Palestine Action and the Terrorism Acts

This week (30 June 2025) the Labour government Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, began the process of proscribing the political group Palestine Action (PA) under the Terrorism Act 2000.[1] The following article considers the recent history of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (from 1974 to the present), and the attacks by UK governments on the legal defences of campaigners who carry out non-violent civil disobedience. It suggests, from the evidence, that rather than a supposed gradual extension of rights to protest over the last 50 years, quite the opposite has taken place under the auspices of both Labour and Tory governments.

Palestine Action

PA was formed in 2020 with the aim of opposition to arms exports to Israel and ‘dismantling British complicity with Israeli apartheid’. Since then, PA have undertaken a series of non-violent actions both before and after the current ‘war’ began in Gaza in October 2023. These actions have been aimed at both highlighting and disrupting UK based facilities linked to companies involved in weapons manufacture for the Israeli state. These include the Israel-based Elbit Systems, Italian aerospace company Leonardo, French multinational Thales and United States company Teledyne, as well as their various subsidiaries. Their protest ‘direct actions’ largely involve colourful rooftop occupations, often lasting several days, along with banners, graffiti and in some cases criminal damage. In 2021 they held a rooftop protest at an Elbit drone factory in Leicester and similar facilities in Bristol, Oldham and Tamworth in 2021. In 2022, a group of PA activists occupied a Thales equipment factory in Glasgow and others chained themselves to the gates of another Elbit subsidiary UAV Tactical Systems Ltd near Leicester. More recently PA broke into RAF Brize Norton on electric scooters and sprayed red paint into the engines of two RAF Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport refuelling planes. It seems it was this recent action which caused the government to react.[2]

Throughout these many actions by PA, no civilians, police or security guards have been injured and there has been little if any violence offered by PA activists at any point. So non-violent civil disobedience at best, and some damage to property and disruption at worst. A minority of courts and juries have treated the motivations of these non-violent activists with some respect. For example, in 2024, three years after the occupation of the Elbit drone factory in Leicester the trial Judge directed the jury to accept the PA activists defence that:

their actions were justified on the basis of necessity, in order to save the lives of Palestinians, and in order to protect property at immediate risk of drone bombardment in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)[3]

The two PA defendants were acquitted. However, most PA activists have been arrested, charged and convicted of criminal offences such as conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass. A number of PA activists have been fined and imprisoned for these various protests, receiving 12-14 month custodial sentences. There have also been some rather ludicrous ‘hate crime’ investigations such as into racially aggravated criminal damage for spraying ‘Free Gaza’ and ‘Free Palestine’ on the Head Office of the weapons company Leonardo’s UK Head office in London.[4]

Terrorists?

So how is it Palestine Action members and supporters are now going to be branded as ‘terrorists’ in the same legal camp as violent, indiscriminate and heavily armed organisations with clear programmes of (para)military tactics and action such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS)? Very soon it is going to be a serious criminal offence to be part of PA, support their actions or even speak out in public about them. As one commentator noted in a piece entitled ‘Israel kills innocent Palestinians. Activists spray-paint a plane. Guess which the UK government calls terrorism’:

From the suffragettes to the gay rights movement to the anti-apartheid struggle, genuine political resistance has always involved intentional lawbreaking. But proscribing an entire organisation under the Terrorism Act is not the same thing as prosecuting particular individuals for specific transgressions … even supporting the group purely in words – as I am doing now – could also constitute a serious legal offence…[5]

Rather than 14-month sentences, the Terrorism Act 2000 (TA 2000) makes it illegal to become a member of the group or to invite support for it, with penalties including fines and up to 14 years in prison. This is on top of all the other post-TA 2000 sanctions such as detention of ‘terrorist’ suspects without charge for up to 28 days, the use of ‘control orders’ as a form of house arrest, seizing personal assets and application of the offence of ‘glorifying’ terrorism. Wearing items of clothing or holding placards or banners supporting the proscribed organisation[6], collecting money or organising public meetings where members of the proscribed organisation might speak, all fall under the Act and could lead to six months in prison. Finally, if you have knowledge of such actions and refuse to inform the authorities, this can lead to fines and up to five years incarceration.[7]

It’ll get better…right?

