For a second successive year, Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) has abandoned its annual diplomatic reception. It seems probable the decision to forsake the prestigious gathering was taken to protect both the council and Israel from unwanted scrutiny and public relations embarrassment.

What is the annual diplomatic reception?

The yearly event is hosted by RBKC’s Mayor in the Mayor’s Parlour and brings together diplomats from across the planet whose embassies are located in the royal borough. In the words of RBKC’s Leader, Elizabeth Campbell, the reception is held for the “genuine purpose of bringing different communities together.”

The council’s press office told us last year that the event is for ambassadors “to meet each other and learn about what is happening in the local area.”

The borough is home to 42 embassies, almost covering the full alphabet, Armenia to Yemen. Among the 42 is Israel represented by its chief diplomat in Britain, Tzipi Hotovely.

2024

In 2024, RBKC defended inviting Israel and Hotovely to the reception despite the ambassador’s genocidal public statements which (prima facie) make her complicit in ethnic cleansing. Anti-genocide campaigners planned a protest, questions were asked about the appropriateness of hosting Hotovely, and a few days before the event, the council pulled the plug.

RBKC cited “security” as their sole reason to cancel. When we asked what the specific concern was, the council’s press officer (a former Ministry of Defence employee) told this website, “We don’t comment on security matters.”

2025

This year, with Israel’s genocide in the Gaza death camp still being aided and abetted by Britain, RBKC again cancelled the reception. So far in 2025, the council’s Investment Committee has resisted calls for it to divest staff pensions from arms companies complicit in Israel’s crimes, and as we reported last month, all politicians from the majority Conservative and opposition Labour parties refused to back a motion calling for a ceasefire and divestment tabled by an independent councillor.

But RBKC denied that it had cancelled the reception, telling us, “It isn’t accurate to say it has been cancelled, because it is not always held annually by every mayor.”

We asked RBKC to name the other years that it had not hosted the event, but (unbelievably) the council press office could only find records going back five years, during which time only two diplomatic receptions were held, in 2022 and 2023.

We had better luck than the council’s own press team and discovered that the only times the reception had not been held were due to Covid (2020, 2021) or genocide (or, from the council’s point of view, “security” concerns, 2024).

Despite the press office claiming the diplomatic reception is not a yearly occurrence, they and the council Leader refer to it on their own website as the “annual Diplomatic Reception.”

2009

During one of Israel’s earlier Gaza massacres in 2009, RBKC’s Labour councillors tabled a motion calling on the Mayor to withdraw the invitation of the Israeli ambassador to the reception. Labour’s Chief Whip, Councillor Catherine Atkinson said, “Are we seriously proposing to stand in the Mayor’s Parlour sipping champagne with the Israeli Ambassador at this time while Gazans are still pulling their dead from the rubble?”

Cover

During the years of Israel slowly suffocating the Palestinian people by siege, occupation, military assault, torture, theft, deceit and far more, western politicians and institutions hid their complicity behind the language of conflict and diplomacy. What would they do when Israel’s mask was fully removed, and the end game came into sight, the extermination of the indigenous population by a settler state?

The terms and conditions of participating in public life in Britain are now clear: loyalty or at least acquiescence to Zionism is expected. Councillor Atkinson, outspoken in 2009, now represents the people of Derby North in parliament and is silent on the genocide. RBKC could have gone ahead with its annual reception but not invited the Israelis, but that would have required a measure of courage that this council does not possess.

by Tom Charles

@tomhcharles @urbandandyldn