Police have been forced to close Tower Bridge due to a pro-Palestine protest in central London.
City of London Police announced the closure of the bridge to vehicles and pedestrians on Saturday evening, as huge crowds were seen gathered on the road and pavement.
Demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were heard chanting “free Palestine”, in videos posted on social media, as they waved Palestinian flags.
The force confirmed Tower Bridge was shut at around 5.40pm “due to protest activity”, with officers at the scene. Roughly 45 minutes later, police said the bridge had reopened.
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, City of London Police said: “Tower Bridge is currently closed due to protest activity. Officers are in attendance at the scene.”
Later, it wrote: “Tower Bridge has now reopened. Thank you for your patience.”
It comes after the Palestine Solidarity Campaign defended the right to lobby MPs “in large numbers”, amid reports the group wanted so many protesters to turn up that Parliament would “have to lock the doors”.
The group said the issue of MPs’ security was “serious” but should not be used to “shield MPs from democratic accountability”.
The organisation’s director Ben Jamal said thousands of people were “shamefully” denied entry into Parliament on Wednesday as they attempted to lobby MPs to vote in favour of a ceasefire in Gaza in what he described was one of the largest physical lobbies of parliament in history.
The Times reported that Mr Jamal told a crowd of demonstrators in the build-up to the protest on Wednesday: “We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of Parliament itself.”
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker who has faced calls to resign after going against convention during the SNP’s Opposition Day debate on a ceasefire, said his motivation for widening Wednesday’s discussion was fuelled by concern about MPs’ security because of intimidation suffered by some parliamentarians.
Mr Jamal said the group “does not call” for protests outside MPs’ homes and believed parliamentarians have a right “to have their privacy respected”.
The Government’s political violence tsar has said police should have the powers to “disperse” protests around Parliament, MPs’ offices and council chambers that they deem to be threatening.
Baron Walney, the Government’s adviser on political violence and disruption, said on Friday that the “aggressive intimidation of MPs” by “mobs” was being mistaken for an “expression of democracy”.
The crossbench peer, who in December submitted a Government-commissioned review into how actions by political groups can “cross into criminality and disruption to people’s lives”, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he was calling for police forces to act “uniformly in stopping” protest outside MPs’ homes.