Letter from Plumstead Jail

Turning up

Being Manhandled by the police in Parliament Square.

What’s most significant about sitting or lying in a police cell in South East London, is how civilised it is. Maybe this has something to do with me being a white British male but I can’t help but think about Palestinian children being detained in an Israeli hell hole by those who viscerally despise you and process you in a language you don’t understand and without a responsible adult there.

I wasn’t connecting the disparate situations emotionally, I was consumed with acclimatising to a situation completely alien to me — in a cell on my own, with no personal belongings or devices to interact with. Cut off from the outside world with no means of exiting except at the convenience of my captors. It was odd being referred to as a prisoner as the police were communicating from the police van while transporting me to the station. It was the strangeness that occupied my mind, relying on my instincts and not any past experience.

Breaking the law

That I hadn’t crossed any ethical line didn’t evoke any sense of injustice on my part. If anything it was a comfort, as I didn’t have to suppress my unrelenting sense of guilt that normally accompanies even the mildest rebuke or correction.

I’d taken part in a protest against the proscription of Palestine Action, displaying my own poster which…