Palestine Action is part of Britain's proud history of protest. Proscribing it is an assault on democracy

The Guardian

7 hours ago

The facts are not disputed. On 20 June, two activists spray-painted two RAF Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, where flights regularly leave for RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. No person inside the compound was harmed.
At worst, these actions may amount to offences around criminal damage and trespass. The former justice secretary Lord Falconer has stated that the action at Brize Norton would not justify outlawing the group.
But that is exactly what is happening. The home secretary's decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to lay an order so swiftly in parliament on Monday will be viewed as a dangerous acceleration to authoritarianism. This means the full weight of the British anti-terrorism state apparatus, including its coercive elements, will be deployed against Palestine Action's leaders and potentially thousands of young British supporters, with devastating consequences for their futures.
The actions used by Palestine Action are not new. They follow a tradition of protest that has been instrumental to civil rights movements throughout history. Indeed, these actions have shaped modern Britain and enriched democratic participation globally.
As a veteran anti-racist civil rights campaigner, for nearly five decades, I continue to support scores of families seeking justice. These have included the families of Blair Peach, Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbié, who were not only traumatised by the way their loved ones were killed but faced a litany of institutional failures.
During every campaign, we faced politicians who ignored or played down our lived experiences blighted by violent and state racism. They also chose to ignore the more subdued and normalised forms of protest that we organised. We were compelled to find creative ways to get the urgency of their message across.
We shouldn't forget the real purpose of the action at Brize Norton – it was to draw attention to British military collaboration with the Israeli government, including its spy flights over Gaza. This is during a war that has led to an unprecedented level of mass killings of Palestinian civilians, near-complete destruction of Gaza's infrastructure, including hospitals, and a deliberate policy of starvation, all leading to official accusations of genocide and action on crimes against humanity. British complicity in Israel's war is a matter of public interest that is too often either ignored or under-reported.
Palestine Action is a network of activists that organises peaceful direct-action tactics to expose and target property and premises connected to Israel's actions in Palestine. Since its inception, more than five years ago, it has primarily disrupted the operations of Elbit Systems. Elbit is Israel's largest arms company. The group claims that its campaign has successfully secured the closure of several Elbit factories.
What Palestine Action understands – and this is borne out by my own experience – is that to bring about change in Britain there is an almost inexhaustible need to press the issue and raise attention. In the Stephen Lawrence case, the family campaigners had to devise extraordinary steps that included an unprecedented private criminal prosecution coupled with protests before the state acknowledged and the public realised the significance of failures in this case. Even then it did not guarantee justice for the family. The actions deployed were peaceful but all of us – the parents, their barrister and I – suffered the indignity of being spied upon by undercover officers who were tasked to sabotage the campaign I coordinated. The deployment of undercover officers in protest groups is now the subject of the undercover policing inquiry.
The home secretary will be aware that protest actions have been organised for decades targeting military bases and aircraft. For instance, from 1981 to 2000, activists disrupted RAF Greenham Common – locking on to the gates, breaking into the grounds and climbing on top of missile silos.
In 2003, five protesters known as the the Fairford Five were arrested and charged for disrupting military operations at RAF Fairford. One of the defendants, Josh Richards, was represented by Keir Starmer. Starmer argued that while the actions broke the law, they were justified as the protesters were trying to stop the planes from committing war crimes. Richards was acquitted because the jury failed to reach a verdict.
The smear campaign against Palestine Action has already begun. It is accused of being funded by Iran or the mouthpiece of Hamas. These accusations are meant to malign a group that is made of ordinary citizens – teachers, nurses, students and workers. I have met many of them.
The drastic move to outlaw Palestine Action would set a dangerous precedent where all civil disobedience actions could be classified as terrorism. Its real crime is being fearless and audacious in exposing the British government's complicity with the Israeli government at a time when it is being pursued by the international court of justice for genocide, and its leaders have had arrest warrants issued against them for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Above all, the move by the home secretary reflects the diminishing of a mature democracy. As a society, we cherish solidarity actions that make a real difference to defenceless people. Will parliament stand up to the home secretary and reject her proposal? History tells them to do so.
Suresh Grover is founder of the Southall Monitoring Group and has led campaigns to help the families of Stephen Lawrence, Zahid Mubarek and Victoria Climbié