Report by Patrick Harrington, Pius Bentgens, Saskia Henn and Rosie Harris-Davison

Angry demonstrations by protest groups over pensions investments in Israeli interests forced Hackney councillors to conclude a committee meeting behind closed doors last night.

The pensions committee meeting was unable to continue after protesters in the public gallery stood up and shouted about the council’s investment in companies “complicit in Israel’s war crimes.”

The Hackney meeting was the second council meeting in Eastlondonlines boroughs in less than a week to be forced into closed session because of protests related to the Israel-Hamas war. Last Wednesday, the full session of Lewisham Council was adjourned and resumed in private after noisy protests from the public gallery by pro-Palestinian demonstrators. See the ELL report here.

The events inside followed a commotion outside the building between members of different protest groups – the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, ‘Stop the War’ and ‘Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!’ One person was briefly led away by police after he fell to the ground while attempting to grab a microphone.

All groups present were angry because the Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign had been scheduled to speak at the meeting, but were removed from the agenda last week.

There has been a long-running campaign demanding that Hackney council divests from companies including Elbit, Israel’s largest arms manufacturers. Hackney PSC launched a petition for this divestment in 2020 that gathered tens of thousands of signatures. A response from the pensions committee in 2021 stated the council could not commit to any divestment that “might lead to financial detriment and potential breach of Law Commission guidance”.

The protestors’ chants in the chamber led to the councillors retreating behind closed doors to continue the meeting in private. Those in the public gallery were escorted outside the building.

During the meeting, protestors in the public gallery stood up and began chants such as “shame on you” and “stop funding genocide, stop funding homicide and stop funding genocide.” Once councillors attempted to continue the meeting the chants continued: “listen to us.”

Diane Abbott, the independent MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, was outside the council building and spoke to Eastlondonlines: ​“I personally think it’s wrong that Hackney should be investing in companies that contribute to what Israel is doing. And if it’s possible to withdraw that investment, I think they should.”

But Abbott’s speech provoked a negative response from members of the ‘Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism” campaign who shouted into megaphones: “If you want a radical movement to be built you have to speak to us and not the members of the Labour party. How dare Diane Abbot speaks about apartheid like that.”

Abbott was suspended from the Labour Party in April this year after writing a letter to The Observer newspaper suggesting that Jewish, Irish, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people did not experience racism in the same way as black people.

A spokesperson for Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! had the microphone tussled from her hands as angry members from other groups criticised her for speaking against the Labour Party’s inaction.

Heather Mendick, a Hackney activist involed in the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, told Eastlondonlines: “Other members got quite aggressive. They essentially wanted to use a protest for their own agenda.”

Mendick said afterwards: “It would have been so much better for them to just have allowed the issue to be aired, to just have like, had the guts to put it on the agenda. The only way we could speak was to do what we did, which is to stand back and to make noise and to hopefully give them a moment’s pause.

“It’s not just that Hackney Council don’t want to centre some voices, they are centring the voices that support that oppression.” When asked about the protest from the public gallery, Mendick told ELL: “We were just too strong. It was completely packed. And we were very, very united.”

• This article was amended on November 29 to correct group affiliations and add background to the pensions protest and clarify the situation over the protester led away by police.