The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign Scotland is offering its full support to Willie Black, an organiser of the Gaza protests in Edinburgh since last October, and a lifelong trade union and socialist activist.

We defend the right to protest. It’s clear that the UK state is cracking down on peaceful protest by judicial means, such as the handing out of five-year sentences to Just Stop Oil activists, and through the use of police violence against pro-Palestinian activists at the Thales factory in Govan.

The right to protest is a democratic right which is being rapidly eroded. The new Labour government must halt this drift to Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, Orban-style violent state authoritarianism.