Bernard Spiegal

Not as part of a grand conspiratorial plan, notwithstanding what some might wish, but incrementally, step by separate step, the architecture of a repressive, authoritarian state is slowly being erected before our eyes.  A multi-dimensional pincer movement comprising laws, processes, procedures, and rights-denying rhetoric, thematically laced together by the extraordinary growth in the concentration of wealth and media control, are together shrinking the space within which democratic popular practice can occur. 

By way of example, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, a self-avowed supporter of Zionism, has said that government could consider pursuing more curbs on protest laws, including targeting some of the chants used at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This on top of measures already announced intended to limit dissent, for example, by enabling police to consider the ‘cumulative effect’ of protests over time, presumably as a prelude to enforcing restrictions.

The restrictions, current and planned, will of course affect not only pro-Palestinian political expression, but all causes that need to demonstrate and protest in the public domain.

However, precisely because there is no necessary connection between law and justice, governments of an authoritarian bent are eager to exploit the freedom-denying potential of law and legal frameworks. For it is governments that control the machinery of law-making, and, as is being amply demonstrated here in the UK, it is significantly difficult for the modes of popular action – marches, vigils, protest gatherings – to breach the seemingly impenetrable walls of government.

Health sector

Emblematic of Starmer government’s betrayal of fundamental values is its support for, and encouragement of, fundamentally undemocratic means to cower and undermine any expression of Pro-Palestinian, Israel-critical opinion. It seeks to bully both the health and educational sectors into formally adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, with its purported examples of antisemitic behaviour.

NHS staff – 1.5 million of them – will be required to complete mandatory antisemitism and antiracism training based on the IHRA definition, a definition that protects Israel from criticism and, falsely, conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. As is known, the IHRA definition is highly contentious, and has been widely criticised by holocaust scholars and legal experts, Jewish and non-Jewish. 

The state is deploying its coercive powers in a direct and shameful way by making IHRA training a compulsory part of the portfolio of competencies that qualify staff to work within the NHS.

NHS staff members who might object to the IHRA content will have no choice but to undertake it if they wish to work within the health service. This is training as a form of indoctrination, with dissenting staff forced to sing from a discordant hymn sheet – or be fired.

Education sector

The education sector is also under pressure to curtail student protest. Much of that pressure comes from pro-Zionist interests and organisations. From a Liberty report:

At least 28 universities are now known to have launched disciplinary investigations against students and staff in connection with their Palestine activism since October 2023, with as many as 113 people affected…

Emails released under freedom of information (FOI) laws also revealed at least nine universities had received briefings on student protests from private intelligence and security companies.

Gina Romero, the United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly condemned the “deeply disturbing situation” across UK campuses.  She accused universities of taking “deliberate actions to curtail” their students’ rights:

It is as if, overnight, many universities had become an absolutely hostile space for dissent and free expression, for the exercise of rights, and for learning.

Digital surveillance and information storage

There are two, seemingly separate, but actually surely connected developments, that represent a present threat to our individual and group liberties: one, government’s insistence that everyone – or nearly everyone – by 2029 will be required to hold a digital identity card for proving their right to work. The card will eventually link to other data bases, welfare, housing and so forth.

Second, is the rapid increase in the use of facial recognition technology by police and local authorities. Below, I briefly set out examples in the use of facial recognition technology. It represents a worrying trend in the reach of surveillance as we go about our daily lives. This from a Liberty briefing.

Some forces are using ‘live facial recognition’. This usually involves parking vans equipped with the tech on busy shopping streets or outside stadiums and train stations, scanning the hundreds of thousands of us who come within range of the police cameras on the vehicles’ roofs, attempting to match our faces in real time to images on secretive watchlists.

In July 2025, the Met announced it will double its number of weekly live facial recognition deployments. And in August, the Government announced a new fleet of 10 facial recognition vans to expand its use across the country.

South Wales has tested setting up networks of facial recognition cameras across Cardiff for specific events like the Six Nations rugby. This massively expands the facial recognition area when the tech is used and leads to thousands more people being scanned. The same force has also been trialling facial recognition technology on officers’ phones, enabling them to scan and potentially instantly identify anyone they come into contact with.

