Keir Starmer's authoritarian tendencies are on full display
It beggars belief, but in the UK today, non-violent direct action involving trivial damage to property by throwing paint is now classified as being on a par with planting a nail bomb in a crowded pub and killing and maiming innocent people.
So just so we are clear, chucking red paint on an RAF plane which was suspected of taking British-made munitions to Israel, where they would be used to perpetuate the genocide which the Israeli Government and its armed forces are currently inflicting on the people of Gaza, is a terrorist act according to the Labour government.
READ MORE: Petition to have Israeli military branded terrorist group gains traction
On the other hand, actual genocide, including dropping a 230 kg bomb on a crowded seaside cafe and killing dozens, flattening civilian infrastructure, bombing hospitals, restricting food aid as a weapon, and mowing down starving civilians desperately seeking food and water, count as Israel's legitimate right of self-defence and the British Government will continue to supply Israel with armaments, military intelligence, and spare parts for the aircraft used to bomb Gaza into the stone age.
Meanwhile, the British establishment and media are far more exercised about chanting at Glastonbury than they are about the ongoing genocide in Gaza, mass murder and starvation, and the Israeli Government's openly aired plans to ethnically cleanse the entire population of the territory and effectively annexe it. A spot of chanting is the really offensive thing here.
Any hope that the election of a Labour government might see an end to the erosion of civil liberties and the right to protest have been well and truly scuppered now. Expressing support for a direct action protest group which has never caused physical harm or committed violence against any individual is now classified as supporting a terrorist organisation, a criminal offence which potentially carries the risk of fourteen years in prison.
Cynically, the Labour government sought to minimise opposition to its authoritarian anti-protest ban by bundling the measure classifying Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation in with the banning of three deeply unpleasant extreme right groups, the "Maniacs Murder Cult", a Moldovan neo-Nazi group, the Russian Imperial Movement – a violent white supremacist far-right group aiming to rebuild the Russian Empire – and its paramilitary wing the Russian Imperial Legion.
Classing Palestine Action along with violent Nazis and far right Russian nationalists is an obvious nonsense, but it succeeded in reducing opposition to the measure as MPs did not want to be accused of voting against classing violent Nazi groups as terrorist organisations
However, a group of around twenty people, including a former government lawyer, have announced that they intend to defy the Government's proscription by holding Palestine Action signs in protest this weekend, despite the risk of criminal conviction and jail time for doing so. The campaign group Defend Our Juries has said the action will be the first in a series, and every week, "more people will show their support for freedom of expression".
The protest will take place on Saturday, July 5, at 1pm, in front of the Gandhi statue in Parliament Square in London. Activists will hold signs saying, 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."
The Government's decision to proscribe the direct action protest group as a terrorist organisation has been widely condemned as an authoritarian over-reach which infringes on freedom of expression and the right to protest, which are vital to democracy.
Thousands of people and organisations, including the Network for Police Monitoring and the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, four UN special rapporteurs, and 266 solicitors, barristers and legal academics, have condemned the decision from the Home Office.
(Image: Supplied)
Defend Our Juries hopes to create a dilemma for UK law enforcement, calling the law change "unenforceable".
The group stated: "If they are arrested and charged with Terrorism Act offences, for a statement opposing the genocide of Palestinians, and supporting those who resist it, it will expose the end of democracy and free speech in the UK.
"If they do not get arrested, they demonstrate that you cannot, in practice, proscribe a popular organisation like Palestine Action and stop hundreds of thousands of people across the country from supporting them."
Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer and director of Plan B, a charity that supports strategic legal action against climate change, is one of those set to take part.
He said: 'There are already 18 Palestine Actionists held in UK prisons without a trial, following lobbying by the Israeli government and Elbit Systems, the leading supplier of the machinery of genocide.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide of Palestinians, if we cannot condemn those who enable it and praise those who resist it, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning, and democracy in this country is dead.'
If the Government can proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, they open the door to doing the same to any other protest organisation which the British Government considers a nuisance, climate activists, disability rights organisations, Scottish and Welsh independence groups, and anti-monarchy campaigners, all could potentially face similar treatment.
MP Zarah Sultana, who was suspended from the Labour party for voting against the two-child benefit cap, said: "Let us be clear: to equate a spray can of paint with a suicide bomb isn't just absurd, it is grotesque. It is a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity, and suppress the truth."
(Image: PA)
Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, slammed the move as 'unprecedented legal overreach', pointing out that it gave the authorities 'massive powers to arrest and detain people, suppress speech and reporting, conduct surveillance and take other measures."
Deshmukh added: Using [anti-terrorist powers] against a direct-action protest group is an egregious abuse of what they were created for."
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