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Defend Our Juries just started pro-Palestine Action protest at Labour conference

Around 100 people have been sitting down outside the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this Sunday 28 September, silently holding signs saying: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”:

Labour Party conference sees Palestine Action ban protest

This simple action has led to the arrest of over 1,500 people since 5 July. The majority of arrests have been elderly protesters. It has included priests, vicars, healthcare workers, teachers, former magistrates and military personnel, and disabled people.

If Merseyside Police decide to go ahead with mass arrests of peaceful protesters, it will be acutely embarrassing for the government on the first day of its conference. The mass protest is confronting MPs, cabinet members, as well as members and delegates at as they walk into conference with the consequences of the Labour’s unprecedented and widely condemned decision to outlaw a protest group as ‘terrorists’ for the first time in British history.

Amnesty International who have issued an unprecedented urgent appeal to their members worldwide over the treatment of Defend Our Juries ‘Lift The Ban’ protesters, have written to the Merseyside Police and are in attendance as observers.

Labour silencing solidarity with Palestinians amid its participation in genocide

This mass action to challenge the Palestine Action ban and Labour’s complicity in Israel’s genocide comes after Labour officials shut down discussion on its policies regarding Palestine at conference. It refused to allow a single motion on Palestine. Party officials blocked all 30 of the motions on Palestine which Labour members put forward for debate.

Even the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who has previously been a vocal supporter of Starmer, recently spoke out against the ban. He said Palestine Action are not terrorists and that the government has “blunted” terror laws by designating the protest group terrorists. In a split with Starmer, Kinnock said:

I want effective action against terrorists, not against protestors.

Polling reported by LabourList and the Telegraph showed over 70% of Labour members oppose the ban on Palestine Action. At its recent annual conference, the TUC unanimously passed a motion demanding the government lift the ban on Palestine Action. Not one of the 48 trade unions objected to the motion.

Authoritarian abuse of the Terrorism Act

When Jack Straw brought in the Terrorism Act 2000 he assured the House of Commons that it would never be used against a domestic protest group. The Labour Party have broken this promise.

Many Labour Lords and MPs feel the government has misled them. They have called on ministers to rethink the “unsustainable and unworkable” and “authoritarian attack of the right to protest”. The New York Times has published the intelligence services assessment on Palestine Action. This undermines the government’s claims that the group poses a danger to the public. Lawyers have accused former home secretary Yvette Cooper of conducting “a cynical media campaign”.

A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said:

We’ve come remind everyone that the Labour party is in breach of it’s duty to act to prevent genocide under international law. Instead it made the cowardly decision to ban the direct action group that was trying to prevent genocide.

Labour members and trades unions are overwhelmingly against their party’s complicity in genocide and the ban on Palestine Action. Yet party officials have shut down all the debates that members wanted to have on these issues during their conference.

Labour also reneged on Jack Straw’s promise that the Terrorism Act he introduced would never be used against a domestic protest group. This sets an alarmingly authroritarian precedent and unless the law is redrawn and the ban overturned, any group that this government or a future government does not like could be treated as terrorists.

Instead of shutting down protest, it’s time the Labour Party took the responsibility to prevent genocide seriously and impose blanket sanctions on Israel including stopping the flow of arms from factories in this country.”

Former Labour members and the public ‘deeply ashamed’ of government’s complicity

Amongst those sitting today is Keith Hackett. Police recently told the 71-year old former Labour councillor he could legally display a poster in support of the proscribed Palestine Action group in his front window. Keith said:

I’m risking arrest today under terrorism legislation because as a former Labour councillor in Liverpool I am deeply ashamed of how Labour are acting. If they want to start turning the party around and win back the support they have lost they need to stop their complicity in this genocide and end the ban on Palestine Action. They need to recognise that direct action has been a fundamental part of the gains that have been in the labour movement.”

Tayo Aluko, 63, actor, writer, and singer from Liverpool who is sitting in protest today, said:

This government, like all authoritarian regimes in modern times, wants to plant fear in the citizens so that it can continue to let their friends and paymasters get away with genocide. This is a time for bravery, as was shown by people who went before us, so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today, which are now under threat. I feel I have no choice but to stand up and be counted.

Protecting free speech and human rights? Only when it’s convenient

The UN Commission of Inquiry found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza on multiple counts. Yet the Labour government continues to say that:

any formal determination as to whether genocide has occurred should be made following a judgment by a competent national or international court.

As the UN Commission report noted:

Since at least January 2024, when the International Court of Justice ordered its first provisional measures, all states… have been on notice of a serious risk that genocide was being or would be committed

This thereby triggered the responsibility of states to prevent genocide under the Genocide Convention. The UK government has therefore been negligent of its obligations under the Geneva Convention to prevent and punish genocide.

Prime minister Keir Starmer, in his recent press conference with US president Donald Trump, said:

free speech, it’s one of the founding values of the United Kingdom and we protect it jealously and fiercely and always will.

Anyone watching the state’s recent mass arrests under terrorism legislation of over 1,500 people for peacefully holding cardboard signs might find that difficult to swallow.

Feature image supplied.

By The Canary

This post was originally published on Canary.