Scrap the Palestine Action ban!

The “Filton Four”, initially found innocent of charges relating to a break-in at an Elbit Systems factory in Filton, then later re-trialled and found guilty, were subject to an outrageous attack on freedom of expression and freedom to protest as their court case came to a close. After the jury’s decision had been made, the judge announced that the defendants were to be sentenced on the basis of a “terrorist connection” to their charges – something the jury was unaware of when reaching their decision.

This increased their sentences and made their cases more damaging than they already were. On 12 June Samuel Corner was given seven years and eight months, while Fatema Rajwani, Leona Kamio and Charlotte Head all received five-year sentences. In addition, they will have to go through 15 years of “terrorist notification requirements”, including registering new phones, email addresses and bank accounts with the police, and going to regular check-ins. Charlotte Head’s barrister Rajiv Menon will now face proceedings for alleged contempt of court.

All that for young people who were attempting to voice their anger and take action against a genocidal war. Palestine Action have politics on Israel/Palestine that are extremely questionable, and their activity is not the best outlet for young people looking to change the world. But to treat them as “terrorists” akin to Daesh, as both beyond the pale of civil society and posing a threat to public life, is nonsense.

The fact that terrorism charges were hidden from the jury, instead utilising a law that allows the judge to determine whether a case is related to terrorism without jury insight, shows a cowardice on the part of the government. They didn’t believe they would be able to convince a randomly-selected jury of the terrorist nature of these charges, so took it out of their hands.

Continues

At the same time, the fight over the banning of Palestine Action continues. PA co-founder Huda Ammori has said that she will continue to attempt to overturn the decision, made by the Court of Appeal in June, that the initial proscription of PA by the government was, in fact, lawful. Ammori has said that the challenge “will go all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights, if needs be”.

Over 200 people have been arrested just recently, most at peaceful protests, “on suspicion” of terrorism charges, including ones carrying long sentences. Over 3,500 have been arrested since the initial proscription, each of them just making the government decision look more and more farcical.

This is part of a broad spectrum of measures, ongoing for several years across both the Labour and Tory governments, to curtail and restrict the right to protest. The Police Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, increasing police abilities to stop and search and increasing the remit of police powers to stop protests, was one of the most significant moments of this wave. The current bans on PA and sentences for its activists should be seen as part of the same wave.

All these decisions accumulate to a terrible rolling back of the right to protest which will infringe on a vast range of future public political activity in this country.