96 arrested around England ahead of legal challenge to group’s proscription, no arrests in Edinburgh and Derry
~ Tim Simon ~
Nearly 100 more people across England have been arrested today (19 July) under the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding signs saying “I oppose genocide—I support Palestine Action”. Protest group Defend Our Juries reported that 55 people were arrested in Parliament Square in London, 17 in Bristol, 16 in Manchester, and 8 in Truro. In contrast, protests in Edinburgh and Derry were left undisturbed.
In Truro, police were slow to respond to the display at first, handing out leaflets outlining the legislation surrounding support for proscribed groups. They later began to slowly arrest those holding the signs—among them 81 year-old Deborah Hinton, a former magistrate.
Edinburgh. Photo: Defend Our Juries
In a statement made during their arrest, one activist stated: “We want Yvette Cooper to remove the proscription of Palestine Action. We want the government to take action on genocide and to stop complying with Israel in killing and slaughtering babies, women, children, and men. If this was in 1930s Germany, it would be the same as helping the Nazis with their concentration camps”.
The ban on the group was announced by Cooper after supporters of Palestine Action entered the RAF base at Brize Norton and spray-painted two military planes. The High Court is to hear a legal challenge to the ban on Monday, when Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori will seek permission for a full judicial review of the group’s proscription.
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.
For the second week running, demonstrators were arrested for holding signs reading ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action’ in Parliament Square today, with others expected to take part in later actions across the UK.
Expressing public support for Palestine Action is now a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act following the group’s proscription by home secretary Yvette Cooper. It is the first time anti-terror law, designed to ban groups like Al Qaida and Isis, has been used to designate a domestic, non-violent direct action group a terrorist organisation.
The action, organised by Defend Our Juries, aims to challenge that proscription. Further such actions are set to take place in Bristol, Manchester and Cardiff. An independently organised demonstration is also being held in Derry, and one man took ‘solo action’ by posing with a sign in the market town of Kendal in Cumbria.
One man took action alone in Kendal. (Credit unknown.)
Bill, a 76-year-old university lecturer, told Novara Media he was participating in the London action because he disagreed “with this government’s definition of a terrorist”. “I might as well call you a red bell pepper, and now you have all the legal rights of a red bell pepper,” he said. Asked how he felt about the prospect of a charge under the terrorism act, he replied, “it’s all an adventure.”
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.
FW Pomeroy’s Statue of Justice standing atop the Central Criminal Court building, Old Bailey, London
PROPOSALS to restrict the right to trial by jury are presented as the only way to salvage a system in crisis.
Former judge Sir Brian Leveson says we must act to avoid “total system collapse.” The backlog in court cases is huge — 77,000 cases await trial in the Crown Court — and Leveson is right that leaving defendants and victims of crime waiting years can have a terrible impact on their lives.
But these are dangerous proposals which must be seen in context: firstly, of the cuts to justice budgets from 2010 onwards, and secondly, of the increasing authoritarianism of the state and the courts which is already undermining jury trials.
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[M]inisters may have other motives. As Tim Crosland of Defend Our Juries has warned, authorities are increasingly wary of the way a “jury of one’s peers” — that is, of randomly selected ordinary people — tends to resist political instruction and acquit defendants for actions they deem morally justifiable.
Judges have resorted to ordering defendants not to explain their actions, even banning references to climate change in court in some cases involving direct action by environmentalists.
Removing the right to a jury trial entirely from a swathe of offences increases the state’s power to shape prosecution outcomes.
Palestine Actionists blockade the entrance roadway at the research centre of Israel weapons producer Elbit Systems at Filton, Bristol. Martin Pope/Reuters
Emma, a small business-owner living in Wales, said riot police raided her home without a warrant, despite having already arrested her daughter. “I was half naked [when they came in],” she said “They seized my work laptop, and my 16-year-old’s school laptop, handcuffed me and then led me away.”
Emma was kept by the police in solitary confinement for five days. “I disappeared from my family almost a week before they released me without charge and without apology, my life and my business upside down. I was left traumatised, in prison scrubs, 150 miles from my home, feeling like an animal. [My crime] was raising a young woman with a great moral compass.”
A spokesperson for South Wales Police said: “A complaint against police has been made which remains under investigation.”
Punished without trial.
Emma’s daughter is one of over 40 political prisoners identified by campaign group Defend Our Juries who have been jailed in the UK since July. The case of the Filton 18 has become emblematic of the UK’s increasingly repressive relationship with political activism. Advocates for the activists say the group is effectively being punished through the UK government’s abuse of counter-terrorism measures in a desperate bid to deter Palestine Action from targeting Elbit.
The controversy has reached parliament. In a Westminster Hall debate in December, John McDonnell MP made a rare, impassioned intervention on the Filton 18’s behalf, saying: “A number of them most probably will be proved innocent, but they’ll have served nearly two years in prison – for what? For trying to do what we’re failing to do – preventing this government supplying arms to a regime that’s killing children.”
In November, United Nations observers wrote to the head of the UK Mission to the UN in Geneva, Simon Manley, about the case. The activists appear to have been arrested under counter-terrorism legislation “for conduct that appears to be in the nature of ordinary criminal offences and does not appear to be genuinely ‘terrorist’ according to international standards”, the observers said. In late January, the government responded saying it would not be appropriate to comment while criminal proceedings are ongoing.
The measures taken against the Filton 18 are an escalation from the British state, especially with regards to Palestine Action. For four years, actions by those associated with the group were prosecuted using non-terrorism related charges, meaning they were released on bail before their trial. “[But now that] they’re being tagged and held in remand in connection to terrorism, suddenly the courts are very cautious of giving bail,” said Simon Pook, a lawyer at Robert Lizar, the firm defending the Filton 18. Pook spoke with Novara Media in general terms, not specifically about the Filton 18.
“When people are arrested under terrorist legislation, they are held in a remand space that is separate from the standard criminal cell. It’s very sterile and intentionally isolating, detaining you in confinement for up to seven days in what I view to be an immensely tortured position,” said Pook.
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For Pook, there’s a concerning continuity between the overzealous anti-protest laws brought in by the previous Tory administration and the current Labour one. “Our civil liberties are in grave danger under the current process that is labelling activist groups as terrorist suspects, as first rolled out by the Conservatives and now Labour,” he said.
While the Filton 18 languish in prison being treated like terrorists, they will not be charged for terrorism, per se. The CPS intends instead to argue a “link with terrorism”. This loose “link with terrorism” charge is a new development in the UK’s legal landscape, but one that echoes the mistreatment of the Irish community in the 70s, 80s and 90s. “It’s a very chilling moment,” said Pook.
“I remember when the UK government called the Irish a ‘suspect community’. They were labelled as terrorists through similar processes we’re seeing today, detained at airports and ferry ports under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The UK government is moving us to the point where activists are suspects, criminalising the rights of protest. This causes me grave concern.”
Pook also points to the lobbying power of the arms and fossil fuel industries – and the geopolitical interests attached to those mammoth sectors. “If the government wants those industries to develop, they’ve got to curtail opposition to it.”
Freedom of Information disclosures show that in recent years, Elbit held multiple meetings and conversations with UK ministers and the attorney general’s office (AGO), which oversees the CPS. (The AGO told Novara Media: “We do not provide a running commentary on who the AGO holds meetings with or how many.”)
FW Pomeroy’s Statue of Justice standing atop the Central Criminal Court building, Old Bailey, London
