UK government – meet the demands of the hunger strikers!
JVL Introduction
This is a powerful and rightly furious piece about the government’s mistreatment of Palestine Action activists incarcerated and awaiting trial for an unconscionable time. Even with a sustained hunger strike the government is not only refusing to meet their reasonable demands but even to meet their representatives. Although most have now ended their hunger strike, they will almost certainly have long term health effects as a result and three remain on hunger strike and their lives are now at risk.
As this article makes clear, the Crown Prosecution Service itself says that no prisoner should be on remand for more than six months and yet many have already been in jail for over year with trial dates that will mean that they will be imprisoned for more than three times as long before they are even tried. Note that these people were arrested before the appalling decision to proscribe the organisation as terrorists but they are being held as though they are terrorists which means denial of many “privileges” in prison. Note also that the charges they face are mostly breaking and entering and criminal damage. Being bailed rather than held on remand poses no risk to people.
Below the article we post a statement from Civil Society organisations in South Africa including our sister organisation South African Jews for a Free Palestine.
Please write to your MPs and join vigils and protests if you can
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Wed 7 Jan 2026. Read the original here.
Let’s be clear: if the Palestine Action hunger strikers die, the government will bear moral responsibility
The three remaining hunger strikers have been convicted of nothing. Yet with astonishing cruelty, ministers refuse to listen to their reasonable demands
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Thank you for these pieces. It is unbelievable how appallingly these young protestors against genocide have been treated. Fearing a judge might be lenient with them they are making certain they suffer hell for as long as possible before they go to trial.
Allegedly the merits/demerits of the alleged actions of the hunger-strikers will be determined when the shattered legal system creaks towards a trial. To remand them in custody pending trial in some cases for two to three times the length of time the CPS states as the maximum, and incredibly as a result of retrospective legislation, brings UK justice into well-deserved disrepute. I go along with ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’. Between 2010 and 2019 over half of courts in England and Wales were closed can’t have had any effect could it? This justice deep-freeze coupled with the disgraceful decision not to allow bail for these non-terrorists has resulted in jail sentences without a trial. However, it is sickening that our government is pedantically sticking with ‘justice must be independent’ not to letting humanity pop up, if it’s not already too late, to save their lives by ‘retrospectively’ allowing bail. This is a vicious doubling-down on the government’s complicity with Israel’s continuing genocide of all Palestinians not yet killed.
Many here in Ireland, some old enough to remember the hunger-strikes of ’81, and many younger people, all support these strikers and are calling on Ireland, the UK, the EU and the US to stop colluding with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Free hunger strikers on remand as the law applied when they were arrested.
The prison minister, James Timpson’s statement that ‘Ministers will not meet with them [lawyers representing the hunger strikers and their families] – we have a justice system that is based on the separation of powers, and the independent judiciary is the cornerstone of our system. It would be entirely unconstitutional and inappropriate for ministers to intervene in ongoing legal cases’ is disingenuous. The Criminal Justice Act 2003, Section 248(1) states: ‘The Secretary of State may at any time release a fixed-term prisoner on licence if he is satisfied that exceptional circumstances exist which justify the prisoner’s release on compassionate grounds’.
Whilst the young people on hunger strike are not (convicted) fixed-term prisoners but rather are being held in prison on what is effectively indefinite remand awaiting trial mainly for offences of criminal damage and trespass, the difference is nugatory.
The attempt to hide behind such a legal nicety when life is at stake is, frankly, morally reprehensible.
I am not Jewish but have several Jewish friends. I hate the fact that any person who disagrees with the genocide in Gaza is branded anti-semitic, because that is NOT what I (and many Jews) are…. but it creates hatred. I luv Miriam Margolis’s statements !!!!!
So thankful you are protesting at this inhumane treatment. I have written to my MP and signed and shared the Avaaz plea to David Lammy.
I do not know what else I can do about something that is so terribly wrong.