heading “Pipe down”, the Morning Star of 21 May commented as follows:

Peter Tatchell should give it a rest. He is squandering the credit of a lifetime of brave campaigning for gay rights, above all, by his present posturing.

His intervention on the Palestine demonstration, equating killings by Hamas with Israel’s genocide and indeed giving greater prominence to the former, serves no purpose beyond sowing division and causing provocation.

Never one for subordinating his actions to the greater good of the movement, such ego-driven performances are exhausting everyone’s patience. Pick a side, Peter, or put a sock in it.

This utterly shameful comment from the paper claiming to be “for Peace and Socialism” must never be forgotten and should be raised within the trade union movement whenever the Morning Star comes touting for support.

Still banging the drum for Brexit

Even as public opinion confirms a clear majority — including Leave voters — now think Brexit was a mistake, the Morning Star continues to bang the drum for little-Englandism.

The response of the right wing media to Starmer’s very minor “reset” of relations with the EU verged on hysteria: the Daily Mail ran with “Starmer’s surrender”. The Sun went with “Done Up Like a Kipper”. And the Telegraph opted for “Kiss goodbye to Brexit”.

Joining them was, all too predictably, the Morning Star, which ran a front page headline (20 May): “Starmer hails ‘reset’ with Brussels but fishermen slam … ‘EU HORROR SHOW’”

Some of the paper’s opposition was due to the UK gaining access to a new EU loan scheme for defence spending, known as “Safe”, which Nick Wright (an anti-EU ultra, even by its standards) claimed would mean “Britain will be compelled to buy into this fund, inevitably at further cost to the remnants of our increasingly threadbare welfare state and the destruction of Remainer illusions”.

The reality is that access to “Safe” in itself does not require increased military spending (that would be happening -unfortunately — anyway) and in practice is likely simply divert defence expenditure away from Nato. Sadly for Mr Wright it will not lead to any “destruction” of what he calls “remainer illusions.”

But most of its opposition to the ‘reset’ centred upon its new-found concern for the fishing industry: “There is real damage done by ceding fishing rights, both because of the over-exploitation of our waters and because of the impact on communities dependent on them” claimed the editorial of 20 May.

As for “ceding” fishing rights: once again, they are being (shall we say) economical with the facts. Nothing has been “ceded” because, apart from allowing fish caught in British waters now to be exported into the EU with the massive amount of red tape caused by Brexit, the deal simply involves a 12 year rollover of the existing arrangement, which was set out in Boris Johnson’s October 2019 Withdrawal Bill. And what did they have to say about this “horror show” arrangement at the time? It supported it, and printed the British Communist Party’s statement urging “MPs to support the swift passage of the new EU Withdrawal Bill.”