A group campaigning for an armaments embargo against Israel protested a speech given by Nancy Pelosi at the historic Oxford Union debating chamber on Thursday night.
Police removed two protesters interrupting a speech by former U.S. speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Oxford Union on Thursday. Two students stepped in front of the rostrum and unfurled a Palestinian flag. Per a video of the protest action published by campaign group ‘Youth Demand’, which is against Israel and climate change, Pelosi continued to deliver her speech while the flag-holding man stood in silence, surrounded by security.
Police officers later removed the pair from the building but, according to a report in the incident by The Telegraph, no arrests were made. The paper states Pelosi was at the university to give the Benazir Bhutto memorial lecture, a former Oxford University student and Oxford Union president who went on to be the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan. Bhutto was assassinated, it is thought by a radical Islamist, in 2007.
After that speech, Pelosi was due to participate in an Oxford Union debate on the motion “This house believes populism is a threat to democracy”.
Youth Demand, by their own reckoning, say they want both of the United Kingdom’s main political parties to commit to a “two-way arms embargo on Israel” and say they want to stop all new oil and gas drilling in the country. Of the decision to protest Pelosi, they further said: “Warmongers like Nancy Pelosi are not welcome on University campuses. When children are being murdered, and hospitals are being bombed, we will not sit down and be quiet whilst these people are given platforms. We must stand up and take action, because we aren’t fucking around anymore.”
A larger protest took place on Thursday evening outside the venue itself as well, with the Cherwell student newspaper claiming “over a hundred” protesters. The paper states those present “condemned the Oxford Union and Oxford University who they described as “complicit” in the war on the Gaza strip”, as well as the U.S. for giving money to Israel, and Pelosi herself.
Pelosi is in the United Kingdom as part of a tour including a four-day visit to Ireland. While there she boasted that she had interfered in Britain’s Brexit process, saying she’d “had to make it clear to the Brits” that the country could “forget about” a trade deal with the U.S. unless it toed the line on American policy on a united Ireland.