Five words about Palestine Action could get me arrested
JVL Introduction
A brilliant, passionate article by Ronan Bennett on the proscription of Palestine Action.
His contempt for Keir Starmer is boundless and that for some other shabby goverment figures is not far behind.
“Who,” asks Bennett, ” can hear chanting at Glastonbury, but not the screams of the maimed and incinerated, or the howls of grief and rage from survivors. Who is offended by Kneecap but not by the genocidal statements of senior Israeli politicians and cabinet ministers.”
Obviously, Bennett points out, it would be a terrorist offence “for me or for you to say or write ‘I stand with Palestine Action’”.
But it’s still possible, he concludes, to tell Starmer and Cooper exactly what they should do…
RK
This article was originally published by Prospect on Wed 9 Jul 2025. Read the original here.
Five words about Palestine Action could get me arrested
Support for the protest group was legal last week—but now it is ‘terrorism’. This is an assault on our liberty
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Yvette Cooper’s “cunning wheeze” of adding Palestine Action to two terrorist organisations, then forcing MPs to choose between proscribing / not proscribing all three is yet another desperate, stupid government mistake. The war between Labour and the Cabinet is already red-hot – why add to the aggro by treating MPs with such blatant disrespect?
Was it only last week that 130 Labour MPs forced a government climb down over Reeves’ £5 billion “welfare reform” cut? And even that climbdown didn’t defuse Labour MP’s anger; 49 voted against the government at the second and third reading of the Bill. There’s yet another furious, destabilising fight to come when the PIP / UC review reports.
And what happens when the appeal court rules (as it may well) that proscribing Palestine Action is unlawful and the arrests and detention of supporters of Palestine Action are equally unlawful? Labour MPs will see the Starmer government as RIDICULOUS as well as vicious, unjust and generally unprincipled. The Cabinet will lose all of its authority to act (in Lord Howe’s words “being in office but not in power”.
It is a very good polemic. And perhaps because it is polemic, I am being too picky. But I am going to stick to my ground that I have two reservations.
The threats of the Terrorism Act are its potential risk of long sentences, its secrecy of process, the uncertainties of what kind of arrest and sentencing policies will be followed, and, ergo, its likely substantial chilling effect on campaigning around Israel-Palestine and many other issues, especially climate change. So it’s really dangerous and regressive.
However, I don’t think the likely sentences for milquetoast spoken or written words supporting Palestine Action are likely to be anywhere near the maximum sentence of 14 years, which Bennett foregrounds. According to David Renton, barrister at Garden Court Chambers (generally ‘progressive’), even prosecutions under the terrifying s12 – where 14 years is the maximum – would likely, in practice, be 2-3 years, which he points out ironically is ‘still more than you would get for gross negligence manslaughter.’ And note that the group who were arrested a few days ago – for their very explicit demonstration in support of Palestine Action in Parliament Square – have been charged under s13, where the maximum sentence is 6 months.
It’s not that I am trying to minimise the seriousness of this clampdown on direct action protest (and its huge implications for freedom of speech). It’s just that I reject tabloid style techniques in headlining the worst and leaving everything else as secondary.
Second, Yvette Cooper is appalling. But Bennett’s swipe at her is cheap – and also misleading. She earns a good salary, as all Ministers do, and she has been a Minister before. She is married to a former Minister, who has presumably managed to replace his previous income by various entertainment, media and podcasting activities. So she is going to be pretty well off. But she didnt have a huge lift up in her childhood. She was ordinary middle class – nothing very elevated. She went to a comp. and then to Oxford (I’m guessing that quite a few JVL members spent time at Oxbridge), and LSE (ditto) and Harvard (maybe some). Her father was a union bureaucrat – ended up as Gen Sec of Prospect (civil service) union, and her mum was a maths teacher (my dad taught history and I am sure many JVL members come from teaching families).
Ronan Bennett should have stuck to his own advice. We should not be opposed to her because of who she is, but what she does. And what she does is consistently dreadful.