Popular understandings of history within the Hegelian frameworks of ‘Whiggism’ or even ‘social democracy’ often assume that ‘things’ gradually get ‘better’ over time. So, slavery was finally abolished because the ‘great men of reason’ realised it was immoral, trade unions were legalised because workers deserved to have representation, men and then women achieved the vote because it was ‘fair and right’ that they should be enfranchised, and the modern welfare state, a necessity for any ‘civilised’ nation, was the product of powerful and well-meaning philanthropists. The ‘baddies’ in these narratives are the reactionary Tories, who supported slavery, objected to religious freedom, opposed enfranchisement for the working classes (male or female) and were against the welfare state. These understandings usually demean or ignore the mass struggles of the oppressed classes, intra and inter-national solidarity with the oppressed and the violence and repression of both the working class and the state in these processes of change. They also seek to belittle the huge historical discontinuities thrown up by uprisings, insurrections and revolutions. Pointing out the irony of the formation of modern bourgeois democracy from the violent overthrow of monarchy and aristocracy, the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek commented on the ‘denial’ amongst conservative and liberal reactions to the French Revolution:

The identifying mark of all kinds of conservatives is its flat rejection: the French Revolution was a catastrophe from its very beginning, the product of the godless modern mind; it is to be interpreted as God’s punishment for the humanity’s wicked ways, so its traces should be undone as thoroughly as possible. The typical liberal attitude is a differentiated one: its formula is ‘1789 without 1793’. In short, what the sensitive liberals want is a decaffeinated revolution, a revolution that does not smell of revolution.[8]

The gradualist assumption that liberal or social democratic societies become more so over time has been confounded both by the globalisation and neo-liberalism of the last 50 years and more recently by the rise of the far right and religious fundamentalism in all its varieties. This is also true in microcosm if we consider the use of repressive laws concerned with ‘terrorism’.

The drift to authoritarian representative democracy

The cultural theorist Stuart Hall and his colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies noted the shift towards authoritarianism in Britain in the early 1970s in their seminal work Policing the Crisis (1978).[9] Hall et al. argued that this was the result of militancy amongst the industrial working class, the emerging struggles for civil rights in Northern Ireland, and political groupings such as Black Power and Women’s Liberation which were the vanguards for wider social movements demanding equality, rights over the body and freedom from racism and male chauvinism. These political and social struggles were met by a huge expansion of state surveillance and infiltration of left-wing political groups from 1968, associated blacklisting of workers and a flurry of repressive legislation including the Industrial Relations Act (1971) which led to the imprisonment of trade unionists.

The deteriorating situation in Northern Ireland due to the violent repression unleashed by the Loyalists and the local state on ‘civil rights’ protests and Catholic communities was exacerbated in the early 1970s by the use of murderous colonial counter-insurgency tactics by the British Army. Alongside the violent military and para-military repression of Catholic/Nationalist communities, juries were suspended and internment without trial introduced. Central to all this was a piece of ‘emergency legislation’, the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act (PTA), drafted in secret in 1973, and introduced after the Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974 by the newly elected Labour government. The Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, publicly admitted that the powers within the Act were ‘Draconian’ and ‘unprecedented in peacetime’. At the time the Act only proscribed one group, the Irish Republican Army, and defined ‘terrorism’ as:

the use of violence for political ends, and includes any use of violence for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in fear.[10]

Part of the remit of this legislation was that it was temporary and had to be renewed annually by Parliament. The act was amended in 1976, 1984 and 1989 and throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s the only proscribed organisations related to the conflict in Northern Ireland.[11]

The Labour Party and the Terrorism Act 2000

Colin Thomas’s pamphlet State Snooping: Spooks, Cops and Double Agents, which BRHG published in 2021, analysed the next major modification in the PTA, noting the changes in content, scope and definition of ‘terrorism’:

