Cllr Paul Swaddle on BBC London - Should repeated protests in London be banned?

Tonight, BBC London focused on growing calls for a pause in protest planned for this weekend, leading to one of Scotland Yard's biggest ever public order operations. One of the marches, the Unite the Kingdom Rally, will start in Kingsway and it'll go via the Strand onto Whitehall, into Parliament Square. Meanwhile, the Nakba Day pro-Palestinian march starts on Exhibition Road and heads east via Knightsbridge and Piccadilly to Pall Mall.

Cllr Paul Swaddle, Leader-elect of Westminster Council, has written to the Home Secretary and the Met calling for repetitive protests to stop, in particular pro-Palestinian marches.

We have marches in central London week after week after week, and some of them are very hateful, and they are putting people off coming into central London.

Both visitors and residents are worried about being seen going to synagogue and travelling around London. And that's wrong. And the Home Secretary is the person who decides what marches can and can't happen. And they need to take a much stronger line on banning the marches.

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