Morning Star Editorial: Looming Palestine Action ban a dangerous assault on our freedoms

YVETTE COOPER’S determination to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for an entirely peaceful protest is a grotesque assault on civil liberties.

If it is not defeated it will have a chilling effect on free expression in Britain, and not just on direct actions of the kind Palestine Action specialise in.

Witness the absurd prosecution of Kneecap band member Liam Og O hAnnaidh for allegedly displaying the flag of proscribed Lebanese group Hezbollah: public expressions of support for Palestine Action would become illegal. As Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley makes clear, that would include the kind of solidarity demonstration that took place in Trafalgar Square today.

Some say the government’s hysterical overreaction is due to deep embarrassment that two individuals could break into Britain’s biggest RAF base, ride up to military jets on scooters and pour paint into their engines in protest at the RAF’s role in providing intelligence to Israel’s armed forces committing war crimes in Gaza, before leaving undetected.

But the reality is that Cooper’s draconian extremism is entirely aligned with the government’s record — and that of its predecessor.

The cross-party consensus in favour of an ever more authoritarian state is as firm as their joint support for militarism, war and an Israeli state facing genocide charges in international courts.

Labour in opposition declined to overturn the successive restrictions on our freedoms by the last Conservative government — from the policing, public order and national security Acts gifting police sweeping powers to shut down protest and providing for 10-year prison sentences for being a “serious nuisance,” to new ministerial authority to declare organisations “extremist” with no court process or right of appeal, banning public authorities from then talking to them.

In power, Cooper’s Crime and Policing Bill continues the repressive drive, with government amendments giving police greater powers to imprison protest organisers and impose huge fines on participants if they breach increasingly arbitrary police restrictions.

This legislation is aimed squarely at suppressing the mass movement for Palestine. So is the ban on Palestine Action. Both are attempts by an unpopular government to mask just how unpopular its active complicity in Israel’s war crimes are.

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Government plans to ban Palestine Action ‘a threat to all of us’

Home Secretary Cooper confirms plans to ban the group and claims it’s peaceful activists ‘meet the legal threshold under the Terrorism Act 2000’

PROTESTERS gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square shouting “we are all Palestine Action” yesterday as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper confirmed plans to ban the group under terrorism laws for its direct action campaigns.

Hundreds waved Palestine flags and chanted at the top of the square, parts of which were cordoned off for an event.

Some protesters spilled onto the road and staged a brief roadblock before being arrested by the Metropolitan Police under Section 14 of the Public Order Act.

Protesters clashed with police to resist the arrests, with one woman shouting “that’s too much force” and others chanting: “Let them go.”

The protest was originally set to take place outside Parliament, where there was more space, but the police imposed an exclusion zone.

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Ban on Palestine Action would have ‘chilling effect’ on other protest groups

Haroon Siddique Legal affairs correspondent

Proscribing organisation under anti-terrorism laws raises stakes amid already increased powers to stop protests

The crackdown on protest in England and Wales has been ringing alarm bells for years, but the decision to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws raises the stakes dramatically.

As the group itself has said, it is the first time the government has attempted to proscribe a direct action protest organisation under the Terrorism Act, placing it alongside the likes of Islamic State, al-Qaida and National Action.

The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the proposed ban was evidence-based and had been assessed by a wide range of experts.

“In several attacks, Palestine Action has committed acts of serious damage to property with the aim of progressing its political cause and influencing the government,” she said.

Proscribing the group, which uses direct action mainly to target Israeli weapons factories in the UK, would make it illegal not only to be a member of Palestine Action but to show support for it.

Given that neither its methods nor its targets are unprecedented, a ban is likely to make every group which has an aim of “progressing its political cause and influencing the government” through protest think twice.

Greenpeace UK’s co-executive director, Areeba Hamid, said a ban would “mark a dark turn for our democracy and a new low for a government already intent on stamping out the right to protest. The police already have laws to prosecute any individuals found guilty of a crime.”

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Palestine Action Is Being Banned Because It’s Effective

If you can’t beat them, ban them.

“We’re a new breed of activism. We’re not your parents’ Humane Society. … We come with a new philosophy. We hold the radical line. We will not compromise. We will not apologise, and we will not relent.” This is how one activist described Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac), the animal rights group active from the late 1980s to the early 2010s. Shac’s central demand was the closure of Europe’s largest animal testing facility, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). It didn’t ask nicely. Anticipating that the state would never act with the urgency commensurate with such a moral outrage as beating beagle puppies – how true that’s proven to be – Shac set about making the company’s life a misery, smashing up laboratories and picking off suppliers with boycott campaigns. All this nearly bankrupted HLS, until Labour’s science minister Lord Sainsbury personally interceded to keep the company afloat. Unable to tolerate this humiliation, the government sent hundreds of police to round up dozens of Shac members. Ring any bells?

