Palestine Action spraying paint is not terrorism. As ministers abuse their powers, I feel a duty to speak out

The Guardian

a day ago

Strongly worded emails are not doing it. Appeals to MPs are not doing it. Taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands with banners and placards is not working. Elected representatives from every party in parliament have stood in the Commons and asked the government to act. Some government ministers themselves have condemned Israel's starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Every poll of public opinion shows that the nation demands we stop arming Israel, and wants to see an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. But none of these things are working.
Keir Starmer and his cabinet remain impervious to all calls for humanitarian intervention, and Israel is still killing children in Gaza with the support of the British government.
To proscribe as 'terrorist' a non-violent direct action group such as Palestine Action threatens the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, and of peaceful protest. Surely the government should only ever apply the Terrorism Act with the utmost restraint and precision. Otherwise it allows the state to repress civil liberties that have been dearly fought for and won, and which represent the bedrock of our democracy.
Those civil liberties have already come under real and dangerous threat. The powers given to the police have incrementally increased to an alarming degree, owing in part to the Terrorism Act of 2000 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022. These have both led to the right of public protest being seriously eroded, and afforded the police much greater powers and significantly less accountability. We have for some time seen these powers being used to suppress lawful protest and to detain peaceful protesters.
In addition, leaving aside its members, the proscription of Palestine Action will directly affect many other activists who are deeply concerned about the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Even to be seen to support PA's non-violent direct action will be to risk being criminalised.
The government's response to embarrassing security breaches at RAF bases by Palestine Action seems disproportionate, and highlights, I think, the influence on them of vested interests. There has long been a campaign by senior rightwing politicians, arms company executives and pro-Israel lobby groups to shut down Palestine Action and have it proscribed.
Lockheed Martin UK is a key manufacturer of parts for the F-35 fighter jets that have helped Israel flatten the Gaza Strip, kill more than 56,000 people and create more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. The government ended direct sales to Israel of some weapons, but created an 'F-35 exemption' allowing sales of these parts to continue to reach Israel via the US, where the planes are assembled.
The Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems also operates on UK soil, and our government has lucrative bilateral deals with the company. As far back as 2022 the then home secretary, Priti Patel, held a meeting with Martin Fausset, the CEO of Elbit Systems in the UK, to discuss how to deal with Palestine Action.
The definition of terrorism as laid out in the Terrorism Act of 2000 is clear, and includes 'serious damage to property'. Does spraying red paint on to metal constitute serious damage? The condemnation of this spraying of red paint on to planes as expressed by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, does not appear to be matched by any equivalent condemnation by her of red blood sprayed on to the tented walls of Gaza.
So yes, crimes concerning damage to property have been committed, but there are already laws in place to deal with them. Labelling these as terrorism only serves to deepen the UK government's complicity in the war crimes being committed in Palestine.
In a further act of desperation, efforts have been made to try to undermine the motives of Palestine Action by making a tenuous link to Iran, with unnamed Home Office sources telling newspapers it is investigating the group's finances.
Smear campaigns such as this are part of a wider policy by government to intimidate and clamp down on dissent.
I have had a small taste of this myself. On 18 January, I attended a rally in Whitehall organised by Stop the War – and noticed immediately that the tactics of the police that day seemed to be markedly different. Present in their thousands, they were already kettling people at the start of the event, and behaving in a manner that seemed aggressive and provocative. The march to the BBC, which had been planned to protest against its coverage of the conflict, had been prohibited by the Met at short notice, and the gathering was confined to Whitehall. I was asked to join a group of about 12 people who would form a symbolic delegation, and request passage through police lines to reach the BBC. There we planned to lay flowers at the door. Reaching the police lines, after some hesitation and resistance, an officer allowed us through. Shortly after that, however, our progress was curtailed by another police line. It was here that I saw at close hand the disproportionate tactics used by police. I witnessed further vanloads of police arriving in the area, kettling peaceful protesters and making numerous arrests – 77 in total that day.
Three weeks later I was sent a letter from the Met threatening me with charges under section 14 of the Public Order Act. I then faced a three-hour police interview, before being told after several weeks (and several thousand pounds of legal fees) that I would face no further action.
Over the past 21 months, I have met many hundreds of people who come out – often travelling long distances – to protest against this genocide. Old people and young, people of every faith, race, generation and ethnic identity. They come in horror at the brutality being inflicted on the population of Gaza. And many of those in our midst are Jewish.
But still we are accused by lobby groups of antisemitism. This I disregard; I am married to a Jewish man, whose mother was a refugee from Hitler's Vienna. She escaped just in time in 1938 as a refugee, and most of her family were subsequently wiped out in the Holocaust. My children define themselves as Jewish, and we have many beloved Jewish friends, all of whom are appalled by the activities of Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and the Israel Defense Forces. These Jewish friends are people driven by compassion, humanity and a sense of right and wrong that will not yield to intimidation. In Gaza, the world is watching the most heinous acts of violence that I have witnessed in my lifetime. It is as if the skin has been ripped off the face of humanity to reveal terrifying depths of sadism and depravity.
I am intensely aware of this thought: I do not want to find myself at the end of my life looking back at this time regretting that I could have done something and didn't – that I was too frightened to speak out, or to act. Palestine Action and its supporters will have no such regrets. Our current British government, however, may well.
Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor
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