PALESTINE campaigners responded with fury today after peer and former Labour MP John Woodcock said protest organisers should foot the bill for policing their demonstrations.

As thousands once again thronged the streets of towns and cities across Britain demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, Mr Woodcock, now known as Lord Walney, the government's independent adviser on “political violence and disruption,” made the call for police costs to be dumped on organisers in a review carried out for the Home Office.

He specifically targeted protests by Palestine supporters who have campaigned tirelessly against Israel’s murderous actions for three months.

The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) accused Lord Walney of attempting to end “hundreds of years of the right to protest” and said it was the police themselves who chose to mobilise thousands of officers for the protests.

Stop the War co-convener Lindsey German told the Morning Star: “This is just the latest scheme to stop the demonstrations. 

“The government, the police and Lord Whatever should be clear that the demonstrations will continue as part of our democratic rights. 

“We completely reject the idea that we should be paying for the police. We do not ask the police to turn out. We police our demonstrations ourselves.”

The peace campaign reported an “unprecedented increase in police mobilisations” at Palestine demonstrations and said that new Tory regulations were being used in “constant attempts to refuse us the right to march in certain parts of London, and in one case, to march at all.

“This is despite the fact that the police have themselves acknowledged that the demonstrations have been well organised and overwhelmingly peaceful.

“The fact is that the huge cost of policing our marches is entirely of the police’s own making.

“Here we have a former Labour MP recommending the deeply anti-democratic idea that organisations peacefully protesting against war and for a ceasefire in Gaza should pay for their fundamental right to do so — a right which goes back hundreds of years.”

Mr Woodcock, an independent peer and former Labour MP for Barrow and Furness, states in his report to the Home Office: “The number of marches being organised around the Israel-Hamas conflict, the scale of these marches, and the behaviour of some protesters means that a great amount of police resource is being directed to these protests.

“When groups run so many mass protests, the authorities should consider whether organisers should be asked to contribute to policing costs.”

Thousands of Palestine protesters showed there was no let-up in public revulsion at Israel’s continuing onslaught on Gaza when they demonstrated on Saturday.

Calls for a ceasefire echoed in towns and cities including London, Glasgow, Cardiff, Leeds and Manchester.

Arrests were made in London where a group of protesters staged a sit-down which blocked Westminster Bridge.

In north-west England, a protest organised by Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine (GMPF) brought out hundreds who marched through the city.

More than a thousand people rallied in a freezing George Square in Glasgow to show solidarity with Palestine and Gaza and demand that the city council follow suit. 

Speakers, from Palestine, Lebanon, and Glasgow itself all called those present to sign a petition urging the council to call for an immediate permanent ceasefire, and display its solidarity by flying the Palestine flag over the city chambers.

The city, for decades twinned with Bethlehem, has enjoyed close links with Palestine over the years, but has come under fire for removing mention of the arrangement from the chambers’ lobby and not yet hoisting the flag of Palestine over the building as it had done repeatedly in the past.

In Aberdeen, the focus of solidarity action was once again a picket of Barclay’s Bank.

Addressing the picket, Aberdeen trades council’s Tommy Campbell said: “Barclays have clearly never learned their lessons from 40 years ago.

“After decades of campaigning Barclays eventually surrendered and withdrew their support for apartheid South Africa, and I have every confidence that with thousands across the country and millions around the world campaigning they’ll surrender again.”

In Gaza the death toll is approaching 23,000 and a further 7,000 to 8,000 people are believed to be buried under rubble.

The death toll among health workers in the enclave has reached 374 including doctors, nurses and ambulance workers, many of whom died while helping others.

Joe Grant, former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, has returned his MBE that was awarded in 2009 for services to policing over the government’s support for Israel, provision of weapons being used in the slaughter and the increasing criminalisation of protests and protesters by government and the police.

Palestine support groups are building for the next national protest in London on Saturday, January 13.