Protesters clashed with police on Monday as the UK government prepared to proscribe Palestine Action.
Hundreds of demonstrators appeared at Trafalgar Square fearing that the proposed designation was intended to diminish the wider mainstream support for Palestine. The government sought to designate Palestine Action after members damaged two military planes at an airbase on June 20.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said in a statement on Monday afternoon that she will lay an order before parliament next week which, if passed, will make membership and support for Palestine Action illegal. An elderly woman who attended the protest said she wouldn't know “how she would belong” to the Palestinian solidarity movement if the proscription went ahead.
She had just returned from Palestine where she was involved in aid work. Her grandchild had brought her to the demonstration, and she feared that they were among the people stopped by the police.
Megan, an academic librarian in her sixties feared the designation was intended to deter people from joining the mainstream anti-war marches in London, which attract hundreds of thousands of people.
“It frightens people away,” she said. “A lot people wouldn't have gone to the march (on Saturday), even though Palestine Solidarity doesn’t allow Palestine Action to speak at those events,” she said.
The fortnightly marches are organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has actively distanced itself from Palestine Action to appeal to the mainstream. But Megan said many people would not know the difference between the two movements and would be deterred.
Palestine Action has staged a series of demonstrations in recent months, including spraying the London offices of Allianz Insurance with red paint over its alleged links to Israeli defence company Elbit, and vandalising US President Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire.
But it was the stunt against cargo planes at RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, southern England, which Palestine Action claimed were used in assisting Israel in its war in Gaza, that has led to its designation as a terrorist group.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton in the early hours of the morning on Friday 20 June is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” said Ms Cooper in a written statement to Parliament. “The UK's defence enterprise is vital to the nation's security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
If Parliament approves the order, Palestine Action will join the 81 organisations have been proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, including Islamist groups such as Hamas and Al Qaeda, far-right groups such as National Action, Russian private military company the Wagner Group and Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Internal opposition
But some within the governing Labour Party believe designating Palestine Action may be a step too far. They include former shadow attorney general Shami Chakrabarti, who has said the actions of Palestine Action at Brize Norton are “not what most people would understand as terrorism”.
“It is one thing to be a threat to property, to be a nuisance, to be prosecuted, and in some cases even imprisoned for those criminal offences, but it's another thing altogether to proscribe a whole group, and that means anybody fairly vaguely associated with it, to ban them (as) terrorists,” said Ms Chakrabarti, a former director of human rights organisation Liberty.
“From what I can tell, this is a militant protest group that engages in direct action and that includes criminality, no question, but to elevate that to terrorism so anybody who attends a meeting, or who promotes the organisation, or is loosely affiliated with it, is branded a terrorist – that is a serious escalation I think.”
Former justice secretary Lord Charlie Falconer said vandalising aircraft at RAF Brize Norton would not solely provide legal justification for proscribing the group.
Expanding terrorism definition
Mr Starmer sought to expand the definition of terrorism earlier this year, in the wake of the Southport knife attacks. Arguing that “terrorism has changed,” he said the law needed to change quickly to recognise “new” threats from “loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom.”
Yet human rights lawyers often say the definition of terrorism is too vague, allowing room for abuse. There are concerns that UK authorities are increasingly leveraging terror laws to police protesting.
Sarah Wilkinson was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 last year for online content related to her pro-Palestinian activism. She was confident the proposed proscription would not stop direct action protests in support of Palestinians in the UK.
“You cannot proscribe a grassroots movement as long as people are acting for Palestine and speaking out for Palestine and trying to stop the Israeli genocide,” she told The National. “You can't be arrested for it just because you are acting for Palestine,” she said.
Speaking of her own case, she said she has yet to be charged with a crime. “They'll bail me forever and ever,” she said.
Many of the protesters were veteran campaigners, who say there is a long tradition of “direct action” protest in the UK. Deborah McIlveen, from Oxford, recalled her participation at a women’s peace camp in 1983 at the former RAF station in Greenham Common.
“I've broken into air bases. I was a Greenham Common woman. I've danced on American airbases because we did not want nuclear weapons,” she said.
She pointed to the Mr Starmer’s representation of one of the Fairford Five when he was a human rights barrister in 2003. The group broke into a military base to disrupt military operations at the start of the Iraq war.
Terrorism undermined
Protester Fiona Lali believed the proposed proscription was to cover up Mr Starmer’s embarrassment that activists were able to break into a UK airbase unnoticed. “They're angry because Palestine Action managed to embarrass the British military and British imperialism. That's really why they've moved so quickly,” she said.
There is also a sense that the designation could undermine the seriousness of acts of terror. Asked whether she worried she would end up on a terror list, Ms Lali laughed and said: “I’m probably on one already.”