The signing of the Good Friday agreement in April 1998, and the subsequent referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic which supported the peace deal, effectively ended thirty years of armed conflict between the British state and the Irish Republican movement. On paper at least, the aftermath of the peace deal in Ireland appeared to be a perfect time to review and repeal the temporary legislation known as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), that had been originally introduced in 1973 at the height of the ‘troubles’. Instead Home Secretary Jack Straw, supported by the Labour Government, passed the Terrorism Act 2000. This made terrorism law permanent, broadened its remit well beyond Northern Ireland and introduced an expanded list of proscribed organisations which the Secretary of State had the power to add to. It defined ‘terrorism’ beyond violence to the person to include ‘serious damage to property’ and to ‘seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system’. Finally, it expanded the category of those liable to its powers from formal membership of proscribed organisations to those who raised funds or ‘invite[d] support for a proscribed organisation… for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause’.[12]

The fundamental changes to the definition of terrorism highlighted above, massively widened the Act’s remit as the pamphlet prophetically stated:

At the time the Act was introduced it became clear to many political activists involved in a diversity of campaigns that they could potentially be defined as ‘terrorists’ under the new legislation. This included those who employed direct action against property from animal rights to ecological struggles and those solidarity groups which supported progressive social and independence movements from the Zapatistas in Mexico, to Palestine and East Timor. In fact, regardless of the official list of proscribed groups, the Act has been used by the police to justify actions against anti-war and anti-globalisation protestors.[13]

Prior to the 2000 Act, 14 organisations, all involved in the war in Northern Ireland, were proscribed. By 2025 this had expanded to 81 ‘terrorist’ groups, many as a result of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequent spread of Islamic fundamentalism across the Middle East and Africa. More recently they have been joined by Neo-Nazi groups, some of which are no more than a few sad keyboard warriors ranting on about ‘race war’ or the ‘collapse’, staging masked up selfies with guns and knives. However, a number of arguably progressive groups fighting for autonomous government or national liberation are also included such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) who’s offshoots the YPG and YPJ defeated ISIS with US support, Basque Homeland and Liberty (ETA), Babbar Khalsa (BK) a Sikh movement that aims to establish an independent Khalistan within the Punjab region of India, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Liwa al-Thawra, fighting for political reform and an end to the Egyptian regime.[14]

As the pamphlet points out, the Labour Party’s Terrorism Act 2000 was formulated well before the events of 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’. So, it appears the plan was to expand the definition of terrorism and massively increase the number of proscribed organisations despite the end of the war in Ireland. Rather than remove this ‘emergency’ legislation the Labour Party set it in stone and are now using it to turn on those groups and their supporters using the tactics of non-violent civil disobedience. If this legislation had been enacted in the 1980s, we would be faced with absurdities which we might expect to see in dictatorships. For example, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and peace camps such as that at USAF Greenham Common and Faslane nuclear submarine base, whose members used extensive non-violent disruptive protests would have been branded ‘terrorist’ organisations with ‘terrorist’ training camps. In the 1990s, disruptive ‘free parties’, ‘repetitive beats’ and protests such as ‘reclaiming the streets’ from cars, would have become sites for counter-terrorism activities, 28-day interrogations and prison sentences. Sounds like Russia, right?

The success of legal defences

Having considered the recent history of the tools available for the state to proscribe and prosecute non-violent protesters and their organisations, it is worth turning to the legal defences that have been used, sometimes successfully, by protesters to escape conviction.