I have a correction/amendment to my post. I have since learned that the people who were arrested for the action in Parliament Square were not charged. Even though the law is now operative, they were bailed until the Judicial Review hearing which I think is on 21st July or possibly sometime later that week. However, it is strongly believed that even if the Judicial Review application is thrown out, it is most likely that people engaging in those kinds of demonstrations will be charged under the lesser provision of the Act, with maximum sentence of six months. If you want to know how I know, someone could give me a ring.
actually the arrestee I know has not been charged just bailed, banned from entering the Westminster borough boundary and ordered to report on 1st October (I think) when they might be charged…..I checked this evening)
Tremendous article. Best I’ve seen so far on this disgraceful affair
Great article and a step towards Spartacus but Starmer’s law demands a collective response
If as Naomi Wayne says, Cooper is an ordinary middle class girl without access to funds, perhaps the approx £80k she got from Labour Together, funded by Trevor Chinn, Gary Lubner and Martin Tayler, of whom Lubner and Chinn at least are well know Israel proxies, may have had some effect on her decision making. Plus the money she has had in the past from LFI?
This article is well intentioned but the writer should use language more carefully. ‘Rich, white’ versus ‘poor brown’?
What is being referred to is the Home Secretary in a government which is part of the ruling class in an advanced capitalist state, also part of the western axis of imperialist; and a black working class activist opposing settler-colonialism. This is a political issue not just a personal issue.
I would like to reply to Chris Wallis. I have no time for Yvette Cooper whatsoever. And I am not surprised at all at the sources of her funding – but none of that was part of Ronan Bennett’s commentary. What he said was:
“It’s worth restating that what was perfectly legal last week, last month and last year is now illegal because last Friday the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, (Home Counties, Oxford, Harvard, London School of Economics, political adviser, MP, government minister) pushed through legislation to proscribe under the Terrorism Act 2000 an activist group co-founded by Huda Ammori.
It probably doesn’t matter to Cooper, but this is not a good look: a rich, powerful, privileged, connected white woman at the stroke of her pen brands as a terrorist and threatens with jail a working–class brown woman born in Bolton, the child and grandchild of Palestinian exiles.”
Yvette Cooper is clearly a supporter of Israel. She made a political decision to crush a direct action non-violent organisation that was throwing light on Israel’s criminal destruction of Gaza, and on our government’s complicity. Cooper’s actions have not only turned non violent criminal damage into terrorism, they have opened the door to even further restrictions on our freedom of speech and our right to engage in direct action. I repeat, this was a political decision by Cooper. Ronan Bennett let himself down in his cheap personal attack on her. He knows better, as his own point about opposing her because of what she does not who she is demonstrates.
Ronan Bennet begins his “polemic” with a plain statement of fact: that if he declared his support for Palestine Action today he “would be liable to arrest and prosecution under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which is punishable by up to 14 years in prison and/or a fine.”
Naomi Wayne responds by saying that she is not “trying to minimise the seriousness of this clampdown” while at the same time criticising Bennet for his “tabloid style techniques in headlining the worst and leaving everything else as secondary.”
It seems to me that this is indeed nit-picking: an attempt to diminish the truth of Bennett’s powerful article by likening it to the worst features of British journalism.
Even more questionable are Ms Wayne’s blithe assurances that those who hold up signs or speak in support of Palestine Action are unlikely to be sent down for the maximum 14 years. She may be right, but there is an implication that a mere six months’ imprisonment is neither here nor there. I wonder if those who have already been arrested for breaching the proscription order are quite so relaxed about that prospect.
Having been imprisoned by the Diplock Courts in northern Ireland, I suspect that Mr Bennett takes a rather less cavalier attitude to being incarcerated. I certainly do, having been twice arrested for public protests – and I suffered nothing more unpleasant than a few hours in a cell and listening to perjured evidence from the police officers in court.
The real damage that this proscription order does is to the fabric of our democracy. It chills freedom of speech and thus undermines the health of our society as a whole. We should applaud and honour those people who have the courage to risk imprisonment.
I think Ronan Bennett’s observations about the class and ethnicity differences between Yvette Cooper and Huda Ammori are well-taken. The endemic racism in our exceptionalist white colonial mindset is worth noting. It’s so ingrained it seems that it’s a ‘personal’ issue rather than a political one.