London man arrested for shouting racial abuse, not for waving the Union flag

Context

According to a video on Instagram, a man in London was arrested for waving a U.K. flag at pro-Palestine demonstrators. Captioned, “POLICE ARREST PATRIOT FOR WAVING 🇬🇧 AT HAMAS SUPPORTERS,” the video shows an elderly man clutching a Union Jack flag as he’s taken away by officers of the Metropolitan Police, London’s police force.

The video was posted on October 14, 2023, and has been shared with similar claims on other social media platforms.

However, the man was arrested for shouting racial abuse at the demonstrators, not for waving a flag. 

In fact

On October 14, 2023, thousands of demonstrators marched in the streets of London in support of Palestine, calling for Israel to put a halt to its retaliatory response to the Hamas attack that had happened one week prior. 

The claims that the Met Police had arrested a man for waving a U.K. flag at the demonstrators appeared on social media on the day of the demonstrations. 

The Met Police soon denied the claims, writing on X/Twitter the same evening “that [the man] was not arrested for anything in connection to carrying the Union Flag.” 

The next day the Met Police released a statement saying the man had now been charged with intentionally causing racially aggravated harassment, alarm, or distress. “The man was arrested after shouting racial abuse at those gathered in Whitehall and making similar racist comments to an officer who spoke with him,” the Met Police said in the statement, stressing that his possession of a U.K. flag was “in no way the reason for his arrest and forms no part of the charges against him.”

The Metropolitan Police's full statement on the incident as shared on X/Twitter on 15 October 2023 (Source: X)

The verdict

The man in the video was arrested after shouting racial abuse at demonstrators and making similar racist comments to a police officer, per the Met Police. He was charged with intentionally causing racially aggravated harassment, alarm, or distress. While he did carry a U.K. flag, it played no part in his arrest. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.