Twelve people were arrested as hundreds joined a pro-Palestinian Al Quds Day demonstration on one side of the Thames, while hundreds more gathered on the opposite bank to support Israeli and US attacks on Iran.
At least 1,000 police officers were drafted in to keep the two rival protests separate. Lambeth Bridge, the river crossing closest to each protest, remained closed on Sunday afternoon.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Ade Adelekan said: “We have made 12 arrests, including for showing support for a banned organisation, affray and for threatening or abusive behaviour. We are also investigating chants uttered by a speaker at the Al Quds protest.”
Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood agreed to a police request to ban Al Quds protesters from marching, for the first time since 2012. She said: “I hope that the full force of the law will be applied to anyone who spreads hatred and division instead of exercising their right to peaceful protest.”
Police warned Al Quds protesters on Albert Embankment that they would arrest those displaying banners, flags or chanting slogans that “cross the line into hate crime or support for a banned organisation”.
Some carried banners of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, or his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war.
There was also a heavy police presence on the Thames at Millbank at a counter-protest co-organised by Stop the Hate and the Iranian Lion Guard group.
Some protesters carried an Israeli flag and the flag of the Iranian state before the 1979 Islamic revolution to show support for Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former pro-Western monarch.
Georgie Stagg, 70, a retired arts administrator from Lewisham wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh, walked past the pro-Israel demonstration on her way to the Al Quds rally. A police officer quickly moved her forward and said, “Because of what you’re wearing, unfortunately I’m going to have to ask you to move in that direction.”
Stagg said: “We have marched on Al Quds Day for 40 years and I have never seen any problems. There was friction last year, but that was because pro-Israel people were in Parliament Square, along with many far-right members who were causing the problems.”
Stagg added: “You can’t criticize the Iranian government for being undemocratic when we have a government here that is arresting people with signs. We were told you couldn’t say ‘from the river to the sea,’ and you can’t say global intifada; that just means uprising.”
The rival demonstrations exposed bitter divisions among Iranians in the UK. One of the pro-Israel protesters carried a banner that read: “Get rid of terrorism and go to hell.”
Raham Moshami, 52, fled Iran in 2010 after being tortured in prison. He showed scars on his forehead as proof. “We are here to support our people, because the Iranian government is holding my people hostage,” he said.
He added: “Netanyahu and Trump are trying to help us. We have to remove a cancer, because the Iranian government is like a cancer. Pahlavi is a good man, he is highly educated.”
Moshami also dismissed the al-Quds protesters as being in the pay of the Iranian government, without offering any evidence to support that claim.
Across the Thames, Fereydun Bahrami, 71, had traveled by coach from Glasgow with 50 other Iranians to join the Al Quds protest, named after the Arabic name for Jerusalem and organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission.
“We are here to celebrate Al Quds Day and also protest against the war,” he said. Bahrami, who left Iran to study engineering in Glasgow, where he later ran a metals factory, carried a sign reading “Stop using UK bases to bomb Iran”.
Pointing across the river, he said: “They are brainwashed to support Israel, rather than their families under bombardment.”
He added: “I am very sad about this war. At the beginning, the United States killed 168 girls in a school. For the last 47 years, Iran has not attacked anyone.”
Bahrami objected to government ministers suggesting the demonstration was a hate march. “This is a march of love, how can it be a march of hate?” said. “We love human beings. We love the Jewish people. We are Muslims, we are bound by religion to love everyone else. There is no hate in this crowd here.”
Salma, 60, who works for a shipping company in London, said she supported Iranian retaliation against targets in the Gulf. She said: “Fighting back and confronting Americans is right: Trump had no right to come in and remove an 86-year-old leader.”
He added: “You can’t allow one party to bomb schools and then worry about the ships waiting in the Strait of Hormuz. If oil prices are going up, who cares? Because at the end of the day, this was created by the United States.”
Adelekan said fewer people attended the march than planned due to the restrictions. “Our police plan worked, we kept both groups separate and we saw no attempt by either side to violate the conditions by marching. Both groups dispersed as planned starting at 3 p.m.,” he said.
“The restrictions and conditions caused many people to choose to stay away and not attend the protest or counter-protest.”
