Britain once jailed suffragettes. Now it jails Palestine activists
She was one of more than two dozen people arrested that day - many of them women and elderly, most carrying nothing but banners and conscience.
Their 'offence' was to stand in solidarity with Palestine Action, the group newly branded a terrorist organisation by the British government, despite never having harmed a single person.
Its methods? Spray paint, red dye, road blockades - all part of a non-violent campaign to end Britain's role in arming Israel's destruction of Gaza.
The irony is almost unbearable: this proscription was ordered by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and backed overwhelmingly in parliament on the very anniversary of women in Britain winning the right to vote. Most female MPs voted to criminalise Palestine Action - and many of them later smiled for photos celebrating the suffragette legacy of militant resistance.
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That legacy wasn't meek.
The Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, planted bombs. They disrupted postal services, set fire to public buildings and politicians' homes, smashed windows, handcuffed themselves to railings, attacked Church of England buildings, and vandalised golf courses and male-only clubs. They disrupted political meetings, broke the law, and starved themselves in protest.
Silencing dissent
Palestine Action has never come close to such tactics. And yet today, it is labelled a terrorist threat.
As Baron Peter Hain put it: 'Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison [to the suffragettes' actions].' But while most female MPs today celebrate the suffragettes in words, they vote to criminalise their spirit in action.
One of the few exceptions is Baroness Jenny Jones, a Green peer who has been outspoken in her defence of Palestine Action and searing in her condemnation of Britain's complicity. She is everything the suffragette legacy demands: principled, defiant, willing to speak uncomfortable truths in a chamber soaked in political cowardice. She stands with those resisting oppression - not those funding it.
UK arrests 83-year-old priest for backing Palestine Action and opposing Gaza genocide Read More »
She is the type of female legislator who was in Pankhurst's mind when she spoke at one of her trials: 'We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.'
And it is no surprise that while the likes of Cooper target campaigners - including women such as Parfitt and the cofounder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori - Jones calls out the state's duplicity: the criminalisation of protest, the arming of apartheid, the silencing of dissent.
As she put it in parliament: 'If you want Palestine Action to disappear, then stop sending arms to Israel and giving military support to a foreign government engaged in ethnic cleansing.'
This isn't just hypocrisy. It's a violent moral inversion.
At the same protest on Saturday stood a Welsh nurse who only weeks ago was at the Rafah border pleading with Egyptian security forces to let him through into Gaza to facilitate aid delivery. Now back in the UK, he continues to protest - heartbroken, undeterred.
This is the face of the movement: ordinary people moved by the extraordinary obscenity of genocide, and by the complicity of their own governments in enabling it.
Growing movement
Just a week earlier, punk duo Bob Vylan sent shockwaves through Glastonbury by chanting 'Death to the IDF' on stage, referencing the Israeli army. The words were echoed by thousands and broadcast live on the BBC.
Palestine was everywhere at the festival - in lyrics, on flags, spoken from the stage. The crowds cheered. The establishment panicked. Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushed to condemn the chant, and even the White House weighed in.
What the same western political establishment has failed to condemn, of course, are the crimes giving rise to those chants: the bombs dropped on hospitals, mass starvation, and body parts in rubble.
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Two days later, London's high court ruled it lawful for the UK to supply parts for F-35 fighter jets - the very aircraft used to flatten Gaza.
The message was unmistakable: chanting against genocide perpetrators is a scandal. Arming a genocidal army is lawful.
Yet despite every effort to suffocate the pro-Palestine movement - police vans, proscription orders, media blackouts - it is only growing.
A long-suppressed BBC documentary on Palestinian medics, which the broadcaster delayed and ultimately dropped, was finally aired by Channel 4. It showed in harrowing detail the systematic targeting of doctors and hospitals by Israeli forces. As commentator Gary Lineker said: 'The BBC should hang its head in shame.'
The people are already ahead of their leaders. And sooner or later, the leaders will follow - whether they want to or not
Meanwhile, Haaretz, Israel's own paper of record, published testimonies from Israeli soldiers describing how they were ordered to shoot starving Palestinians gathered for food. Not militants - children, parents, civilians.
The body count in Gaza now exceeds 56,000. And Britain is arresting the people trying to stop it.
But the tide is turning. Public opinion is not just shifting; it is collapsing around the western establishment. In the UK, net favourability towards Israel is now at -46. Nearly half of Britons believe Israel is committing genocide, while a majority support the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Across Europe, it's the same, with net favourability towards Israel at -44 in Germany, -48 in France, -54 in Denmark, -52 in Italy and -55 in Spain.
In the US, the shift is also stark. A Pew poll conducted in March found that 53 percent of Americans now view Israel unfavourably, a rise of more than 10 percentage points from three years ago. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that four in 10 Americans now believe Israel's problems are 'none of our business.'
Unstoppable shift
The battle to liberate Palestine is no longer being fought solely in Gaza or the occupied West Bank. It is being waged just as critically in the heart of the western world: between an increasingly awakened public and an establishment determined to suppress it.
