Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
This week, MPs shamefully approved the proscription of Palestine Action. Several challenged the move in the Commons. Zarah Sultana, Independent MP for Coventry South, gave an outstanding speech in condemnation. Because of the exceptional gravity of the issue, we reproduce her speech, lightly edited, here.
TWENTY-ONE years ago, a human rights barrister … defended an activist who broke into RAF Fairford trying to disable a bomber to prevent war crimes in Iraq. That became a landmark case in lawful, non-violent direct action against an illegal war. That barrister is now our Prime Minister, Keir Starmer KC. He argued that it was not terrorism, but conscience.
Fast-forward to June 20 2025: two Palestine Action activists entered RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint — red paint, not fire — on aircraft linked to surveillance flights over Gaza. Instead of prosecuting them for criminal damage, the Home Secretary is using the Terrorism Act 2000 to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
This is an unprecedented and dangerous overreach of the state. Never before in Britain has it been a crime to simply support a group.
Palestine Action’s real crime is shutting down Elbit Systems sites that arm the Israeli military; its true offence is being audacious enough to expose the blood-soaked ties between this government and the genocidal Israeli apartheid state and its war machine.
Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb is not just absurd; it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth.
Amnesty International, Liberty, over 266 senior lawyers and UN special rapporteurs have all opposed these draconian measures. Under this order, anyone expressing moral support for a proscribed group could face 14 years in prison. That includes wearing a badge, wearing a T-shirt, sharing a post or calling for de-proscription.
And journalists have no exemption either: there is no legal protection for reporting favourably, even factually, about Palestine Action.
Let us not forget what is happening in Gaza, where the real crimes are being ignored: hospitals bombed, children starved, and tens of thousands of people killed. Palestinian children now suffer more amputations per capita than children anywhere else on Earth.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and the Israeli Prime Minister faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, yet the government’s response is to criminalise solidarity and to continue exporting lethal F-35 jets that are decimating Gaza.
We also have to understand the history of this country and what built our democracy: the tradition of civil disobedience that includes the suffragettes, without whom I would not have the vote, let alone the privilege of being here as an MP.
Even those who oppose Palestine Action’s tactics must recognise the vast gulf between criminal damage and terrorism. If this order passes, what and who is next — climate protesters, striking workers, feminists in the street?
Already we have seen a wider crackdown on our civil liberties — musicians censored, journalists arrested, and demonstrators, including MPs sitting here, harassed — and now this government want to use anti-terror laws to make peaceful protest itself a crime. If our democratic institutions functioned as they should, none of this would be necessary.
If this proscription passes, we have to understand that no campaign will be safe tomorrow. We have to recognise that this will go down as a dark day in our country’s history … People will ask, “Which side were you on?” and I stand with the millions of people who oppose genocide, because I am one of them. I oppose the blood-soaked hands of this government trying to silence us. So I say this loudly and proudly: we are all Palestine…
UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
The government’s planned proscription of Palestine Action is appalling state overreach. As journalists and media workers, Novara Media unequivocally opposes this historic infringement on freedom of expression in the UK. We believe it is a gross abuse of legislation to equate a non-violent, direct action protest group with the likes of Isis, Al-Qaida, and National Action. Never before in Britain has it been illegal to support a protest group.
We report day after day on Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. We have watched countless hours of footage, heard testimony, and combed through data. It has been evident for many months that Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian population, from opening fire on unarmed crowds at aid distribution points to the bombardment of refugees at so-called safe-zones, amount to the crime of genocide.
Meanwhile, the establishment media remains biased in favour of Israel. Even the BBC, a public service broadcaster, grants 33 times more coverage per fatality to Israeli deaths than those of Palestinians. If there were ever a time when non-violent direct action was justified in the prevention of greater harm, it is now.
Furthermore, we are disgusted by the arrest and investigation of pro-Palestine journalists such as Asa Winstanley, the imposition of excessive restrictions on pro-Palestine rallies, and attacks on the artistic expression of Bob Vylan and Kneecap’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh. Novara Media views the proscription of Palestine Action as part of this wider effort to silence opposition to Israel’s campaign of genocide against the people of Gaza.
Everyone should be alarmed by Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper’s decision to designate Palestine Action a proscribed terrorist organisation. The use of terror legislation will dramatically limit what anyone in the UK can say about the group. Section 12 of the Terrorism Act gives the state sweeping power to restrict speech that it deems supportive of proscribed organisations. Wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt, praising the group in public, or expressing a positive opinion about it online could all be grounds for arrest and prosecution.
