An ‘independent adviser’ to the government has been grilled about accusations of impartiality over his lobbying links, ahead of launching his review recommending tougher action for protest groups including for Palestine liberation and against climate change.
Lord Walney, also know as John Woodcock, quit Labour in 2018, after being accused of sexual harassment, and is now a crossbench peer. He was made the UK Government’s ‘independent adviser on political violence and disruption’ and his report ‘protecting our Democracy from Coercion’ was laid before parliament today.
He was tasked by the government to lead its crackdown on protests, including ones against the climate crisis and global arms trade, however he was accused of a conflict of interest with links to both the fossil fuel and weapons lobbyists.
Woodcock chaired the Purpose Defence Coalition with members including one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers Leonardo, which has links to the Israeli government. Co-founder of campaign group Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, said it was a “sham” for the government to claim Lord Walney is an ‘independent’ adviser.
Ammori said: “By writing this report, he is working to protect the interests of Israel’s military supply chain, over the will of the British people, who overwhelmingly support an arms embargo on Israel.”
On his proposals, Woodcock has said “militant groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil are using criminal tactics to create mayhem” and accused left-wing activists of holding “the public to ransom”.
The report includes suggesting that some protest groups have to pay for policing of their protests and calls for a ban on protest groups organising or raising money if they “cause serious disruption”. On Palestine Action group, the report says, “given the extreme and evolving nature of the group’s tactics, the Government should keep under review the question of whether Palestine Action meets the criteria for proscription as a terrorist entity”.
During an episode of The News Agents podcast last week, journalist Jon Sopel asked Lord Walney whether he was the right person to be advancing these arguments, given his role as the former chair of Labour Friends of Israel and accusations that he was being funded by the “Israel lobby”.
When grilled about these accusations, Lord Walney accused Palestine Action of using a “textbook example of the kind of anti-semitism that mainstream organisations have tried to move away from”.
But the presenters challenged him again over how his links to Israel and the arms industry could be seen as a conflict of interest.
Emily Maitlis asked: “John, you are the former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, do you not see how this is going to come across to supporters of Palestinian liberation?”
He replied: “Well I don’t think I would go into this thinking I was going to make friends with people who are part of that extreme end of the pro-Palestine movement anyway.”
He went on to defend the Purpose Defence Coalition including defence related companies who he said “value the contribution they make to the UK economy” and that “we should all do that.”
Presenter Sopel replied that “people would beg to differ” about his claim to being an impartial voice.
His full report was published today.
(Image credit: News Agents / screenshot YouTube)
Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward
Attacks on democratic rights will not excuse Israel’s war crimes
From the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Media Team
Today, John Woodcock (Lord Walney) – inaccurately described by the government as an ‘Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption’ – has published his much-trailed report calling for a crackdown on democratic protests. Michael Gove M.P. has chosen the same day to deliver a speech falsely accusing those who have marched for Palestinian rights of antisemitism.
This comes just a day after International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Karim A.A. Khan KC, applied for a series of arrest warrants for war crimes, including for the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Minister of Defence.
John Woodcock is a paid lobbyist for weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies and a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Several of his recommendations are transparent attempts to use the law to further his political disagreement with the recent marches in support of Palestinian rights. Others are extraordinarily draconian – including an effective ban on any protests outside council chambers.
Using police resources to suppress political protests might serve the interests of Woodcock’s corporate paymasters but would seriously undermine long-held democratic principles. This comes on the very day that Liberty has won a court case to prevent an unlawful attempt by the government to overturn the will of parliament and restrict the right to demonstrate. Everyone who truly cares about preserving democratic freedoms will utterly reject these proposals. This thoroughly compromised report should be allowed to gather dust in the obscurity it deserves.
Unlike Michael Gove, the organisers of the recent demonstrations against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza have a proud track-record of challenging all forms of racism. Every single one of the fourteen London demonstrations for Palestinian rights that we have organised in the past seven months has been attended by thousands of Jewish people, including an organised and highly visible Jewish bloc and Jewish speakers on every platform. At our demonstration in Hyde Park last month, Jewish Holocaust survivor, Stephen Kapos, spoke to a crowd of 200 thousand – probably the largest audience ever addressed by a Holocaust survivor in Britain. Anyone who was genuinely motivated by a desire to combat antisemitism, as opposed to cynically shield the state of Israel from legitimate accountability, would celebrate rather than attempt to dismiss these facts.
Those who continue to demonstrate against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, calling for a ceasefire, and for Palestinian human rights and international law to be upheld, are driven by consistent anti-racism. They are exercising precious democratic rights and represent the views of the vast majority of British people who, unlike the government, support these noble goals. These latest smears cannot be allowed to distract from the horrors that Israel continues to inflict on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The British government must end its complicity with Israel’s criminal violence by halting the arms trade with Israel and give full support to both the ICC and the ongoing work of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where Israel is currently on trial for genocide.
Ben Jamal, PSC Director, said, “The resumption of these baseless attacks by Michael Gove and John Woodcock amount to an admission: apologists for Israel’s genocidal violence and system of apartheid have lost the democratic and legal arguments, but continue to attempt to delegitimise Palestinian solidarity. They will not succeed.
At a moment when Israel is on trial in the world’s highest court for the crime of genocide and the day after its Prime Minister has been threatened with ICC arrest warrants for war crimes, it is grotesque that these smears continue. The real issues are that the UK government continues to arm Israel, refuses to resume funding to UNRWA, and is attempting to protect Israel from legal accountability. Far from stopping the genocide in Gaza as required under international law, the UK is complicit and actors such as Gove and Woodcock attempt to deflect from that fact.
They discredit themselves, not the Palestinian solidarity movement.”
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