BBC Cardiff July 2026 – Credit R Witts Photography
Defend Our Juries will host a mass, silent signholding vigil in Liverpool this Sunday, 27 September, to coincide with the opening day of Andy Burnham’s first Labour Party conference since becoming Prime Minister. It is expected that several hundred people will gather as close to the conference center as they are able and at approximately 1pm will begin to write seven words on a sign that is likely to lead to their arrest under the Terrorism Act.
The words are;
“I OPPOSE GENOCIDE. I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION”
The action has been designed as an integrity test of the new leadership’s commitment to ending Britain’s complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
Those attending the action have been asked to wear red, echoing the red jumpsuits typically worn by Palestine Action to show solidarity with those who took direct action with the group, primarily targeting weapons manufacturers sending arms from the UK to Israel.
Palestine Action joke that appeared in the UK satirical magazine ‘Private Eye’.
An increasing number of Palestine Action ‘actionists’ are facing sentencing as ‘terrorists’, despite their actions taking place before the group’s proscription, with many also being held for months or years on remand in prison whilst they await trial.
Speaking today, a Defend Our Juries spokesperson said;
“We will be peacefully sitting outside the Labour Conference because if PM Burnham means what he says, that he plans to end Britain’s complicity in Israel’s horrific crimes, then he would stop the arrests of people peacefully demonstrating against the genocide and the authoritarian attempts to crush its opponents.
We urge PM Burnham to do the only sensible thing and lift the ban on Palestine Action, the very people in the UK actually trying to prevent British complicity in Israel’s war crimes.”
Sunday’s action will continue Defend Our Juries’ campaign to Lift The Ban on Palestine Action which, since July 2025, has seen over 3,600 arrests under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding such signs. Previous polling showed that the majority of Labour party members opposed the ban, which has cost the police millions to enforce.
Protesters sit with handwritten signs outside Woolwich Crown Court, 24 April 2026. Credit: Defend Our Juries
‘An absolute right to acquit according to conscience.’
Nine people have been arrested for breaching a Section 14 order while holding signs communicating the principle of jury equity outside a court where Palestine Action activists are being retried.
Their signs read: “Jurors have an absolute right to acquit according to their conscience” and “Jurors deserve to hear the whole truth”. The latter sign appears to reference a court order, which prohibits British media outlets from reporting on certain aspects of some proceedings.
The nine people arrested were holding handwritten signs outside Woolwich crown court on Friday 24 April, where six Filton24 defendants are currently being retried on charges of criminal damage in connection with a Palestine Action raid on an Elbit Systems factory in Filton, South Gloucestershire, in August 2024.
A Section 14 order was implemented on both Thursday and Friday to prevent any demonstrations near the court outside of a designated area. A DOJ spokesperson told Novara Media that the area where protest was permitted by the Metropolitan police is a mile away from the court, which defeats the purpose of the protest.
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The principle of jury equity is the common law principle that juries have the power to acquit according to their conscience. Its origins can be found in Bushell’s Case of 1670, which established the right of a jury to find facts and apply the law to those facts according to its conscience – without fear of judicial reprisal.
A plaque in the Old Bailey, visible to any serving juror or court user passing through the Grand Hall, includes a reference to this same principle.
DOJ has called today’s arrests on the basis of the Public Order Act a “cynical attempt” to bypass the high court judge’s 2024 ruling on the Warner case.
Police officers make an arrest at a “Lift The Ban” demonstration in support of the proscribed group Palestine Action in Parliament Square on August 9, 2025.
“Let us be under no illusion,” said one organizer. “The government is criminalizing the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it’s livestreamed from Gaza.”
British campaigners reported Saturday that the sheer volume of people who showed up in London’s Parliament Square to support the nonviolent advocacy group Palestine Action presented a major challenge for the Metropolitan Police, who had threatened to arrest anyone supporting the organization.
