ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

This afternoon’s planned protest against east London’s controversial Jack the Ripper Museum has been cancelled, its organisers have announced.

A statement on the Class War Official Facebook page posted last night reads: “We believe the police are intending to make large scale arrests tomorrow – egged on by a press campaign and the mass presence of journalists from round the world.

“We would be highly irresponsible to our comrades if we put them at risk of arrest. We are therefore cancelling tomorrow’s demo.”

The “Women’s Death Brigade” had planned to try and shut down the museum for the afternoon alongside Class War.

The Whitechapel museum, opened this year, had been advertised to planning chiefs as a women’s history exhibition – but instead turned out to be what campaigners called “a gory, grubby museum” that “glories” violence against women.

Jack the Ripper’s victims were all women, many of whom had been horrifically mutilated.

Last week’s “F*** Parade”, also organised by Class War, saw hundreds of anti-gentrification campaigners gather in the East End to protest about the area’s increasing lack of affordable housing.

During the event Cereal Killer, the Brick Lane cereal café, was targeted with paint and cornflakes, while a window of estate agent Marsh and Parsons was smashed nearby.

“We are fighting a class war,” last night’s Facebook statement adds. “We will fight on our own terms when and where we want to – on our terrain when we can win.

“We choose the time and place for our mobs to gather. We do not now think tomorrow is one of them.

“In all this the message the Women’s Death Brigade want to send out about the Ripper Museum will be totally lost and hijacked by journos and cops working together to identify and arrest people.

“It has been an exceptional week. We believe the phenomenal worldwide coverage is ‘cos the dams of deference are breaking – the paint bomb at the cereal café was the lightning rod for anti-gentrification struggles worldwide.”

In a statement addressing the planned protest, the museum dodged questions about its subject matter – but said: “We understand and sympathise with concerns about gentrification but attacking us is not the answer to solving that issue.

“We, like the brave owners of the Cereal Killer Café, will not give in to bullies. We will be open as usual on Sunday and would ask all Londoners who believe in free speech and freedom of expression to come down to the museum this weekend and show the world that we do not give in to bullying.”

Class War did not respond to the Standard’s requests for comment. Scotland Yard could not confirm whether its policing plan for the afternoon had changed in light of the announcement.