In 1996, four women from the anti-war Seeds of Hope activist group broke into the British Aerospace (BAe) site at Warton and with hammers caused several million pounds worth of damage to a Hawk jet. The women along with many activists had been campaigning for years about the sales by BAe of the dual role (trainer/fighter) Hawks to the Indonesian regime. Hawks were deployed to East Timor, which had been invaded by Indonesia in 1975, to back up the state’s bloody campaign of repression against the Timorese independence movement. After six months on remand in prison the four women were found not guilty by a jury. This was on the basis of section 3 of the Criminal Law Act: ‘A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime…’. In this case the women argued they were acting to stop the use of the jet for committing war crimes in East Timor. As one legal commentator explained:

The media generally obfuscated the issue as ‘conscience before the law’, however… ‘the Seeds of Hope women were quite clear… that they weren’t “breaking the law for a higher end” but rather fulfilling their legal duty/availing themselves of their legal right to stop crime. It is precisely because they were so clear on this… framing their action in legal as well as moral terms, that the women were allowed to present the jury with evidence of the real crime taking place’.[15]

Over the years following the Seeds of Hope trial there were a flurry of successful defences using similar arguments over stopping ‘greater’ crimes to property and people, these included, in 1999, three women cleared of causing damage to Trident nuclear submarine computer equipment, the following year 28 Greenpeace activists were found not guilty of causing criminal damage to a field of GM crops and another five cleared of criminal damage after occupying an incinerator. In 2008, another six Greenpeace climate change activists were cleared of causing criminal damage at the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent. They successfully claimed that ‘they were legally justified because they were trying to prevent climate change causing greater damage to property around the world’.[16] In 2010, in an action in solidarity with the people of Palestine, seven activists broke into and sabotaged an EDO MBM arms factory in Brighton.[17] The facility was manufacturing and selling military equipment to the Israelis which the defendants argued would be used to commit war crimes in the occupied territories.[18] One again, the defence of ‘committing a crime to stop a greater crime’ stood up and the defendants were found not guilty.[19] One of the last successful legal defences of this type was that of PA in 2024, as a result of its occupation of a drone factory three years previously.

In April 2021, nine women turned up at the Canary Wharf branch of HSBC wearing patches that read “better broken windows than broken promises”, smashed the office’s windows and awaited their arrest.[20] In court the women relied on a defence of ‘belief in consent’ that allows:

defendants to argue that they have a lawful excuse for normally illegal action. It allows them to argue that the organisation affected by the action would consent to the damage if they knew of the “destruction and damage and its circumstances”.[21]

In the case of the HSBC 9, the defence was successful, the jury acquitted them when it agreed that HSBC would have consented to their window being broken had they had known more about the climate emergency. In each of these types of defence by ‘necessity’ whether ‘stopping a greater crime’, ‘belief in consent’ or merely relying on the jury to recognise the motivation of the defendants, the contextual evidence of the ‘greater crime’ is required in court to establish the motivation and thus the ‘rightness’ of the protesters to carry out the lesser ‘crime’.

The Colston 4 case…a turning point?

The turning point in all this ‘success’ for activists and campaigners came in 2022 under Johnson’s Tory government. In January 2021, the Colston 4, a small group (amongst many) who were charged with criminal damage after pulling down the statue of the leading slave-trader Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol in June 2020, were found not-guilty after trial by jury. This infuriated the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary Priti Patel, the Attorney-General (AG) Suella Braverman and much of the right-wing press. They had already changed the law via the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act (2022) so that damage to memorials could lead to up to 10 years in prison.[22] Braverman then launched a more subtle attack on protest in the aftermath of the victory of the Colston 4.

Crucial to the verdict of the jury in the Bristol case was evidence of Colston’s involvement in the slave trade, the long history of protest over the statue, the failure of the authorities to act, the effect the ‘offensive’ statue had on Bristolians and finally the motivations of the four defendants.[23] The prosecution, of course, had wanted all this evidence to be inadmissible on the basis that the ‘facts’ of the case merely related to act of doing ‘criminal’ damage to the statue, something which the trial judge rejected. Recognising this, Attorney-General Braverman launched a successful appeal which, although not overturning the judgement in the case of the Colston 4, more worryingly limited the rights of a defendant to ‘freedom of expression’ as defined by article 10 the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).[24] That is, evidence in the court, could be restricted to the criminal damage in the case of a protest rather than the ‘expression’ of a defendant about why they carried out their action. In practice, the judge would instruct the jury to disregard any evidence about why the protesters did what they did, as it did not have to consider the ECHR. Through the appeal, Braverman’s aim was to set UK legal precedent, such that in similar protest cases the jury could not reach these ‘not guilty’ verdicts as they would be barred from seeing or hearing the evidence to do so.[25]

