Sir Mark Rowley deserves credit for recognising the potential for serious disorder around Al Quds Day. His decision to write to the Home Secretary requesting a ban on the march was a sensible and proportionate step. But the commissioner’s subsequent explanation in a Times op-ed reveals a troubling failure of analysis: a false equivalency that treats activists aligned with the Islamic Republic and Iranian dissidents protesting against the regime as if they were two comparable protest movements posing similar risks.
Under the Public Order Act 1986, restrictions on demonstrations must be based on a clear assessment of risks to public safety. In that context it is difficult to accept the commissioner’s insistence that the ideological nature of the conflict surrounding the demonstrations is unimportant. “This is not about ideology,” he wrote. “It is not about policing taste or decency.”
Yet ideology is key to making an informed risk assessment.
Rowley begins his article by acknowledging the Islamic Republic of Iran’s hostile activities in the UK and its targeting of dissidents living here. But he then proceeds to collapse the opposing camps into a single category of risk that obscures the true nature of the threats emanating from the two different grooups.
On one side are activists aligned with an Islamist regime that is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Only two months ago the Islamic Republic killed tens of thousands of its own citizens while crushing dissent at home. Its networks abroad — including those operating in Britain — are organised, well-resourced and ideologically committed.
A report released this week by Lord Walney, Undue Influence, details how organisations linked to the Iranian regime have exploited Britain’s charitable sector – including some of the same groups involved in organising Al Quds Day demonstrations. These networks are not spontaneous protest movements but part of a broader infrastructure of influence aligned with a hostile state.
Security professionals have long understood the scale of the challenge. Lord Beamish of the Intelligence and Security Committee warned after October 7 that Iran poses “a wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK”.
On the other side are largely unorganised Iranian dissidents and their allies, many of whom are motivated simply by the hope that the regime in Tehran might one day fall.
Treating these groups as equivalent actors in a symmetrical conflict is not neutrality; it is analytical failure undermining effective policing. It would appear self-evident that organisations with ties to the Islamic Regime, and potential access to their resources, pose a far higher risk of disorder than anything the Iranian dissidents would be capable of.
The reality of this ideological divide was visible at a rally on March 6 organised by the Palestinian Youth Movement. Many participants waved the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Counter-protesters – largely Iranian dissidents and supporters of Israel – gathered nearby to thank the United States and Israel for striking the regime in Tehran, which they hope may eventually free their families from tyranny.
The tone on the regime-side was markedly different. Speakers denounced London as “the belly of the beast” and crowds chanted slogans calling for the destruction of both Israel and the United States.
The differences seen that night are the ideological differences that Sir Rowley wishes to ignore – and they are not minor.. They reflect an ideological worldview rooted in the revolutionary theology of the Iranian regime – a belief system that frames the West as decadent and sees confrontation with it as part of a messianic struggle. It is these deeply held religious beliefs which motivate the terrorist threats that the Commissioner acknowledged, based in the hatred of the West and its values. That is why the Palestinian Youth Movement demonstrators were happy to chant, “Smash the Zionist Settler State, Smash the US Imperial state”.
Such beliefs matter because they shape behaviour and risk. They help explain why organisations sympathetic to Tehran mobilise around causes such as Al Quds Day, and why those movements are often intertwined with networks that promote hostility toward Jews and Israel.
The Met’s own guidance on inciting racial hatred states that chants which explicitly call — or strongly imply — the violent destruction of Israel or violence against Jews should be considered a criminal offence. Yet when I tried to raise these specific chants with the Superintendent commanding the protest, he had no time to discuss it. An Inspector was more willing to engage. When I showed him the Met’s guidance, he conceded that the chant appeared relevant. But he said it was not feasible to deal with the individual leading as it might agitate the crowd.
In other words, the law was not enforced because enforcement might prove inconvenient.
This pattern — avoiding confrontation with militant activists for fear of escalation — feeds the perception of two-tier policing. It is not difficult to see why. Figures reported this week suggest that allegations of anti-Muslim hate crime are roughly twice as likely to result in prosecution as allegations involving anti-Jewish hostility, despite Jews being ten times more likely to be the target of such criminality.
Statistics alone never tell the whole story. But when combined with a pattern of visible reluctance to confront extremist rhetoric on the streets, they raise legitimate questions about whether policing leadership is too often tempted by appeasement.
Recent controversies elsewhere reinforce that concern. The West Midlands Police decision to bar Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from an Aston Villa match — widely criticised as capitulating to sectarian pressure — illustrated how quickly operational decisions can slide into political accommodation.
Rowley’s decision to physically separate rival demonstrations was sensible as a short-term measure to prevent disorder. For one weekend, it may well succeed. But policing Britain in the long term requires more than crowd control. It requires the willingness to recognise ideological threats when they appear — and to confront them without hesitation.
Until that happens, the perception that Britain is policed unevenly — that some extremist movements are handled with caution either because the police don't understand their ideological threat or maybe understand it too well — will continue to grow.
Sir Mark Rowley has shown he understands the immediate risks of Al Quds Day. The real test is whether he is prepared to confront the deeper problem: the organised ideological forces behind it. Only then can the Metropolitan Police credibly claim to uphold the principle of policing without fear or favour.
Gill Levy is a former Metropolitan Police officer
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