Parliament Square

They came to Parliament Square

armed with

placards,

Sharpies,

and the unreasonable desire

that civilians not be blown apart,

that those queuing for bread not be picked off by snipers,

that mothers not cradle children

who starved to death in the night.

Their crime?

Sitting beneath Gandhi’s bronze patience,

with cardboard declaring,

“I oppose genocide.

I support Palestine Action.”

In 2025,

this is no longer opinion.

It is contraband.

They came to challenge the state,

to test the edges of its tolerance,

but the state had already decided

there would be no more edges—

only walls.

The right to protest,

once paraded as proof of freedom,

was quietly folded away

and filed under “threats to security.”

History will note:

that summer,

Britain was kept safe

from the mortal danger of

cardboard,

marker pens,

and inconvenient questions.