This ‘suppression of contextual evidence’ approach was used in March 2023 when three activists were brought to court for taking part in a roadblock in the City of London in 2021 as part of a campaign by Insulate Britain (IB) to pressurise the government to reduce carbon emissions. The defendants were instructed by the judge ‘not to mention the climate crisis, fuel poverty or the history of the peaceful civil rights movement to juries’. When they refused and were found in contempt of court, all three were imprisoned for 7-8 weeks.[26] These draconian measures were not just employed in the court. Supporters of the defendants outside, who were protesting the suppression of contextual evidence and that of personal motivation, were investigated by police for displaying banners stating ‘Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.’ One of the group, Trudi Warner a retired social worker, was arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice.[27] Robert Courts MP, the Solicitor General, made it clear he wanted to imprison the 69-year-old. It was only after a campaign by hundreds of people who replicated Warner’s actions, holding placards outside of courts all over the country, that the case was dropped.[28]

This was not an isolated incident, and in response to these emerging legal manoeuvres Michel Forst, the United Nations special rapporteur on environmental defenders, stated in a report in January 2024:

It is very difficult to understand what could justify denying the jury the opportunity to hear the reason for the defendant’s action, and how a jury could reach a properly informed decision without hearing it, in particular at the time of environmental defenders’ peaceful but ever more urgent calls for the government to take pressing action for the climate.[29]

Two months after Forst’s report, in another appeal made by the AG (this time Victoria Prentis MP under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak), the defence of ‘belief in consent’ in committing criminal damage came under attack. The appeal court ruled:

“the political or philosophical beliefs” and the “reasoning and wider motivation” of the defendant were “too remote” from the criminal damage and did not constitute lawful excuse, and said evidence from defendants about the facts of climate change would be inadmissible.[30]

Despite counterarguments that the jury should decide about whether a defendant honestly believed that the owner of a property would have consented to the damage caused, the appeal was upheld. By precedent, this effectively removed ‘belief in consent’ as a viable defence.

Four months after this ruling, in July 2024, in what was dubbed ‘UK’s wildest climate trial’, five leading Just Stop Oil protesters who had been charged with ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’ for organising direct action protests to block the M25 during an online call in November 2022 were brought to court.[31] At the start of the trial the Judge ruled that ‘evidence about climate change could not feature in their defence’. This led to four of the five defendants being dragged from court by police and remanded into custody for contempt of court after they transgressed his ruling. Another 11 of their supporters were left facing contempt proceedings for silent protests outside the courtroom which via placards asserted the right of juries to hear all the evidence.[32] At the end of the trial the five were hit with the severest sentences yet for climate protesters, with one getting five years inside and the others four years detention, despite the fact that they had not actually participated in the M25 action. The protesters were described by the judge as having ‘crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic’.[33]

Summary

This article has attempted to capture two linked recent histories, the first the development and extension of repressive legislation concerned with ‘terrorism’ and the more recent attacks by the state on legal defences used by non-violent protesters in courts. In order to judge whether our current situation is deteriorating first we need to ditch overarching proto-Hegelian ideologies that suggest (or hope?) that things will gradually get better. After all its ‘us’ that makes things better not determinist historical trajectories. As Lawrence of Arabia (Peter O’Toole) says in the film, ‘nothing is written’.