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Many have correctly pointed out how harmless PA’s actions are in comparison with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. However, PA has distinguished itself within the Palestine movement, and amongst leftwing activist groups in general, by the severity of disruption it has caused. While successive UK governments have complained noisily about the “chaos” and “crisis” besetting Gaza (it was David Cameron, lest we forget, who in 2010 referred to the strip as an “open-air prison”), PA has done something about it. Much like its puppy-rescuing Shac forbears, PA has cost its primary target – Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems – vast sums of money, and used many of the same tactics. It has shut down two of Elbit’s factories and chased the company out of its London headquarters. It has isolated Elbit, forcing its metal manufacturer, couriers, property managers and even lobbyists to drop it. It has temporarily halted the manufacture of F-35 parts. It has rendered the company such an unreliable supplier that the Ministry of Defence axed hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of its contracts, which fell 18% the month one contract was pulled. For five years now, PA has wreaked havoc for Elbit and, thanks to the consciences of jurors and the uselessness of police, mostly gotten away with it.

PA’s continued success represents a major embarrassment to the Labour government. Part of the RAF base was, it has since emerged, secured with little more than a wooden fence. The risk, however, is more than reputational. PA is a menace to both the UK and Israeli governments, which have, much like HLS and Lord Sainsbury, responded as a team. Earlier this month, Declassified reported that Northumbria police spent £210,000 protecting the Newcastle outpost of Pearson Engineering, owned by Israeli weapons company Rafael. This week it found that Elbit lobbied the Home Office to retry PA’s co-founders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard after they were acquitted in December 2023. The Israeli embassy tried something similar with the attorney general’s office, which has been remarkably obliging. The UK and its ally have poured vast resources into beating back PA, a testament to just how seriously both understand the threat to their individual and joint military and business interests (not to be confused with their citizens’ interests).

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WE ARE ALL PALESTINE ACTION.

CAAT SOLIDARITY STATEMENT.

Let’s be clear. Direct action is not terrorism and taking action against genocide profiteers is not terrorism.

We are writing this statement in unequivocal support with Palestine Action and the outrageous decision by this government to try to proscribe them.

The British government is currently aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide. There is one clear legal and moral path available to them – imposing a full two-way arms embargo. Instead they are labelling those taking action to stop genocide as terrorists.

Let’s be clear. Direct action is not terrorism and taking action against genocide profiteers is not terrorism.

There is a long and proud history in the peace movement of direct action at military bases and arms companies. Keir Starmer himself was part of the legal team defending the Fairford Five during the Iraq war. Using the protest at Brize Norton as an excuse for proscription is manufactured outrage. It’s an excuse to do what Israeli and arms trade lobbyists, such as Lord Walney, have always wanted. For generations, from Greenham, Aldermaston, Fairford and others, the peace movement has taken action against military bases – actions that regularly involve breaching security, getting inside and causing damage. This is not something new. This is legitimate opposition to illegal wars. This is not terrorism.

At CAAT, we are the proud custodians of one of the hammers used by the Seeds of Hope Ploughshares women to smash up a hawk aircraft bound for Indonesia in 1996. CAAT supported the women who were eventually acquitted by a jury.

Supporting those who dismantle the tools of war is at the heart of CAAT’s past and present.  Successive governments have failed not only us as citizens, but more importantly, the Palestinian people. They have stood aside while Israel commits horrific war crimes. They have ignored international law. They have misled parliament, obfuscated and done everything in their power to protect arms dealers’ profits. Instead of imposing a full two-way arms embargo, this Labour government has instead increased the UK’s arms trade with Israel – licensing £127m of arms in the last three months of 2024 – more than 2020-2023 combined.

When our government fails to act, it is down to us, ordinary people with a conscience, to take action. We applaud those who feel their moral duty to disarm weapons factories outweighs the risks of imprisonment. We cannot sit back while UK companies profit from genocide, when Palestinian children are killed by 2000lb bombs dropped from F-35 combat aircraft that the UK is ensuring remain operational with its supply of spare parts.

Attempting to proscribe Palestine Action is designed to scare us, to intimidate our movements and to divide our solidarity.

It won’t work. When the state remanded the Filton 18 on the spurious basis the action has “terrorist connections”, it hoped that it would deter people. It didn’t. The actions have continued because people care, because they have a conscience, because taking action against genocide is more important than the personal consequences.

Now is the time to be courageous. We will defeat this ban through mass opposition. Met Commissioner Mark Rowley said he was “shocked” by the emergency demonstration held today in Westminster. He shouldn’t be shocked. Our movements are based on solidarity. And it is essential that this solidarity continues.

We are all Palestine Action! 

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