Police officers are called to Camden Town Hall in King’s Cross to remove protesters from the public gallery

A 15-strong team of police last night (Monday) ordered protesters out of Camden’s public gallery as councillors were told they were crushing free speech and democracy with new changes to the council’s constitution.

The all-member meeting had been brought to a standstill by shouting from the upstairs public seating area which overlooks the main council chamber and the unveiling of Palestinian flags and posters.

Councillors were voting to approve amendments to the rules which will prohibit placards and banners being taken into the public gallery in future, restrict election candidates from taking part in deputations and block discussions on global issues.

Instead, any future deputation must prove that it has “significant” local relevance to the borough.

The changes come after 18 months of demonstrations both inside and outside of the Town Hall in relation to the Middle East conflict, which eventually led to a public deputation demanding the removal of Camden’s pension fund investments from arms companies.

As the leader of council, Labour councillor Richard Olszewski, explained his support for the changes to the rules, the protesters above him began unfurling their flags and holding up posters. When they refused to stop shouting out and ignored pleas from the borough solicitor Andrew Maughan who went up to speak to them, a large group of police officers appeared in the public gallery.

There were no arrests as the demonstrators were ushered out and down the main marble staircase at the front of the building in Judd Street, King’s Cross.

Camden Council clearing the chamber and suspending tonight’s meeting as protesters shout out over proposed ban on banners and deputations about global issues. pic.twitter.com/tKjbMyqnca

— Richard Osley (@RichardOsley) March 3, 2025

All Labour councillors voted in favour of the changes with two notable exceptions: West Hampstead councillor Shiva Tiwari and former mayor Richard Cotton both asbstained.

Cllr Cotton told the meeting: “From the outset can I say I’m acutely aware that some of my colleagues have received horrendous abuse from some of those supporting recent demonstrations and if I thought that these proposals would stop that I would support them without hesitation, but I do have some concerns.

“The word ‘significant’ seems to do a lot of heavy lifting. The supplementary papers indicate that council officers will determine the definition – so are we giving council officers a veto over which external issues we discuss?”

He added: “Banners signs and flags  – will this extend to councillors? I ask because I’m wearing a t-shirt that is clearly political and I’m also wearing a flag badge on my lapel.

“The former leader of this council Georgia Gould frequently referred to our rebellious spirit. Are we not risking that reputation for fear of a few demonstrators in the public gallery? Isn’t this a sledgehammer to crack a few nuts? I remain to be convinced and hopefully assured that this is not just an authoritarian and unnecessary response.”

As he spoke someone from upstairs shouted “the nuts agree”.

Liberal Democrat councillor Tom Simon, the leader of the opposition, said his group supported many of the changes but added some of them would have a “chilling effect on democracy”.

He said: “Banners are a legitimate form of protest and expression and, of course, we recognise that it is possible for a banner to include unacceptable language or images – but this does not warrant a complete prohibition.”

Camden wants to stop election candidates from using deputations at meetings as publicity vehicles but Cllr Simon said the restrictions on who from the public would be allowed to address councillors – and who wouldn’t – went too far.

“Banning residents who are also political activists and who have stated an intention to stand for election is wrong,” he said.

“I think all parties here have had would-be candidates take part in deputations before and I cannot think of a single time when there was any harm in doing so.”

The boroughwide council elections, before which each party will be looking to assemble a slate of 55 candidates, are now just 14 months away.

“It’s not enough to suggest these powers would be exercised with discretion,” said Cllr Simon. “If you have a rule that you only enforce on a subjective basis, it is not a rule but an arbitrary use of power.”

Officers in the public seating area

Councillor Matthew Kirk, another Lib Dem, suggested Camden could expect more disruption to meetings if it tried to prevent people from expressing themselves.

“The deputy mayor [Eddie Hanson] was quite right to clear the gallery tonight because they were looking to shout down democratic discussion taking place in this chamber – not because of a little bit of clapping and the odd shout which was entirely harmless, and not because they designed some rather good posters about posters,” he said.

“In fact they were unfurled when the leader was in the middle of his speech and he wasn’t thrown off his stride at all, nor would anyone else have been by a few bits of paper and the simple, simple position that I stand on is that the more that you reduce legitimate routes to democratic expression – to voicing opinion – the more people are stuck with disrupting meetings in the way that we have seen.”