So, are we in better shape in the UK with regard to protests and repression since the 60s, the starting point of this article? The answer is probably no; things have generally got worse in fits and starts over the last 50 or so years. I remember a member of the Angry Brigade speaking about the early 70s and the shock of the long prison sentences they received, which they regarded as a historical step-change. A reaction to the ‘repressive tolerance’ of 60s British state. Since then, and particularly from the 1990s, the term ‘terrorism’ has been expanded to include a wide range of armed groups fighting for national liberation and autonomous zones, whether they use terrorist tactics or not. Obviously, the recent invasions from the 1980s onwards and use of proxies (such as Israel, Assad’s regime etc) to achieve imperialist ambitions in the Middle East by both western and eastern powers have at worst exacerbated the spread of armed Islamic groups such as ISIS, adding to the lists of proscribed groups on the ‘terrorist’ list.

The term ‘terrorism’ since the so-called ‘war on terror’ of the early 2000s has become fluid, moving away from a description of a tactic in conflict to the realms of propaganda. In the UK and the US whole academic departments and military ‘think tanks’ will tell you that only ‘non-state actors’ can be ‘terrorists’, that states can legally assassinate, kidnap and torture people (especially if their targets are ‘terrorists’) and that aerial bombing and drone strikes are ‘not really terror’ especially if they are precision-based (sic). Repressive states along with so-called ‘liberal democracies’ bandy the term around to frame their ‘enemies’ whether these ‘non-state actors’ are fighting for equality, democracy, homeland or religion. To a degree, the word ‘terrorist’ has become meaningless, but it certainly still kills lots of people.

In all this horror, we find that those who refuse to be silenced, who act non-violently to protest and disrupt the UK arms and finance industries that cooperate with and ‘arm’ Israel, are now being branded as ‘terrorists’ and are being banned. As one commentator referring to the indiscriminate slaughter and numerous war crimes carried out by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza noted:

Law-abiding protest has so far failed… More than 50,000 innocent children have been killed or injured. In what circumstances could civil disobedience ever be justified if not now?[34]

In the case of Palestine Action, one might ask who they are actually terrorising? You can’t as far as I am aware terrorise a wall, an office building, a factory, a fighter jet…or a statue of a slave-trader. If the RAF at Brize Norton were ‘terrorised’ by the PA activists on scooters the other week, then you may want to question their capability for ‘defending us’. It appears next on the list for proscription are climate activists, who have already suffered significant repression in the UK but now face being framed as ‘climate terrorists’. What next, bring back hanging for ‘eco-terrorists’?

One aspect of this half-century review of the terror laws in the UK has demonstrated that the Tories are not the (only) ‘baddies’. In fact, it’s the Labour Party you need to keep an eye on. The three major introductions, revisions and extensions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act occurred in 1974, 2000 and 2025, under three different Labour administrations. So far under it looks highly unlikely that Starmer and his allies will reverse or repeal any existing legislation, in fact quite the opposite. So when (or if) you vote next time, at least on this issue, clear all that social-democratic gradualist claptrap out of your mind. However, it is true to say that where the Tories have had a significant hand in all this repression has been in their so-far successful attempts to remove any legal defences non-violent protesters might enjoy. So, with the Labour Party on the legal offensive and the Tories having damaged (or destroyed) our legal defences, activists and their supporters are caught between a rock and a hard place. But then…no one said it was going to be easy…

Postscript – Palestine Action proscribed

On the 2 July 2025, the House of Commons voted by 385 votes to 26 to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000.[35] But it wasn’t just PA that was banned, the scheming Labour Party cabinet and its spin doctors knew they could be in trouble with this repressive action against a non-violent organisation. In a move the dictator Putin would have been proud of, they bundled PA up with two other organisations, Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM). Sounding like something out of a Batman comic, the former a white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organisation and the latter a white supremacist ethno-nationalist organisation were unknown to the vast majority of MPs, as one SNP member pointed out:

Palestine Action has inexplicably been linked to groups such as the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement—groups unknown to the House until this measure was on the Order Paper today, but they are groups that, from a cursory glance at their activities, should of course be proscribed.