Other forces have software allowing the police to identify everyone in any pictures and footage they can get their hands on – from CCTV cameras to what we post on our social media accounts. This is called ‘retrospective facial recognition’… because the images and videos already exist. Hammersmith and Fulham has approved plans for 500 CCTV cameras equipped with retrospective facial recognition capabilities, storing all footage to allow searches to find all locations where a given face can be identified.

The rapid growth of police and local authorities using facial recognition technology, and the push by government to ensure that everyone (or almost everyone) has a digital identity card carries the real and present danger of a centralising state holding – or having access to – and controlling, vast reams of data on every individual for purposes known, but also those kept unknown to the public.

The evidence is sparse that we can trust governments to not misuse the capabilities that they have at their command.

Police and the IHRA definition

UK police forces have adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, along with purported examples.  The actual definition is a soup of incoherence, tied to a number of so-called examples that wilfully conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

Essentially, the definition, with the examples hanging on to its coat-tails, is perfectly formed to inflate the number of so-called antisemitic incidences. Taken together – definition/examples – one can barely cough without being accused of antisemitism.

It is ultimately to no-one’s advantage to artificially exaggerate the prevalence of antisemitism through the elastication of language – forcing it to go where it should not go.  Where and when this occurs, it is bad enough. Arguably, however, because of its scatter-gun approach, more and more people will see through it as the anti-democratic, pro-Zionist tool that it is. Ultimately this will not be good for Jews as people come to question the proliferation of accusations that seem more to do with protecting Israel and curtailing free speech here in the UK, than countering antisemitism.

There is also this question: How comes it that Islamophobia receives so little attention in comparison to that of antisemitism? This when:

 Statistics show Islamophobia is on the rise with the number of offences growing each year. Offences relating to Islamophobia have increased by nearly 20% in the past year and form nearly 50% of all faith hate crime making Muslims the most vulnerable Faith group.

Surely there should be parity of esteem, and equal leverage with government across the range of discriminated interests and groups.

Jury trials

The proposal to limit the scope of Jury trials is an example of the state’s willingness to curtail ‘ordinary people’ having agency in the highly significant matter of judging who is innocent and who is guilty in a range of criminal cases.

It is of course David Lammy who is pushing for reform, this in the face of his own Lammy Report of September 2017 which looked to the delivery of three principles when considering trial by jury. They were: guaranteeing fairness, building trust and sharing responsibility for reducing reoffending. The report found that: 

Juries are a success story of our justice system. Rigorous analysis shows that, on average, juries – including all- white juries – do not deliver different results for BAME and White defendants. The lesson is that juries are representative of local populations – and must deliberate as a group, leaving no hiding place for bias or discrimination.

What is starkly revealed here is the shallowness, if it exists at all, of Lammy’s, and therefore the government’s, commitment to ensuring that our justice system actually bends towards pursuing justice.

Juries, because their proceedings are not recorded, nor are they required – indeed, it is forbidden – to justify their verdicts; and because a verdict is always the result of discussion, they can look beyond what might be considered strict application of law, to focus instead on what verdict might be just. The case of the Colston Four is a good example. The four admitted taking down a statute of Colston and pushing it into the river.  Nevertheless, a jury acquitted them of a Criminal Damage charge.  A summary of that case can be found here.

The purported motivation for the proposed Lammy reforms is the need for the justice system to be more efficient, in particular to reduce the backlog of cases yet to be heard, and the sentences yet to be passed; and that the justice system must be more cost-efficient. In other words, the pursuit of justice is not the bedrock value undergirding the proposed reforms. Cost efficiency is.

Democratic space is being wilfully reduced and more actively controlled. This trend seems unstoppable at present.  Juries, in contrast, form a nexus point connecting the application of law to ideas of equity and justice. This is distinct from the context within which magistrates and judges can act. They have no choice but to cling tightly to the law’s strictures.

Looking wider, there may be a connection between government’s intent to limit jury trials, and the forthcoming trials of courageous and principled Palestine Action activists.

Jury trials in England and Wales for crimes that carry a likely sentence of less than three years will be scrapped, the justice secretary has announced [BBC]

One can speculate that a jury is more likely to acquit the activists notwithstanding the actual charges they are answering. A government defeat in the courts will not be to its taste, so best to avoid that possibility by curtailing the possibility of a jury trial.  Or so we speculate.

Sadly, this article could have been significantly longer if I had allowed it to highlight other impositions on, and curtailments of, democratic space.

But for the present, we will rest here.