The campaign group Defend Our Juries reported that as of 4:00 pm local time, at least 200 people had been arrested for joining the protest, where more than 1,000 sat silently in the square with many displaying signs that read: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Others held signs reading, “Is this why you joined the police?” as officers arrested demonstrators including National Health Service workers; a blind man using a wheelchair; author Jonathon Porritt; and former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, who now advocates for wrongly-imprisoned people swept up in the War on Terror.
BREAKING: Moazzam Begg, a never convicted former Guantanamo prisoner and senior director of CAGE international, was just arrested under the Terrorism Act.
Alongside approximately a thousand others, he held a sign which said "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action" pic.twitter.com/UNFgE4zQPi
“The fact that unprecedented numbers came out today risking arrest and possible imprisonment, shows how repulsed and ashamed people are about our government’s ongoing complicity in a livestreamed genocide, and the lengths people are prepared to go to defend this country’s ancient liberties,” said a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, which also organized a protest last month where more than two dozen people were arrested.
The protests have been held to demand that the government reverse its June decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization after it vandalized two military airplanes. The ban on the organization means that anyone who publicly supports Palestine Action risks up to 14 years in prison.
Palestine Action was formed in 2020 to demand an end to Israeli apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories including Gaza and the West Bank. It has organized nonviolent actions since Israel began bombarding Gaza and blockading nearly all humanitarian aid in October 2023—killing more than 61,000 Palestinians, injuring more than 150,000, creating the largest per capita population of child amputees in the world, and starving at least 212 people so far.
“Palestine Action and people holding cardboard signs present no danger to the public at large, whereas the people who have lobbied for this ban—the arms companies and Israel lobbies—have the blood of 60,000 Palestinians on their hands,” said Defend Our Juries.
The government’s ban, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, faces a legal challenge scheduled to be heard by the U.K. High Court in November. The court granted a full judicial review to Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk warned last month that the U.K.’s proscription of the group “is at odds with the U.K.’s obligations under international human rights law” and noted that “according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages”—not property damage.
Defend Our Juries said the mass arrest of Palestinian rights advocates is taking place as Britain continues to provide support to the Israeli military, which is moving towards a full takeover of Gaza under the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“They’re being arrested for holding signs in opposition to genocide and the ban of Palestine Action,” said the group as hundreds of people were carried away from Parliament Square by Metropolitan Police. “Meanwhile, the ones enabling the mass murder of Palestinians face no consequences.”
Mass arrests under the Terrorism Act are ongoing at Parliament Square.
They're being arrested for holding signs in opposition to genocide and the ban of Palestine Action.
Meanwhile, the ones enabling the mass murder of Palestinians, face no consequences pic.twitter.com/OWecwhX85J
Support from civil society groups for Palestine Action and the organizations demanding a reversal of the ban grew this past week ahead of the protest. More than 300 Jewish Britons including film director Mike Leigh; children’s author Michael Rosen; and Geoffrey Bindman, a former legal instructor to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling the ban “illegitimate” in a letter to Downing Street.
“The government should stop deflecting attention from genocide by linking nonviolent protest to terrorism,” read the letter.
Begg noted Saturday that “historically, civil disobedience has been employed in this country, as well as by the American civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, to challenge unjust and oppressive laws.”
“This action is not about Palestine Action, but wider issues of how anti-terror legislation curtails basic freedoms and undermines the rule of law,” he said. “There can be no doubt that such laws have been, and continue to be abused and exploited, to suppress free speech and put in place an oppressive infrastructure that represents a danger to our civil liberties.”
“In such moments, all those who resist are acting in the public interest and are motivated by the desire to protect fundamental principles of fairness, equality, and justice,” he added. “How can it be a crime to call for an end to apartheid and genocide? The planned action on August 9 is motivated by the highest moral principles that have underpinned our society and made it the envy of the world.”
“Let us be under no illusion,” said Begg. “The government is criminalizing the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it’s livestreamed from Gaza. That is why it must be opposed.”in for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it’s livestreamed from Gaza. That is why it must be opposed.”
