The crackdown on protest in England and Wales has been ringing alarm bells for years, but the decision to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws raises the stakes dramatically.
As the group itself has said, it is the first time the British government has attempted to proscribe a direct action protest organization under the Terrorism Act, placing it alongside the likes of Islamic State, al-Qaeda and National Action.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the proposed ban was evidence-based and had been assessed by a wide range of experts.
Illustration: Mountain People
“In several attacks, Palestine Action has committed acts of serious damage to property with the aim of progressing its political cause and influencing the government,” she said.
Proscribing the group, which uses direct action mainly to target Israeli weapons factories in the UK, would make it illegal not only to be a member of Palestine Action, but to show support for it.
Given that neither its methods nor its targets are unprecedented, a ban is likely to make every group which has an aim of “progressing its political cause and influencing the government” through protest think twice.
Greenpeace UK coexecutive director Areeba Hamid said a ban would “mark a dark turn for our democracy and a new low for a government already intent on stamping out the right to protest. The police already have laws to prosecute any individuals found guilty of a crime.”
Laws passed over the past few years have already increased police powers to restrict and shut down protests. At the same time, protesters have often been gagged from telling juries what motivated their actions and have received record prison sentences.
The final straw for ministers appears to have been the embarrassing security breach at Royal Air Force (RAF) Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on Friday last week, in which two Palestine Action activists broke in and sprayed two military planes with red paint.
However, protesters have caused criminal damage to military facilities in the past and even been acquitted for it, while Cooper herself admitted it might not amount to terrorism.
Before becoming British prime minister, Keir Starmer successfully defended protesters who broke into an RAF base in 2003 to stop US bombers heading to Iraq. He argued that it was lawful, because their intention was to prevent war crimes.
Palestine Action said that pro-Israel groups had lobbied for the ban, and there is evidence to support that contention.
Internal government documents released under freedom of information laws have revealed meetings, apparently to discuss Palestine Action, between the government and Israeli embassy officials, although they were heavily redacted.
Ministers have also met representatives from the Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems.
The organization We Believe in Israel, which Labour MP Luke Akehurst used to be director of, began a campaign this month to ban Palestine Action.
In an accompanying report, it stated: “In July 2022, the group was investigated under counterterrorism protocols following intelligence suggesting contact between some of its members and individuals linked to Hamas-aligned networks abroad (see: Metropolitan Police briefing, classified).”
“While the investigation yielded no direct terror charges, it underscored the degree of concern shared by law enforcement agencies over Palestine Action’s increasingly radicalised behaviour,” it said.
It is not clear how or why We Believe in Israel was granted access to classified documents.
There was no reference to links to Hamas in Cooper’s statement, but she did refer to Palestine Action as threatening infrastructure which supports Ukraine and NATO, echoing language in We Believe in Israel’s report.
With the government already unpopular among many over its stance on Gaza, the planned ban risks looking like it is based on Palestine Action’s cause rather than its methods.
“Proscribing a direct-action protest group in this way potentially sets a new precedent for what we do and do not treat as terrorism,” said Akiko Hart, director of civil rights organization Liberty.
“We’re worried about the chilling effect this would have on the thousands of people who campaign for Palestine, and their ability to express themselves and take part in protests,” she said.
“Proscribing Palestine Action would mean that showing support for them in any way — for example, sharing a post on social media or wearing a logo — could carry a prison sentence,” she added.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS