Six held over suspected plot to disrupt London Stock Exchange opening

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Police presence will be heightened in the City of London on Monday after six pro-Palestinian activists suspected of planning to disrupt the opening of the London Stock Exchange were arrested, the Metropolitan police said.

The six activists were “intending to target the London Stock Exchange on the morning of Monday, 15 January, causing damage and ‘locking on’ in an effort to prevent the building opening for trading”, the Met said in a statement.

The plot involved tactics similar to those used by environmental activists such as Just Stop Oil, who have attached themselves to buildings and made arrests difficult for police to make, the Met added. However, the police were unclear what effect the protest would have had on markets had it gone ahead.

No physical trading takes place at the LSE headquarters, so it is unlikely that trading would have been affected. The LSE declined to comment.

A 31-year-old man was arrested in Liverpool on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage, and a further five people, all believed to be part of the same plot, were later detained in Liverpool, London, and Brighton.

“These are significant arrests. We believe this group was ready to carry out a disruptive and damaging stunt which could have had serious implications had it been carried out successfully,” Detective Superintendent Sian Thomas of the Met, the UK’s largest police force, said.

Palestine Action has a record of using direct action to disrupt multinational arms dealers and in recent years has targeted companies providing weapons used in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In particular, members of the group have been charged in relation to rooftop and other protests at factories across the UK run by Elbit Systems, an Israeli military technology company and defence contractor.

The Met said it had received information regarding Monday’s planned protests at the stock exchange from the Daily Express newspaper. The information suggested the protest group had hoped to prevent workers from entering the building on Monday. However, the force was “fairly confident” that Sunday’s arrests had forestalled any disruption, and City of London police would also deploy officers in the area on Monday.

Monday’s planned protest was intended as the start of a “week of action” by Palestine Action, about which the police said they are still gathering intelligence.

“We are in contact with the City of London Police as well as other forces across the UK to ensure that appropriate resources are in place to deal with any disruption in the coming days,” a Met spokesman said.

Tens of thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday in the latest of a string of unrelated mass demonstrations calling for an end to Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza strip, which has claimed the lives of more than 23,000 Palestinians since October 7.