03-07-2025
I'm an SNP MP. Here's why we abstained on proscribing Palestine Action
This week the Government presented MPs with a take-it or leave-it, indivisible package which lumped Palestinian Action into the mix with two other groups, the Murder Maniac Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement.
The Murder Maniac Cult is an extremely violent white supremacist, neo-Nazi organisation, whose leader is accused of plotting to have people dressed as Santa Claus, hand out sweets laced with poison to Jewish and other racial minority children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn.
The Russian Imperial Movement is also a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, ultranationalist group which recruited and trained thousands of volunteers to fight for Russia in Ukraine. It is known to be active in Europe and in North America.
READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action – see the list
The third group on the Government's list for proscription was Palestinian Action. A group whose only objective is to protest the genocide being committed in Gaza. A genocide that the UK Government is perpetuating and supporting.
Despite being asked, the UK Government, in a disgraceful, cynical, manipulation of parliamentary procedure, refused to separate these groups and allow MPs to make individual decisions on whether each of them met the threshold for proscription – forcing an all or nothing vote.
And that decision to lump all three groups together in the way that they did should lead any reasonable person to conclude that this was a grubby political decision to proscribe a group that the Government simply don't like, and not what the Government claim was an issue of vital national security.
But of course, if this really was about national security, why did the UK Government not proscribe Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? In opposition, the Labour Party rightly campaigned for the IRGC to be proscribed, but despite the opportunity now, they have decided to proscribe a group which opposes war and terror, rather than one which perpetuates it.
But there is a much wider issue at play here, and that is the serious long-term consequences that this illiberal, profoundly undemocratic and entirely disproportionate decision will have on our fundamental right to protest, and our ability to organise, assemble, and campaign.
It is not far-fetched to say that rather than differentiate themselves from the far right that they fear, the Labour Party have made a decision which sets them on a path of authoritarianism.
There is in the UK, a long tradition of direct action being taken by protest movements. For decades – from the Suffragettes to the women of Greenham Common, to the anti-apartheid movement, to Greenpeace, even to the Quakers protesting outside the gates of Faslane – committed individuals have broken the law because of strong moral or religious beliefs, or to highlight their cause in the hope of changing government policy.
READ MORE: 20 to protest Palestine Action ban at Gandhi Statue on July 5
And throughout those decades those involved in direct action have done so in the full understanding that there will be consequences for their actions, and that, if they have broken the law, they will be held to account by the courts.
The UK already has in place robust domestic legislation which can adequately deal with any criminality which may arise because of direct action by protest group, as so I believe there was absolutely no need for the UK Government to create this very dangerous precedent by proscribing Palestinian Action as a terrorist organisation.
Though I hope that through doing so, the Labour Government exposes the lengths it is willing to go to oppress and silence those who advocate for a free Palestine and who protest the end of the UK Government's support of Israeli war crimes.
I fear that this decision will have long-term consequences, particularly as the UK continues to flirt with the populist right. Significantly lowering the bar as to what is and is not terrorism now will, I fear, be seized upon and exploited should the extreme right come to power at Westminster. And we should be in no doubt that that will happen.
One only needs to look back to 1999 and the debate which surrounded the introduction of the Terrorism Act. We should all be concerned as to just how far we have travelled in a relatively short space of time. During the debate on of the Terrorism Act, the case of the Greenpeace activists who breached the security fence at both Aldermaston and Sellafield in 1995 to block the production of arms and weapons-grade plutonium was raised, which included dumping six tonnes of cement to block a waste outlet pipe.
The then minister of state for the Home Office, Charles Clarke, made it clear that, 'if [direct action] groups do not engage in serious violence […] the new definition cannot catch them'.
The then – Labour - home secretary Jack Straw (below) went further, specifically confirming to MPs that the definition of terrorism in the new act would exclude direct action groups such as Greenpeace.
The activities of Greenpeace in 1995 far surpass anything Palestinian Action have done to date, yet they are now proscribed as a terrorist organisation. We are on a slippery slope. This week it is Palestinian Action, next week, will it be Just Stop Oil, or Greenpeace? And how long will it be, I wonder, until a future UK government deems the activities of The Quakers to be a threat to national security?
This is a bad law. One which was formulated in anger, driven by revenge and bulldozed through the House of Commons in the most cynical fashion, by a government whose moral compass is becoming a far-distant memory.