The Israeli project is not a self-contained national affair. It is, at its core, a western colonial enterprise. And the last two years have exposed how deeply its survival depends on the political and military sponsorship of western governments - above all, the United States.
This is why the frontline now runs through London, Paris, Berlin and Washington - through parliaments, universities, media outlets and courtrooms. It is a battle for moral authority, a contest between power and truth. And its outcome will shape the fate of Palestine.
But history teaches us something else too: that the most transformative struggles - from the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, to the civil rights movement - were won not because the powerful saw the light, but because the public made them feel the heat. And that public pressure, relentless and sustained, forced open doors long held shut.
So it will be with Palestine.
The people are already ahead of their leaders. And sooner or later, the leaders will follow - whether they want to or not.
Public opinion will, in time, impose its will on those in power. It may take years. It may come slowly. But this shift is already underway, and it is unstoppable.
History is watching. And when Palestine is finally free - as it will be - the names remembered won't be those who armed Israel with bombs. It will be the ones they tried to silence. The ones they arrested. The ones who marched. The ones who healed.
The ones like Reverend Sue Parfitt, who smiled as they took her away. The ones like Baroness Jenny Jones, who refused to betray what justice means.
We will remember who stood on the side of freedom - and who stood in its way.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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Another former chair was Danny Finkelstein of the Times. David Frum, notorious for coining the phrase 'axis of evil' as George W Bush's speechwriter, is yet another. Andrew Gilligan, a former Telegraph and Sunday Times journalist whose own reporting on British Muslims has been a subject of contention, is a senior fellow, and joint author of this Policy Exchange document. One of us, Peter Oborne, wrote a foreword for the CfMM report on the BBC which Policy Exchange quotes from in its report, as well as speaking at a parliamentary event to mark its launch. We have studied Policy Exchange's report. It is riddled with falsehoods and distortions. Every accusation a confession Andrew Neil, whose journalistic career includes spells as editor at the Sunday Times and as the long-time chairman of The Spectator, claims in the foreword that CfMM is engaged in enforcing a 'tendentious view of Islam and, sometimes, seeking to suppress truthful, factual reporting which happens to contradict that view'. As they say, every accusation is a confession. Neil might as well be describing some of The Spectator's reporting on Muslims during the years he was in charge. The report provides no evidence of CfMM seeking to 'suppress truthful, factual reporting' He asserts that the report proves 'CfMM is part of a wider campaign for legal restrictions on what you can say about Islam, with fundamental implications for free speech". These are sensational claims. They are also absurd. The report provides no evidence of CfMM seeking to 'suppress truthful, factual reporting'. CfMM says it supports the All-Party Parliamentary Group's definition of Islamophobia. The report that accompanied the creation of that definition insisted it was not 'intended to curtail free speech or criticism of Islam as a religion'. Policy Exchange accuses CfMM of saying that 60 percent of news stories about Muslims are Islamophobic. But the organisation has never said that. Policy Exchange further claims that CfMM 'has openly taken the side of intimidating mobs staging banned anti-gay demonstrations outside primary schools'. This is a deeply serious accusation. But there is no record of CfMM endorsing any such demonstrations. Failures of omission More important by far is what Policy Exchange omits. We had expected that the think tank would challenge the central thrust of the CfMM analysis of British media coverage of Gaza. This amounts to a serious body of work exposing one set of reporting rules for Israelis and another for Palestinians. Policy Exchange did not even try. Let's take as an example the recent CfMM finding that the BBC employed the word 'massacre' almost 18 times more often about Israeli than Palestinian victims - and never used the term in headlines about Israeli atrocities. No rebuttal from Policy Exchange. UK's charity regulator urged to investigate Policy Exchange over 'anti-Muslim agenda' Read More » The finding that BBC correspondents or presenters applied the term 'butcher' 220 times for actions against Israelis; just once for actions against Palestinians. No rebuttal. That Israeli deaths were reported in more emotive terms, with victims far more likely to be humanised with details about the names, family backgrounds and jobs. No rebuttal. That just six percent of the deaths of Palestinian journalists had been reported by the BBC. No rebuttal. The failure of the BBC (and wider media) to cover Israel's Hannibal directive, or the Dahiya doctrine, or statements of genocidal intent by Israeli politicians from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu down. Again, no rebuttal. Rather than confront these serious allegations made against British media reporting which lie at the heart of the CfMM argument, Policy Exchange has chosen to ignore them. One can only suppose that's because they are accurate. Unable to challenge the substance of CfMM's work, it has tried to discredit it with smears. In footballing terms, Policy Exchange has played the man and not the ball. One last point needs to be made. CfMM's report into British reporting of Gaza have been largely ignored in mainstream press and media. By contrast, the Policy Exchange attack on CfMM has been noisily amplified in the Mail, the Telegraph, The Times and GB News. We rest our case M'lord.
