Action, just not Palestine Action

Staying on the right side of the line

I would strongly encourage anyone to exercise their fundamental right to protest and to stand up for the rights of the Palestinian people. So would the British Government, who have the stated aim of recognising a Palestinian state at a time when it would have the ‘maximum impact’. Well, maybe the Government wouldn’t welcome the protesting part, but we seem to be on the same page.

But please do not mistake me. This post is in no way an expression of support for the proscribed terrorist organisation Palestine Action, nor is it an invitation of support for the group. Being found to be doing either of those things could leave me liable to a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

I certainly do not want to go to prison for fourteen years over a blog post. Wouldn’t that be ludicrous? But, please bear in mind that if you do exactly what Palestine Action do (or did), under your own initiative, and make sure that you do not endorse the group while you are doing it, you cannot be labelled a ‘terrorist’. Don’t take that from me, take it from the most learned judges in land. Confused yet? You should be.

This is Marianne Sorrell, an 80 year old woman arrested for holding a placard at a recent protest. Concerning

Before I begin this next section, let me be clear that I do not think octogenarians are incapable of terrorism. A certain Benjamin Netanyahu only has five years to go until he hits the big 8-0, and is certainly going strong on the enormous, catastrophic violence front which most people would associate with terrorism. I am just not convinced that Marianne Sorrell, pictured above, is a terrorist for holding a placard at a non-violent protest against the aforementioned enormous, catastrophic violence. I am not sure that action, completely in opposition to terrorism, justifies the police in holding Mrs Sorrell for 27 hours, searching her home, and removing 19 items from her possession, including drumsticks and a belt used for holding a samba drum. I did not make those items up.

This unusual episode happened because the group Palestine Action have been proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000. This makes it a criminal offence to express or invite support for the group, on pain of a potential 14 years worth of imprisonment. The British Government says that this is necessary to protect the national security of the UK, because the group took action such as spraying paint on some planes and tried to sabotage UK-based Israeli weapons factories. The Government took the decision in spite of the Foreign Office reporting that the group are understood as ‘activists’ as opposed to ‘extremists’ internationally, as well as scant evidence that the group would progress from property damage to actually doing harm to some humans. I would strongly encourage you to read this report (also linked above) to get a serious, properly researched review of the Government’s decision to progress with the proscription.

I feel safe using this image in this post, because the United Nations already have as part of a statement asking why the British Government thought banning Palestine Action was necessary. A strange world

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Government’s decision was to throw a spanner in the works when the decision to ban Palestine Action came before Parliament. We live in a democracy of course, which means that our public representatives must vote before associating with a group or holding a particular belief is outlawed. Which would have been fine, if the Government hadn’t shoehorned two other groups into a single vote alongside Palestine Action, asking MPs to ban all three simultaneously. The other two groups were the Russian Imperial Movement and the Maniacs Murder Cult. The Russian Imperial Movement are an ultranationalist neo-Nazi organisation that seeks to establish a new Russian empire through, amongst other things, letter bomb campaigns and guerrilla warfare. The Maniacs Murder Cult (despite sounding like a band from Peep Show) does not have any specific objective aside from spreading chaos through random assaults and murders, and were involved in a plot to poison Jewish children and minorities in New York while dressed as Santa Claus. Both groups should certainly be illegal, and MPs could not have voted against any move to ban them. Which is why sneaking in Palestine Action, an expressly non-violent organisation, alongside them is concerning.

The courts found their hands tied. After finding out that they were going to be made illegal, the leaders of Palestine Action sought a judicial review of the order against them. Now, the courts are generally pretty reluctant to get involved when there are any ‘national security’ issues at stake, and took advantage of a series of closed hearings during the case, the evidence from which will never see the light of day. If that wasn’t suspect enough, the Government also made noises in the press about Iran somehow being involved with Palestine Action, which turned out to be on the basis that their donations channels were publicly available, so Iran could donate if it wanted to. Like they could sponsor a fun run or a bake sale, but without any actual evidence that they had done.

So the judges failed to be convinced. Of course, they do not want to be seen as siding with ‘terrorists’, and the last decade of British politics has managed to turn public opinion inexplicably against an independent judiciary (thanks Boris). But they still made some interesting statements while dismissing the case. As I mentioned at the start of the blog, the judges were clear that Palestine Action does not seek to target or endanger people, and that carrying out the ‘criminal damage’ Palestine Action activists had been accused of would not independently be worthy of the label of terrorism. So why use terrorism laws against them?

This could be because taking members of Palestine Action to court on criminal damage charges would expose the gap between public opinion and Government policy on Palestine. As has long been established, juries can acquit in accordance with their conscience, and have been shown willing to do so in recent years. Notably, the ‘Fairford Five’ broke into an RAF airbase during the Iraq war and attempted to disable aircraft that could have been used to commit war crimes. One of the defendants’ lawyers argued successfully that the criminal offence had only been committed to prevent a greater crime in the Middle East, which the jury accepted. That lawyers name: Sir Keir Starmer. The Government knows that defendants charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act may not have the right to appear before a jury, nullifying the risk of exposing the Government to an embarrassing acquittal and adding another strand to the case for banning Palestine Action.

So now the UK, as a traditional bastion of free expression (self-assessed), is in the slightly awkward position of being called out by the UN Human Rights Commissioner for banning Palestine Action. For many of the reasons I’ve discussed, the Commissioner has called the prohibition of the group ‘disproportionate and unnecessary’, citing concerns that terrorism laws are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature. There are already plentiful offences to be used against the perpetrators of criminal damage, and the proscription of an avowedly non-violent group has left police forces up and down the country confused about what to do with the new order. Hence the arrest of public menaces like Marianne Sorrell, and more than 100 other people like her. Ultimately, the Government has got itself into an enormous pickle over Palestine Action, and I can’t see them risking prosecutions of pensioners due to the public uproar this would cause. It will be even stranger if the group remains banned after the UK recognises a Palestinian state, which if media reports are to be believed, could soon be on the Government agenda.