Protesters Disrupt PSNI Recruitment at Queen’s Fresher’s Fair

On Wednesday, at the Freshers Fair in Queen’s University Belfast, a coalition of activists came together to disrupt a recruitment stall for the Police Service of Northern Ireland. 

The students gathered around and blocked off the stall, holding placards and directing attention towards themselves. They made statements condemning the PSNI and aired their contentions with the policing organisation.

The student activists accused the PSNI of acting as a rebranded RUC, beating students on campus, and collaborating with Loyalist gangs and Israeli occupation forces. 

The groups involved are QUB Palestine Assembly, Academia for Palestine - Ireland, QUB Anti-Imperialist Society, socialist republican group Conradh na Saoirse Náisíunta, BDS Belfast and Association of Student Activism for Palestine.

This follows similar efforts in 2025, when students converged around the PSNI’s Freshers Fair stall and disrupted their recruitment efforts. 

The PSNI made themselves known on campus in November 2025, when they arrested 4 activists at a protest against the visit of the university’s chancellor, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Previously, in 2024 they arrested 3 students for attempting to unfurl a Palestine flag on the college green.  

The PSNI were accused of using “batons and kicks” to cause injury against the protesters, who were charged with trespass and resisting arrest. The charges were dropped after over a year of proceedings. 

In a joint statement made after the disruption, the students alleged that QUB had assured them there would be no police presence during the Fresher’s Fair, but their presence came as no surprise given QUB’s “track record of imperialist activity”. 

In July 2026, Queen’s University Belfast joined the Defence Universities Alliance, a UK government initiative to push universities towards militarisation so they can better support the British Army. 

Through this initiative, Queen’s will invest in warfare research, create student pipelines into the armed forces, and directly collaborate with the UK military to develop the country’s “warfighting readiness”. 

This was cited by the protesters as evidence of the university’s links to genocide and war profiteering. They also cited QUB’s Blackrock portfolio, which invested £34m in 2025 into companies that are complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

The PSNI have faced difficulty meeting their recruitment goals. In particular, their Catholic recruitment efforts have stalled, with 27% of this year’s applicants being from a Catholic community background, the lowest in 10 years. 

The PSNI is facing several lawsuits from former police officers from Catholic community backgrounds for sectarianism in the force. They have also neglected their duty towards Irish language speakers, making no effort to translate or communicate in Irish during an arrest.

Aontacht has previously reported on data that shows the PSNI’s significant bias towards threatening citizens of a Catholic or ethnic minority background.

The PSNI continues to collaborate with the Israeli National Police on an EU-funded police surveillance research project called ROXANNE. This project aims to improve the state’s ability to analyse private communications, such as phone calls and texts, to better identify their targets. 

Through this project, the PSNI refines their policing methods using data and research produced by Israel, and in turn contributes to the state of Israel’s ability to monitor and control communications.