For Palestine Action to be included alongside those groups is, at best, a cynical and calculated move by the Government to ensure that this order gets through today.[36]

This calculated move was to provide an excuse for Labour MPs to have to vote for the measure, or be seen to be not proscribing neo-Nazi organsiations. As independant MP Zarah Sultana pointed out:

This order lumps a non-violent network of students, nurses, teachers, firefighters and peace campaigners—ordinary people, my constituents and yours—with neo-Nazi militias and mass-casualty cults. Palestine Action’s real crime is, we have to be clear, 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.[37]

Randall Brantley (30 June 2025)

Endnotes

[1] James, I. & Price, E. Palestine Action group to be banned, home secretary confirms. BBC News. 23 June 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g83l33wdeo.

[2] Anon. Pro-Palestinian activists jailed over weapons equipment factory protest. BBC News. 20 August 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9wj144zd7po; Anon., Leicester pro-Palestinian drone factory protest ends after six days. BBC News. 25 May 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-57243045; Shamim, S. What is the Palestine Action group, and why is the UK banning it? Aljazeera. 25 Jun 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/25/what-is-the-palestine-action-group-and-why-is-the-uk-banning-it.

[3] Greenhall O. Jury acquits Palestine Action activists on defences of Necessity and Protection of Property. Greenhall Chambers. 25 June 2024. Retrieved from: https://gardencourtchambers.co.uk/jury-acquits-palestine-action-activists-on-defences-of-necessity-and-protection-of-property/.

[4] Anon., Gaza protesters arrested after weapons firm’s office covered in red paint. ITV X. 2 Nov 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.itv.com/news/london/2023-11-02/gaza-protester-refuses-to-get-down-from-canopy-as-office-covered-in-red-paint.

[5] Rooney, S. Israel kills innocent Palestinians. Activists spray-paint a plane. Guess which the UK government calls terrorism. Guardian. 22 June 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/22/israel-palestine-action-uk-government-terrorism-sally-rooney.

[6] Hence the charges launched against Kneecap rapper Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, better known as Mo Chara, who allegedly displayed a flag supporting proscribed organisation Hezbollah. Bonner, K. Kneecap rapper bailed over terror charge. BBC News. 18 June 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy4k4xnlj8qo.

[7] Terrorism Act 2000 c. 11 Sections 1, 11 and 12, The National Archive, retrieved from https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/11/contents

[8] Zizek, S. in Robespierre. Virtue and Terror. Verso 2007 p. vii. Zizek discusses Robespierre and these issues in an interview here: Was the Terror necessary to defend the French Revolution?- Democratic underground.

[9] Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B., Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state and law and order. London: Bloomsbury Publishing 2017.

[10] The National Archives. Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974. legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/56/enacted.

[11] UK Parliament – Parliamentary Archives. Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, c. 8. 1976. Retrieved from: https://archives.parliament.uk/collections/getrecord/GB61_HL_PO_PU_1_1976_c8; The National Archives. Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 (repealed). 1989. legislation.gov.uk. Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/4/contents.

[12] Thomas, C. State Snooping: Spooks, Cops and Double Agents. Bristol:  BRHG, 2021. p. 28.

[13] Thomas, State Snooping p. 28.

[14] Home Office Policy paper – Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations. 27 February 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version.

[15] Anon. Ploughshares women freed. Institute for Law and Peace. 29 August 2004. Retrieved from: http://www.inlap.freeuk.com/ploughsh.htm.

[16] Vidal, J. Not guilty: the Greenpeace activists who used climate change as a legal defence. Guardian. 11 Sep 2008. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/sep/11/activists.kingsnorthclimatecamp

[17] Van der Zee, B. & Evans, Rob. Jury clears activists who broke into Brighton arms factory. Guardian. 30 June 2010. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/30/activists-arms-factory-acquitted.

[18] The defendants referred to Operation Cast Lead, a three-week assault on Gaza launched by the Israeli state in December 2008. According to an Amnesty Report ‘the Israeli military killed at least 1,383 Palestinians, including 333 children. Palestinian armed groups killed thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, in rocket attacks on Southern Israel’. Anon. Gaza: Operation ‘Cast Lead’. Amnesty International UK, Israel and Palestine. 6 Dec 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/gaza-operation-cast-lead.

