Mayor joins vigil marking ‘grief and horror’ of Middle East conflict

Mayor Woodley speaks with Father Taylor, Rabbi Gluck and Eusoof Amerat from Masjid Quba. Photograph: Josef Steen / free for use by LDRS partners

Hackney’s mayor has said she feels “overwhelming shame” in light of the Israel-Gaza war and has been “shaken to the core” by the unfolding humanitarian crisis.

On Wednesday, Mayor Caroline Woodley gathered with faith leaders and others at a peace vigil on Clapton Common, marking the “grief and horror” of the conflict.

Members from Hackney’s Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities were also present, and stood in a circle on the grass with residents.

Her voice breaking, Mayor Woodley said: “What I feel in my heart, in all honesty, is overwhelming shame – that I lead a borough that sees poverty, division, and has communities who have cried out for change in the face of genocide and famine, not only in Gaza, but across the world.

“I do not want shame to defeat me or any of us in finding a way forward. We have to call out for what is right, and I have to believe it’s never too late.”

She added that people were now hearing stories that “make us question our humanity”.

“In my job, I have to compartmentalise,” she said.

“I move from meeting to meeting, decision to decision, and it terrifies me that at times you may shut off emotion, and try to see things from a bird’s eye view, objectively.”

Local clergyman Father William Taylor began the vigil with a call to stand and “share some silence” together.

Rabbi Herschel Gluck said: “We are gathered here today in a place which is called a common, and we all have something in common.”

Mohammed Maljee, from Masjid Quba, described his feeling of isolation living in the borough since the war’s outbreak.

“The Quran says the person who kills one soul has killed humanity and the person who saves one soul has saved humanity,” he said.

“We, who profess to care for animals and insects, have somehow been silent when children are being shred into pieces.

“Today, seeing people of different faiths and different ages, I feel so proud to see young children as part of us, who are here to understand that we can’t normalise this.”

The vigil was organised by singer-songwriter James Riley and other community members in collaboration with local initiative Clapton Commons, supported by St Thomas’s Church.

“This is about reclaiming the common – not just as physical space, but emotional space too. Shared sorrow, held together in public, can open up solidarity and healing,” Riley said.

It followed five other meetings of its kind under the name ‘Common Grief’, which began in the winter solstice last year.

He admitted to fearing that the vigils would turn into “milquetoast, toothless expressions” of sadness inadequate amid the scale of destruction.

“Six events on, I don’t think that’s what’s happened. We’ve been able to be present for the grief this entire situation evokes.”

The mayor’s words came a day after she had issued a statement condemning Israel’s expanded military operations in Gaza, and its refusal to allow all but the basic quantity of food to Palestinians in the territory.

In it, she said that the borough’s communities, “along with many thousands of voices raised across the country”, had been constant and clear in the need for the government and allies to stop the war and the humanitarian crisis.

Her words followed a joint statement by the UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, alongside the leaders of France and Canada, which denounced Israel’s “wholly disproportionate escalation” of its military assault and blockade of critical aid to the Gaza Strip.

Woodley invoked the warnings of UN emergency relief coordinator Tom Fletcher, who last week said no aid had entered Gaza for more than 10 weeks and that “every single one” of the region’s 2.1 million people faced the prospect of famine.

But the mayor’s statement prompted criticism from activists and political groups who argued that it was “far too little, too late”.

A letter, co-signed by Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Greens, Hackney Independent Socialists and others, stated: “The mayor and Hackney Council have repeatedly ignored communities’ calls to stop military operations.”

The groups slammed the council for refusing to divest millions invested in corporations supplying arms to Israel, such as Elbit Systems, through its pension fund, and for rebuffing calls for the borough to un-twin from the state’s third-largest city, Haifa.

“Without action, Mayor Woodley’s statement is worse than empty – it is a cowardly denial of Hackney Council’s continued complicity in genocide, which she has personally overseen.”