PSC statement on government plans to proscribe non-violent direct action group Palestine Action as terrorists

PSC utterly condemns the government’s disgraceful plan to proscribe the non-violent direct action group Palestine Action as terrorists, part of a wider crackdown on those protesting for Palestinian rights. Such a repressive step will only serve to degrade the meaning of terrorism and further undermine all of our civil liberties and democratic freedoms.

The overwhelming majority of people rightly understand terrorism as involving acts of violence directed against civilians, to achieve political ends. Palestine Action has never advocated violence against people.

We believe in the need to build a truly mass movement rooted in all of our communities and use a wide range of tactics to bring about political change. While we have a different strategy to Palestine Action, we utterly reject this attempt to brand those using non-violent direct action to try and stop a genocide as terrorists.

There is a long and noble tradition of the use of direct action by protest movements that includes the Suffragettes, the movement against apartheid in South Africa, and peace and anti-war campaigners. In 1996, for example, activists from the Ploughshares movement disarmed warplanes bound for Indonesia and were acquitted in court after arguing at their trial that they took their action to prevent the greater crime of genocide in East Timor. In the ‘Fairford Five’ trial in 2004, protestors who sabotaged US military aircraft argued that their acts were justified to prevent the planes from participating an illegal war. One of the lawyers who made this case was Keir Starmer.

Where non-violent direct action involves law-breaking, those who take such action do so in the knowledge that they may face prosecution, but have the right to justify their civil disobedience to a court. Even those who reject such methods should recognise that to falsely brand acts of this kind as terrorism would be a grotesque move designed to suppress political protest. This announcement comes amidst a wider and ongoing attempt to silence those advocating for Palestinian rights which includes the charges recently brought against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, a member of the rap group Kneecap, and those against demonstration organisers for taking part in a peaceful protest.

The British government is still selling arms – including F35 fighter jet components – to a regime that is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, has already been found guilty of the crime of apartheid, and which is led by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is disgraceful that it falls to ordinary citizens to do what they can to try to end this shameful complicity in Israel’s ongoing atrocities in Gaza.

The movement for Palestinian rights will not be silenced. We call on all MPs to oppose this dangerous attack on our fundamental democratic rights.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign