We must not allow Palestine Action activists to destroy our criminal justice system
Here at home, too, the now proscribed Palestine Action group has taken heart from Starmer's cave-in. There is blood in the water. They are planning acts of mass civil disobedience over the coming weeks to protest the ban on the organisation on July 5 after four of their activists breached an RAF base and vandalised two aircraft at an estimated cost of £7million.
The strategy is not a new one. The goal is to overwhelm the criminal justice system, which is already struggling under the strain of failing front line cops, jammed up courts and overflowing jails.
Mass peaceful disobedience trying to change laws has historical resonance. Think of the Montgomery Bus boycott in the US civil rights struggle or the anti-colonial protests in pre-independence India. The Suffragettes used both peaceful and then violent acts of civil disobedience to achieve the same ends.
The thing that you notice about these examples is that they had both numbers and morality on their side. While plenty of people are discomfited by Palestine Actions activities, there is an argument that an organisation that targets things, not people, should not be labelled as terrorists.
That argument is due to be tested in court as lawyers for the group have successfully argued for a judicial review of the ban. The judge hearing the original appeal said the Government had not consulted Palestine Action on the ban: this is like a farmer consulting turkeys on their welfare ahead of Christmas.
Whatever your position on proscription, we are in more than enough trouble as it is policing public order around illegal migration. It is perfectly rational for the leaders of PA to seek to add to this woe by staging protests where people will be deliberately and clearly in breach of the Terrorism Act 2000 in numbers that will make enforcement a mockery.
The offence of supporting a terror organisation is punishable by up to 14 years in prison, and even arrest can have profound future consequences for foreign travel and employment. These facts are likely to be glossed over by zealots within the movement who see their actions as 'martyrdom' in terms of what many in their ranks would style as the 'resistance' movement in Gaza. The trouble with these people is their tendency to mobilise others, the naive and credulous in particular, to take the hit for them.
Our enduring problem here is the collapse of trust in our law enforcement agencies to enforce existing laws, not the lack of new ones. The next month is looking rocky for public order. We have already seen protests, some violent, against migrant hotels and some occupants charged with sexual offences.
The public mood is febrile across the country. This additional stress could be alleviated if the Government acts decisively against mass protests by people who simply believe the law does not apply to them. This means identifying the ringleaders of the PA strategy and dealing with them first.
Whether the state is ultimately right or wrong about proscription is secondary to the public order risk. We cannot let activists of any group organise in plain sight to bring down the criminal justice system in a democracy.
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