Green councillor Lorna Jane Russell said the changes were “excessive” and undermine “our core principles of democracy.”

She told the meeting: “Our meetings here must be open and accessible, allowing the public to express their views freely. Banners and placards have long been a peaceful, visible means for our community to communicate their views directly to us and prohibiting them will compromise the democratic principles that underpin our council and our community, and would effectively silence the voices of the very people that we are elected to represent.”

Flags and posters appear behind the leader of the council

On the rules on what could and could not be talked about, Cllr Russell said: “The constraints threaten to exclude diverse voices from discussions.”

Several Labour councillors spoke in favour of the changes.

Councillor Nanouche Umeadi said the council was not silencing anyone, but instead “protecting the integrity of our democratic process”, adding: “I fully understand, deeply, what it means to live under a system where voices are not just ignored but erased. I’m from the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], a country where people march, protest and speak up – yet often their words fall on deaf ears.

“However here in Camden we are privileged to have a system where residents can bring their concerns directly to those in power. That is a right we should we should protect. The constitutional changes do not take away the right to protest. They set a framework that ensures the chamber remains a space for meaningful discussions, not a battleground.

“The changes will ensure the deputations are focused and addresses issues that generally impact our residents and crucially they will help safeguard the mental well-being of councillors who dedicate themselves to serving their communities. Democracy works best when it fosters real engagement, not just noise. I want to hear from my residents.”

Police usher the demonstrators out of the building

Councillor Robert Thompson said: “It feels to me that the present situation in Gaza and Israel is being used opportunistically by very many and has been in this chamber, and that the proposals that are before us today are actually proportionate to what we have experienced as a council being prevented from doing our business.

“They are proportionate to actually what our function is in term of bettering the lives of those within our local community and those in the borough.”

He added: “The freedom of expression is not an absolute freedom and what we have experienced today was some anti-semitic slurs and a racist slur towards Councillor Umeadi. Whatever any of us think about the situation in Gaza there is absolutely nothing that we as a council can do about it

“I come from a time in which the place where my family live would have Israeli flags on the kerbstones and Israeli flags flying because we come from a Protestant, unionist community – and you go to a different part of the town and it will be Palestinian flags. It is not appropriate in this chamber to display any flag or poster that actually prevents us from doing the business that we are here to do.”

Cllr Kirk had said in relation to the posters: “This is a grown up chamber that should be able to deal with bits of cloth and bits of paper.”

Discussions on issues from outside Camden are not completely unheard of at full council meetings. During the Scottish referendum debate, Labour councillors draped themselves with flags and went as far as cancelling one of their meetings so they could all attend a rally in Trafalgar Square appealing for people north of the border to vote to stay in the United Kingdom.

Back in history, Camden took a forceful and prominent stance in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa with many discussions in full council meetings and the renaming of Selous Street in Camden Town to Mandela Street. Labour councillors later devoted parts of its meeting to paying tribute to Nelson Mandela after learning that he was unwell in hospital.

Cllr Olszewski said the proposals were “perfectly reasonable”, adding: “I think some of the abuse we saw directed at Councillor Umeadi at the last meeting and again today rather proves the point of what underlines them and it’s a pity the Liberal Democrats couldn’t actually show some support for someone making a perfectly reasonable point who’s getting shouted down. But when you please the gallery, the gallery never attacks you, does it?”

“It’s not as if we don’t think about what’s going on in the outside world and so. The night I was nominated  to be leader of the council, I recognised that there is a terrible conflict in Gaza and so on and how it impacts people of all faiths and all backgrounds and so on.

“But we’re here to discuss issues relating to how the council provides its services, how it supports its residents and so on and no one in poverty gets by by eating a banner, if I can paraphrase John Hume.”

He then referred to the late Frank Dobson, the long-serving Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, who often used an anecdote about the public caring most about how councillors would stop people urinating in the lifts on their estates.

Cllr Olszewski said: “These changes will focus in a way to answer ‘the Frank Dobson question’. If you can’t stop people doing what they do in the lifts, how do you deal with German re-armament? We can’t. If we can’t sort of fix the lifts, how are we going to deal with anything else? We’re here to focus on fixing the lifts and I think the opposition should be or sections of the opposition should be as well.

“It’s also perfectly reasonable to try and stop people abusing council processes simply to provide them with a political platform.”

Conservative councillors voted in favour of the amendments.

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