New legislation would limit the ability to ‘intimidate our communities’, Tim Roca told the European Jewish Association’s conference
November 3, 2025 15:44
A Labour MP has hit out at pro-Palestine protests, which he claimed deliberately target the Jewish community.
Speaking at the European Jewish Association conference in Krakow, Poland, on Monday, Macclesfield MP Tim Roca attacked what he described as “the appalling antisemitism in some of the protests in London”.
He added that “it is not right that those protests are deliberately choosing routes that go via our Jewish communities or near our synagogues”, and championed legislation the government has announced which would take account of the “cumulative impact” on the Jewish community of repeat protests.
“I look forward to the legislation the government is considering to restrict the ability of protests to intimidate our communities.”
Roca was speaking alongside fellow European parliamentarians – including French senator Laurence Rossignol, Austrian MEP Lukas Mandl, Greek Deputy Minister of Social Security Konstantinos Karagjounis and Dutch MEP Bert-Jan Ruissen – discussing the challenges in the fight against antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
He started his remarks by paying tribute to the victims of the Heaton Park shul terror attack, Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz.
The 40-year-old described the attack as “a clear-cut case of Jew-hatred, that also demonstrates some of the things that we're discussing today, which is how antisemitism is also intersecting with anti-Zionism”.
Roca described the levels of anti-Jewish hatred in the UK as “astonishing” and told those present: “20 per cent of all religious hate crimes are directed towards Jews, who are only 0.5 per cent of the population.”
Roca went on to say that ordinary members of the British public were “shocked” to discover the levels of security required by the Jewish community in the UK.
“They can't believe that there are fellow citizens of theirs who live in an environment where they are constantly under threat, and where, when they leave the synagogue or the school, they may decide it's not safe for them to wear their kippa, that they have to hide their identity; and that's thoroughly unacceptable in this day and age, in a western society.”
Roca, who won his seat at the 2024 general election, praised the government’s increase in funding for the Community Security Trust, but admitted there was still more to do.
He went on to re-emphasise the need for all political figures “to be vigilant to antisemitism and anti-Zionism”, adding: “We're seeing signs of anti-Zionist rhetoric making its way into the discourse of parties, and that's totally unacceptable”.
The Labour MP also highlighted his own party’s struggle with antisemitism, continuing: “If you told me when I first joined 20 years ago, I would be marching against my own party because it was failing to deal with antisemitism. I would never have believed you, but that's where we were.”
Other panellists shared their own experiences of the increased challenge of combatting antisemitism on both the far-right and far-left, as well as Islamist antisemitism.
Rossignol, a socialist senator, lamented the silence about Hamas’ sexual violence on October 7: “my first commitment after the October 7 has been to break the silence about rapes on October 7 … which nobody wanted to talk even my feminist activists, friends”.
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