The last London M&S picket of 2004 on 30 December was lively and spirited. 30-40 demonstrators chanted, leafleted, made speeches, sang amended versions of Christmas carols and gave Oxford Street the message that we support and will continue to support the Palestinian Intifada. We were joined for short periods by lots of sympathetic members of the public and, other than a few isolated and irate Zionist passers-by, we met with no hostility. The rightwing Zionist organisation Betar, which has been opposing us for the past 18 months, has given its counter-demonstration a rest over Christmas/New Year, and although the police are very far from being our friends, their attitude over recent months has become one of trying to bore rather than scare us into giving up. Just as we wouldn’t be scared, we will certainly not get bored!

We are, of course, aware that our comrades and friends in Manchester have had a far harder ride lately, with virulent Zionists attacking them at the same time as the police and local council have been conspiring to have them banned from the city centre.

We also know that in other towns individuals and small groups have struggled to organise pickets of M&S in the face of general apathy, not to mention disinformation and sometimes downright hostility from political organisations which nominally support Palestine and should know better. So, big up everyone in Brighton, Nottingham, Glasgow, Leicester, Canterbury, Stratford, Durham and anywhere else I have missed out, who has picketed M&S this year. Well done to you. Keep up the fight. Solidarity is strength!!

Marks and Spencer is Britain’s biggest corporate supporter of Zionism. And all those who have been telling us for the past four years that this support was a thing of the past, or that picketing M&S was ‘anti-Semitic’ and somehow connected to the religion or ethnicity of the founders rather than the store’s policies (for the record, Spencer was not Jewish), had to shut up in December, when the British-Israeli Chamber of Commerce held its annual dinner and the guest of honour was – Stuart Rose, Chief Executive of M&S! And of course, we were there outside the event, loudly putting our message across.

So, a big thanks to everyone who has been with us this year. Please redouble your efforts next year, and bring all your friends along too. We salute you. But most of all, we salute the valiant, risen people of occupied Palestine, those who struggle every day against enormous odds for a better future for us all. Freedom, justice, peace, struggle. The wall must and will fall. VICTORY TO THE INTIFADA!