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The glaringly hypocrisy in this picture of MPs cannot be understated

MPs proudly posed for photos with suffragette-style sashes on exactly the same day most of them voted to approve a shameful attack on direct action group Palestine Action. Apparently, it’s a lot cheaper and easier to cosplay as direct-actionists from the past than it is to oppose state repression of direct-actionists in the present.

Centenary Action – which a member of the Pankhurst family founded – helped to organise the handcrafting of white sashes for female MPs. The politicians received them on 2 July, the same day that most of them voted to ban direct-action group Palestine Action.

The most famous Pankhursts, Sylvia and Emmeline, were (in the words of the BBC) “trailblazing women who founded the suffragettes and campaigned for women’s right to vote”. Even the British parliament’s website honours them, saying:

The Pankhurst family is closely associated with the militant campaign for the vote. In 1903 Emmeline Pankhurst and others, frustrated by the lack of progress, decided more direct action was required and founded the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) with the motto ‘Deeds not words’… Under her leadership the WSPU was a highly organised group and like other members she was imprisoned and went on hunger strike protests.

It adds:

the lack of Government action led the WSPU to undertake… attacks on property and law-breaking, which resulted in imprisonment and hunger strikes… These tactics attracted a great deal of attention to the campaign for votes for women.

So it’s ok to cosplay as direct actionists from the past, but we shouldn’t dare to use direct action today? Gotcha.

The British establishment has clearly felt uncomfortable about heroising the suffragettes. Because they represent a rich national tradition of active resistance to injustice – usually at the hands of the state. While trying to share the glory of the suffragettes in public by wearing their colours, politicians have long continued to treat them as extremists behind the scenes. They know full well the dangers of normalising direct action too much, because it could – and does – inspire others in the present day to resist injustice in similar ways.

Jeremy Corbyn highlighted parliament’s clear hypocrisy on direct action in his speech against the proscription of Palestine Action. He gave examples of ordinary people resisting injustice in the past, from the chartists to the suffragettes, mass trespassers to anti-apartheid campaigners, and from the women of Greenham Common to Palestine Action:

Most of Britain’s MPs are not Jeremy Corbyn, though, unfortunately. They seem happy to cosplay as direct-actionists from the past, because it costs them nothing. But when it comes to actually defending the public’s brave resistance to injustice, they run and hide. Or more accurately, they vote to set the whole repressive power of the state against direct-actionists by labelling them as terrorists.

Before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, many people in Britain perhaps believed that we live in a democratic country with civil rights. But with Tory-Labour governments’ open participation in that genocide, the state has forced ordinary people to test how true that idea is. And as journalist Matt Kennard, it turns out it was just a facade:

The struggle against injustice is just as alive and necessary as it was in the time of the suffragettes. And just as it was morally right to support their cause in the past, it is morally right to support Palestine Action’s today.

Featured image via screengrab

By Ed Sykes

This post was originally published on Canary.