[19] Anon. Activists cleared over Brighton weapons factory raid. BBC News. 2 July 2010. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10489356.

[20] Smith, S. Extinction Rebellion co-founder Clare Farrell on smashing up HSBC bank. Dazed. 13 Dec 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/61534/1/extinction-rebellion-xr-co-founder-clare-farrell-prison-hsbc-windows-smash.

[21] Farsides, S. Campaigners risk losing their “last line of legal defence”. Shelia McKechnie Foundation, Unleashing Social Change. 21 Feb 2024. Retrieved from: https://smk.org.uk/campaigners-risk-losing-their-last-line-of-legal-defence/.

[22] Anon. What is the Police and Crime Bill and how will it change protests? BBC News. 2 July 2010. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56400751.

[23] Anon. Court of Appeal rules on point of law within the acquittal of Colston Four. Hodge, Jones & Allen. 28 September 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.hja.net/news-and-insights/press-releases/falsely-accused-of-crime/court-of-appeal-rules-on-point-of-law-within-the-acquittal-of-colston-four/.

[24] European Convention on Human Rights. European Court of Human Rights. 1 August 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.echr.coe.int/european-convention-on-human-rights.

[25] Tobin, S. News focus: Colston Four – AG accused of subverting jury system. 4 July 2022. The Law Society Gazette. Retrieved from: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news-focus/news-focus-colston-four-ag-accused-of-subverting-jury-system/5113003.article.

[26] Laville, S. Court restrictions on climate protesters ‘deeply concerning’, say leading lawyers. Guardian. 8 March 2023. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/08/court-restrictions-on-climate-protesters-deeply-concerning-say-leading-lawyers.

[27] Laville, S. Fears over right to protest after woman with sign at climate trial prosecuted. Guardian. 19 Sep 2023. Retrieved from:  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/19/protester-who-held-sign-outside-london-climate-trial-prosecuted.

[28] Anon. High court dismisses case against Trudi Warner following public demonstrations of support across England and Wales. Defend our Juries. 22 April 2024. Retrieved from: https://defendourjuries.org/press-releases/high-court-dismisses-case-against-trudi-warner-following-public-demonstrations-of-support-across-england-and-wales/.

[29] Laville, S. UN expert condemns UK crackdown on environmental protest. Guardian. 23 Jan 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/23/un-expert-condemns-uk-crackdown-on-environmental-protest.

[30] Laville, S. Climate protesters in England and Wales lose criminal damage defence. Guardian. 18 Mar 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/18/climate-protesters-in-england-and-wales-lose-criminal-damage-defence.

[31] The content of this zoom call was given to the state by a reporter from the Sun newspaper who infiltrated and spied on the meeting. Spray, S. Just Stop Oil Protestors Receive Harshest Jail Terms Yet in Case that ‘May Violate Human Rights Law.’ Byline Times. 18 July 2024. Retrieved from: https://bylinetimes.com/2024/07/18/just-stop-oil-sentencing-m25/; Steel, P. Crossing the Line. BBC Radio 4: Currently, 29 June 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002f6p2.

[32] Gayle, D. Contempt, gagging and UN intervention: inside the UK’s wildest climate trial. Guardian. 12 Jul 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/12/contempt-gagging-un-intervention-uk-wildest-climate-trial-just-stop-oil; Spray, Byline Times.

[33] Spray, Byline Times; Steel, Crossing the line.

[34] Rooney, Israel kills innocent Palestinians.

[35] McNamee, M. S. MPs approve plan to proscribe Palestine Action as terrorist group. BBC News. 02 July 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2d0j0ljdzko

[36] Hansard. Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism. Volume 770: debated on Wednesday 2 July 2025. UK Parliament. Retrieved from: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-07-02/debates/6C9338E8-E516-494A-81A2-B3FEF549DD48/PreventionAndSuppressionOfTerrorism.

[37] Hansard. Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism.