The pictures from last week's sit-in protest in Parliament Square over the banned group Palestine Action were unprecedented.
As demonstrators held up placards reading, "I support Palestine Action", some 522 of them were arrested on suspicion of breaking terrorism laws - more than double the total such arrests in 2024.
Their average age was 54, said the police. Some 112 of them were over 70 years old.
The battle over the ban on Palestine Action (PAG) - last month, proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK - now feels as much a political and PR battle as a legal one.
And the organisers of the campaign are trying to capitalise on perceived sympathy among some of the public by organising another demonstration in September - hoping to force the state, through numbers, to lift the ban.
