Kensington & Chelsea Council’s decision to cancel its annual diplomatic reception was a victory for anti-war campaigners. However, the council leadership’s claim that security threats were behind the move could suggest coordination between the local authority and bigger players in the war on Palestine.
13th February
We published this article on Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC)’s diplomatic reception for embassies based in the borough, the invitees including Israel’s genocidal ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.
Concerned locals, including members of the newly formed Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham branch of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, mobilised, planning a demonstration at the Town Hall and urging residents to contact their councillors to demand the reception’s cancellation.
14th February
RBKC’s Press Office emailed us saying that inviting Israeli diplomats to the soirée did not constitute honouring them, as we had written.
16th February
3:26pm: With the event just four days away, we responded to the press officers’ push-back, telling them we “understand that it isn’t about honouring a specific person as might happen at an awards ceremony, but other definitions of honour apply in this case: ‘high respect; great esteem’; ‘pay public respect to.’
“Given the atrocities the Israeli government is committing as you read this email, any kind of normal treatment of their representatives is elevated in status.”
We also asked if, given their claim that the event was a neutral one open to all embassies in the borough, the Ukrainian and Russian embassies had both been invited.
7:22pm: RBKC sent us the statement of Leader of the local authority, Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, announcing that she had decided to cancel the reception.
In her statement Cllr Campbell defended the event as an innocent one, with a “genuine purpose of bringing different communities together” but said she was “worried that it might have the opposite effect.”
Foreshadowing the words of national politicians days later, Campbell invoked a security threat to explain the cancellation: “I must listen to our residents and ensure everyone’s safety and dignity.”
The previous day, Conservative MP Robert Jenrick had told the House of Commons that Britain had “allowed our streets to be dominated by Islamist extremists” and claimed there was “a pattern of Islamist extremists intimidating those they disagree with, backed by the prospect of violence.”
Jenrick, former Housing Secretary with responsibility for the Grenfell Tower survivors and bereaved, offered no evidence to back up his statements. Neither did Cllr Campbell for hers.
21st February
What at first seemed to be a mealy-mouthed climbdown from the RBKC Leader took on a more sinister hue when the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, used similar language to justify his sabotaging of the Scottish National Party’s Opposition Day call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hoyle broke centuries of parliamentary convention (our parliament largely operates through convention) to allow a Labour Party amendment to override the SNP’s. The Labour iteration removed accurate language about Israel’s assault on Gaza including “collective punishment” and “slaughter” and Hoyle’s intervention succeeded in avoiding an embarrassing defeat for party leader Sir Keir Starmer and the country he supports, Israel.
Hoyle told the Commons he was “very very concerned” about the safety of MPs, their families, and staff.
22nd February
After a night to reflect on his actions and words, the Speaker returned to parliament and doubled down: “The details of the things that have been brought to me are absolutely frightening…if my mistake is looking after members [of parliament], I am guilty”.
Prime Minister Sunak joined in, telling the nation “We should never let extremists intimidate us into changing the way in which parliament works.” This was exactly what had happened, although Sunak was not pointing the finger at Hoyle, the committed Zionist whose father founded the influential lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.
23rd February
Across the media, there was a wave of fear-mongering, with Nigel Farage stating that “by the 2029 general election, we will have a radical Islamic party represented in Westminster.”
In all cases, no evidence of a security threat was presented, and no police investigation has been announced into any threats made against politicians or diplomats. The public was expected to accept the assertions at face value. We asked RBKC for details of the security threat against the Mayor’s reception, and they replied, “We don’t comment on security matters, so nothing further to add.”
Democracy as a threat
The following week, triggered by George Galloway’s byelection trouncing of all the main parties in Rochdale, the scaremongering peaked with the prime minister leading a synchronised establishment political-media hysteria, presenting anti-genocide protesters as an enemy within, a threat to our democracy and national way of life. By way of evidence, Sunak could only offer evidence of the opposite: the democratic election of an MP.
Presuming the entire British political and media establishment don’t take their cue from Elizabeth Campbell, there are two possibilities. One is that there is common ground in how these institutions, from RBKC to Tory HQ, to Labour to the mainstream media, view Israel’s genocidal onslaught. This could be the result of internalised, racist ideas of how the Middle East should be governed and the acceptability of the extermination of one group by another, if it serves the interests of Western elites.
The second possibility is that the invocation of a dire (albeit fabricated) threat to Britain, and the choice of language used in the articles, speeches and official statements, can be explained by it all being written, crafted and decided on by an aligned set of institutions and people working across national borders to force a narrative onto the public in an attempt to defend the Zionist movement and its crimes.
There is no evidence of a security threat. There were more arrests last year at a festival headlined by Sir Reg Dwight than at hundreds of anti-genocide protests in this country since October 7th.
Specific threats made against RBKC, diplomats and MPs would have triggered arrests and, one would hope, a robust defence of our nation’s traditions and democracy.
In the case of RBKC, the timeline of emails above shows that any security concerns regarding the Mayor’s reception arose during a four-hour period on a Friday afternoon. In the case of the Speaker of the House, he first gave one reason (ensuring a broad debate) then another (the security of our MPs) suggesting that in at least one case, he lied to Parliament. Hoyle appeared hapless, Cllr Campbell insisted the council was innocent and Sunak looked pitiful. But these are people of power, and their policies and statements are not made in moments of emotional vulnerability. A comprehensive public relations strategy lies behind every public utterance these people make.
It is clear who and what RBKC, the Sunak government and the media are persecuting, but who and what are they protecting? What are the interests at stake that force them into a litany of lies? And how extensive is the coordination between them and foreign interests that have no democratic mandate in Britain?
Overlooked Hoax
An overlooked factor in the publicly-funded misinformation and disinformation blitz of February was the Conservative government’s own amendment to the SNP’s ceasefire motion. In it, the government emphasised support for “Israel’s right to self-defence, in compliance with international humanitarian law.” But self-defence does not apply in this case; Israel has zero right to use violence against a population it occupies (UN Resolution 242) and is legally obliged to liberate that population immediately, ending the occupation and facilitating the return of the Palestinian refugees (UN Resolution 194). That it is committing a genocide against a captive population makes the Tories’ point about humanitarian law a sick joke.
The government also highlighting and condemned “the slaughter, abuse and gender-based violence perpetrated on 7 October 2023.”
But there is no evidence of any gender-based violence perpetrated by the Palestinians on October 7th, and all claims to the contrary are being systematically and forensically exposed as a psychological operation. The claims of rape, so central to manufacturing public sympathy for Israel, were a hoax. Even the claim of “slaughter” is a highly contentious one as more and more evidence emerges detailing Israel’s deliberate killing of its own civilians that day, and its failure, or refusal, to rescue hostages from Gaza.
Our government’s racist, Islamophobic lies during the parliamentary farce went unmentioned in the media and parliament by British journalists and politicians who are finely tuned to the every whim of a genocidal foreign government but incapable of engaging with millions of their own citizens who continue to demand peace and justice.
RBKC
Who called the shots at RBKC to ensure it played its part in denigrating anti-war campaigners? A council that has spent years repeating its “change” and “listening to residents” mantras following the Grenfell atrocity abused the same communities again, this time in the service of a genocidal, ethno-supremacist, anti-democratic, Islamophobic, anti-Christian, colonial apartheid state that trashes international law and undermines community cohesion every day.
by Tom Charles @tomhcharles
Urban Dandy London 
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