It is my opinion that Palestine Action has the moral right to protest against genocide using non-violent direct action.
That simple sentence will soon make me criminally culpable for supporting a terrorist organisation.
Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 makes it criminal offence to “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation.” I could go to jail for fourteen years. So could you if you ‘like’ this on social media.
Of course, no one in the current government would consider a ‘like’ as support for a proscribed organisation. Would they? That would be as ridiculous as barring an elected politician from running for office for talking to a film maker about films at an event about films.
Palestine Action strike
No one was hurt by Palestine Action’s red paint. The fact is that no one in the RAF even knew the action took place until afterwards. Palestine Action had to take videos of themselves on electric scooters. They are not a threat to life and limb. They are opposed to war, war crimes, and war mongering.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper’s statement justified the proscription on grounds on national security, saying Palestine Action “put that security at risk.” Yet the RAF said that no planned flights or operations were affected.
Which is it, then?
Terrorism is defined by the government as:
The use or threat of serious violence against a person or serious damage to property where that action is:
- designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public; and
- for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The Israeli Defence Force is certainly using serious violence against non-combatants to achieve political and ideological aims. They have killed at least 62,000 civilians. How are they not terrorists?
Starmer the terrorist
In the UK, the 1989 Prevention of Terrorism Act defined terrorism as “the use of violence for political ends.” It was the Blair government that changed it in 2000, to include “serious damage to property” and creating “a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.” By that final definition, this Labour government’s plans to plunge 250,000 disabled people into poverty through stripping Personal Independence Payments (PIP) makes Keir Starmer a terrorist. And, the water companies pumping sewage into our rivers and beaches are terrorists too.
That might sound like a satirical argument. It’s not. I’m making a serious point. We have legislation that is so vague that a Home Secretary can criminalise anyone who says non-violent protesters might have a point. We are not functioning as a democratic state protected by universal human rights.
Cooper says Palestine Action have a “long history” of criminal damage. She claims that since 2024 “its activity has increased in frequency and severity”. But we already have laws for dealing with criminal damage. If they’ve trespassed on an RAF base, charge them with that if you must.
‘Clear moral case’
In fact last year, members of Palestine Action were tried for disrupting the operation of Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit. Their six day rooftop protest injured no one at the drone making plant near Leicester. They mostly sprayed red paint. The jury acquitted them on the grounds that their actions were necessary to save lives. Most reasonable people would conclude that engaging in actions necessary to save lives sounds like the opposite of terrorism.
We find ourselves sliding towards an Orwellian world. Keir Starmer has said that “there is a clear moral case” for cutting welfare payments for disabled people. But, it’s his own government’s own analysis shows 250,000 people will be plunged into poverty, including 50,000 children.
This is the weapons of mass destruction debacle all over again. In the novel 1984, George Orwell introduced Newspeak. This was the deliberate simplification and corruption of words. Iraq never had nuclear weapons. It never had biological weapons. The chemical weapons it had were destroyed years before the 2003 invasion. However, the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” was used to manufacture consent for the invasion of Iraq.
We have found ourselves in a country where those using non-violence to prevent killing are now proscribed terrorists, while those arming and defending genocide claim to uphold the “rules based order”.
Embarrassment
Some context, here. I’m not a pacifist. I never have been. I’m a black belt in jiu jitsu. I paid my way through university working as a night club bouncer. My Dad was a tank driver. My brother was in the Royal Navy when the Falklands war took place. I have no moral difficulty using force in an emergency if it will prevent greater suffering. I do object to authoritarian governments and war mongering. That includes the Iranian government and Hamas. But killing civilians in the name of regime change is terrorism.
It’s all connected. The truth is Palestine Action caused embarrassment. We’re being bombarded by messages that we are at war with Russia. That Iranians are a threat. That China is…, hmm, well they’re okay this week because we might have a trade deal in the pipeline. But if that falls flat, they’re a threat too. Yet, the aircraft at RAF Brize Norton were protected by nothing but a six foot high wire fence.
NATO General Secretary Mark Rutter has said unless we spend 5% of GDP on the military, “British people had better learn to speak Russian” is just one example. He’s wrong. Russia will not invade Britain by sailing a nuclear submarine up the River Tyne. Our freedom is imperilled by dodgy money influencing politics. The allies of warmongers are funding authoritarian political parties in Britain.
The government says it will spend 1.5% of GDP on “resilience and security”. Well, let’s spend that £39 billion a year insulating homes and generating clean energy then. Let’s end the need for food banks too.
It’s just as president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in 1961:
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex… Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This post was originally published on Canary.