There is no journalistic exemption to the Terrorism Act. Reporting freely carries the risk of large fines and up to 14 years imprisonment. Journalists arrested under terrorism legislation may have their homes and offices raided, or work devices seized and searched, putting them and their sources at risk.
Novara Media strongly upholds the right to report events and produce fact-based analysis without the interference of the government. We oppose all state attempts to crush legitimate expressions of political opinion. We abhor Keir Starmer’s willingness to clamp down on free speech, dissent, and longstanding traditions of civil disobedience that are vital to democracy and liberty.
Without equivocation or caveat, we stand opposed to the government’s proscription of Palestine Action.
dizzy: Me too.
Vote Labour for Genocide.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
A protest in support of Palestine Action in London last month. Photograph: Vuk Valcic/Sopa Images/Shutterstock
Minister argues move will not impinge on people’s right to protest but critics call it ‘grave abuse of state power’
MPs have voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation despite concerns that the move could risk criminalising legitimate protest.
The draft order to amend the Terrorism Act 2000 and proscribe the group, laid by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, passed the Commons on Wednesday by 385 votes to 26.
The order also bans two neo-Nazi groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russia Imperial Movement (RIM).
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It will become a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison for anyone to become a member of and support the direct action of Palestine Action.
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After the vote, a Palestine Action spokesperson said: “We are confident that this unlawful order will be overturned. As United Nations experts have made clear, spraying red paint and disrupting the British-based operations of Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, is not terrorism.
The terrorism and war crimes are being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people – armed and enabled by this government.”
The announcement came as police imposed restrictions on Palestine Solidarity Campaign protests outside parliament.
Before the vote, the lawyers group Network for Police Monitoring and the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers had warned the home secretary in two separate letters that proscribing Palestine Action would conflate protest and terrorism. The letters collectively were signed by hundreds of lawyers and by UN experts.
Several UN special rapporteurs said they had contacted the UK government to say that “acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism”.
Last week, Cooper linked Palestine Action with the MMC and the RIM, saying each of them had “passed the threshold for proscription based on clear national security evidence and assessments”. She said: “Violence and serious criminal damage has no place in legitimate protests.”
Vote Labour for Genocide.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.
People take part in a demonstration at Trafalgar Square in London in support of Palestine Action, June 23, 2025
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.
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.
People take part in a demonstration at Trafalgar Square in London in support of Palestine Action, June 23, 2025
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.
Pro-Palestine protesters protest in Trafalgar Square, including supporters of Palestine Action. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian
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.”
Palestine Action activists are removed from an Elbit Systems factory in Oldham, Greater Manchester, January 2022. Photo: Palestine Action
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).
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!
Keir “I support Zionism without Qualification” Starmer supporting genocide.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Four UN Special Rapporteurs have written jointly to the UK government demanding explanation of its inappropriate persecution of journalists and political activists under the Terrorism Act. They state that those persecuted:
appear to have no credible connection to “terrorist” or “hostile” activity
The cases taken up by the United Nations are those of Johanna Ross (Ganyukova), John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Craig Murray (yes, me), Richard Barnard and Richard Medhurst. The UN letter is signed by:
Ben Saul Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism
Irene Khan Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
Gina Romero Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association
Ana Brian Nougrères Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy
Under this UN special procedure, the letter is sent to the government in question which has sixty days to respond. This letter was sent by the UN to Starmer’s government on 4 December. No reply having been received, it has now been published.
It is worth noting that even with the UN letter on its desk and ignored, Starmer’s government in fact stepped up the use of the Terrorism Act against pro-Palestinian journalists and activists in this period. The cases of Asa Winstanley, Sarah Wilkinson and Tony Greenstein, among others, happened after the letter was drafted.
I should be clear that I was, working with Justice for All International (for which we had a crowdfunder last year in relation to the Assange case at the UN), heavily involved in assisting with preparation of this initiative, and made three visits to the UN in Geneva on the subject together with Sharof Azizov, and on one occasion Richard Medhurst. Your subscriptions and donations to this blog are the only funding I have to make such activity possible, so thank you.
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There is no sign the UN has given the Starmer government pause; human rights are extremely low on their agenda. Support for Israel and the crushing of pro-Palestinian sentiment, or of any criticism of western foreign policy, is extremely high on their agenda.
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWREGenocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Zarah Sultana speaking after a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, from Russell Square to Whitehall in central London, June 21, 2025
