What went down at the Palestine Action protest in London

Hundreds of people gathered in central London today to protest a decision – confirmed this afternoon by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – to ban the activist group Palestine Action. This measure comes after members of the group broke into an RAF base in Brize Norton last Friday (June 20) and vandalised two military planes with spray paint.

When an RAF base was similarly targeted by anti-Iraq war activists back in 2003, Keir Starmer defended the protest as lawful on the grounds that it was carried out in service of preventing an illegal war. Now that Palestine Action are engaging in non-violent civil disobedience as a means of preventing a genocide, at a time when Israel is massacring dozens of civilians every day as they line up for humanitarian aid, he is denouncing them as “disgraceful” and moving to have them banned. As Palestine Action said in a statement issued today: “the real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes, but the war crimes that have been enabled with those planes because of the UK Government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.”

If the ban passes in Parliament, it would effectively designate Palestine Action as a terrorist group and make it illegal not only to be a member, but also to express support for them. It has provoked widespread criticism as an authoritarian crackdown on freedom of speech and the right to protest, from leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Liberty, members of parliament and other public figures. As novelist Sally Rooney wrote in the Guardian, “even supporting the group purely in words – as I am doing now – could also constitute a serious legal offence, punishable with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. Financial dealings with members and supporters may also be illegal, even if the individuals concerned have done nothing against the law other than belong to or express support for a protest movement.”

Ahead of the protest today, which saw large crowds waving the Palestine flag and chanting “we are all Palestine Action” in Trafalgar Square, the head of the Metropolitan Police released a statement expressing his shock and frustration that it was taking place. This attitude seems to have been reflected in how the event was policed. Arrests took place within the first half hour – but it wasn’t clear what prompted such an aggressive response. According to a source at the scene, police officers were trying to grab anyone standing in the road, and one of the people arrested was an “older man in a suit who looked very confused.” Another source claims they were “crushed up against a line of coppers” while one police officer “threw punches” at the crowd, busting one one protestor’s lip. After the arrests took place, protesters surrounded the police, chanting “let them go”, and there was more shoving and tussling as the police formed a barricade. From my perspective, it seemed the police had set out to be antagonistic and escalated the situation entirely unnecessarily.

“This move to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is an attack on our civil liberties as citizens of the UK who have a right to freedom of expression,” Marley, one of the protestors in attendance, told me. “I do not believe that the temporary decommissioning of two planes amounts to an act of terrorism and I think that it’s an insult to genuine victims of terrorism to suggest that it does. I’m also well aware that Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine – I wholeheartedly stand against that and I think that everyone in the UK should have a right to stand against that using non-violent means,” he continued. 

“We’re here today because we know that this attack on Palestine Action is intended as an attack on the entire Palestine movement,” an anonymous representative from Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), one of the many organisations which attended the action in solidarity, told me. “You can see that even from the way that Keir Starmer tweeted about the action at the RAF base – he was intentionally vague about who the actors were, because they’re going to use this to try to silence a very vibrant and powerful organized movement that has been resisting the complicity of the British government in the genocide in Gaza for over a year and a half now.”

But if the ban is intended to divide and suppress the Palestine solidarity movement, PYM’s spokesperson believes it may have the opposite effect. “Every time the government tries to repress our movement, the people come back stronger, because the people in Britain demand an end to the genocide,” they say. “The important thing is not just that it energises people again, which it undoubtedly will, but that people start to internalise the importance of building organised power, as opposed to just having spurts of energy. Palestine Acton are organised, they are thinking strategically, and that’s what the rest of the movement needs to be thinking about – how we all fit in together, work with each other and build that organised power.”

Earlier today, Palestine Action encouraged people to write to their MPs and oppose the ban, including a suggested email template. Everyone who cares about their right to oppose genocide should speak up now.