Right, so in a democracy teetering on the edge of farce—say, Britain in 2025—spray paint, red banners, and rooftop protests have apparently become weapons of mass terror. You see, the UK government has decided that the real national security threat to this country isn’t violent fascist militias or armed white supremacists—it’s Palestine Action, the protest group armed with lock-ons, slogans, and a deeply inconvenient sense of justice combined with the ultimate in WMDs – a moral compass. And in a twist so perverse it would be rejected by fiction editors as too on-the-nose, they’ve been bundled in for proscription alongside two actual neo-Nazi organisations, just to ensure no MP dares vote against the measure without publicly defending the fash.
In this strange new Britain, where satire has literally now become government policy, dissent is being criminalised not for violence but for audacity. If you’re effective, if you’re visible, if you’re challenging power where it hurts—expect to find yourself on a list. And now, with Palestine Action facing the full wrath of the state under the Terrorism Act 2000, the stakes for democratic protest could not be higher, but they’re also fighting back, as we all should be.
Right, so the absolute sham that passes for a UK government under Keir Starmer and his equally appalling Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have as we know, taken the extraordinary step of seeking to proscribe the direct action group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 effectively turning protest into a criminal act if the government ever deems it fit to do so. But aside from the obvious contempt Labour are earning for themselves by using counterterrorism powers to target a protest movement, there’s an even bigger scandal at play her. It lies in how exactly Labour have chosen to make sure they get their way: by deliberately packaging Palestine Action’s proscription with that of two actual neo-Nazi organisations—the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement—ensuring that no Member of Parliament can vote against it without appearing to defend actual violent extremists.
This political sleight of hand exposes a government not simply acting in bad faith, but actively rigging the machinery of state to crush dissent. The implications for democratic expression, lawful protest, and the moral standing of British governance could not be more severe therefore. The act of proscribing a non-violent protest movement alongside fascist organisations is that of a government increasingly at war with its own citizens when they refuse to bow to government authoritarianism, itself far too in hoc to foreign political interference.
The statutory instrument laid before Parliament today proposes to ban all three groups in one go, no separation. According to the Home Office announcement, Palestine Action is to be labelled as "concerned in terrorism" under the Act—a designation typically reserved for organisations that engage in or promote serious violence against civilians. That such a label is being applied to a protest group whose most notorious actions include spray painting buildings, occupying weapons factories, and chaining themselves to fences is nothing short of a political perversion of the law.
Palestine Action’s primary target has been Elbit Systems, the UK’s leading Israeli-owned arms manufacturer. The group has, since its founding, employed civil disobedience tactics to obstruct what they argue is British complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. Their methods, while certainly disruptive and often illegal, have been consistently non-violent. Indeed, the Home Secretary’s rationale for the proscription cites only two incidents: a break-in at a Thales factory in Glasgow in June 2022, causing roughly £1 million in damage, and a protest at RAF Brize Norton that left two RAF Voyager planes covered in red paint. No persons were harmed. No violence was threatened against civilians. Yet under Cooper’s calculus, this amounts to terrorism. It clearly doesn’t.
To equate protest-induced property damage with terrorism is to shred the distinction between civil disobedience and ideological violence. It is to say that public disorder is a threat comparable to orchestrated murder, political assassination, and bombings. The implications of such a legal and political redefinition are not just ridiculous, not just stupid beyond belief—they are actually terrifying.
The comparison between Palestine Action and the other organisations bundled into the proscription vote only highlights the absurdity. The Maniacs Murder Cult is a neo-Nazi group that openly incites racial hatred and has been linked to calls for political violence. The Russian Imperial Movement is a white supremacist outfit known for training paramilitary fighters in Russia, some of whom have participated in violent terrorist attacks in Europe. These are organisations that fit the textbook definition of terrorism. Palestine Action does not.
This grouping was not accidental. As reported by Skwawkbox and also confirmed by government documents, the decision to lump all three organisations together in a single statutory instrument was a tactical move. It ensures that any MP voting against the proscription of Palestine Action would also be voting to protect two violent neo-fascist organisations—a career-ending decision for most politicians as that would be. In effect, this makes the vote a foregone conclusion. It is not a deliberation of law but a performance of power.
If the proscription is allowed to go ahead, it will come into force on Saturday, 5 July. From that point on, any member of or supporter of Palestine Action—however tangential—could face up to 14 years in prison. This includes activists, fundraisers, legal representatives, and even public advocates. The consequences for civil liberties are staggering. It is the criminalisation of solidarity, and the outlawing of dissent. This is a government that demands you tow their line.
Palestine Action, however, is fighting back. The group has launched an urgent legal challenge against its designation, and the High Court has granted them an interim hearing to determine whether the proscription can be paused. A full judicial review is scheduled for 21 July, where the group will argue that the proscription is disproportionate, politically motivated, and a misuse of the Terrorism Act. Legal experts note that even granting an interim hearing is a significant development, indicating judicial unease with the government’s sweeping approach and therefore with any luck this overreach is going to blow up in Starmer and Cooper’s faces.
The legal community is already raising the alarm. Amnesty International, Liberty, and PEN International have all condemned the move. PEN has warned that the decision "threatens fundamental rights, including the right to free expression and peaceful protest," while Liberty argues that it represents a grave and dangerous precedent that could be applied to climate activists, trade unionists, and anti-war demonstrators alike, because where after all would the line get drawn? The misuse of terror legislation to suppress protest sets the UK on a course disturbingly aligned with authoritarian regimes that jail dissidents under the guise of national security, regimes in any other time a UK government would condemn.
In a brilliant act of political satire though, a new direct action group has emerged under the name "Yvette Cooper"—explicitly created to support Palestine Action and to dare the Home Secretary to, quite literally, proscribe herself. This gesture, while humorous on the surface, lays bare the absurdity of the current state of British democracy, where government ministers are unilaterally branding peaceful protest groups as terrorists while remaining silent on British citizens who actively participate in foreign military operations linked to war crimes, such as Britons fighting in the IDF for example, committing genocide.
This authoritarian drift is not confined to Palestine Action though. At Glastonbury, Irish hip-hop group Kneecap and British punk duo Bob Vylan became targets of police investigation after delivering impassioned performances in support of Palestine. Bob Vylan’s frontman Bobby V came out with the line, “Death to the IDF,” prompting outrage from right-wing media snowflakes, because when it comes to performative outrage, they are always the loudest and also members of Parliament. The BBC refused to broadcast the performance, continuing its long-standing pattern of shielding Israel from public criticism and sanitising pro-Palestinian narratives.
Kneecap's set was equally political, filled with references to British imperialism and performed under Palestinian flags, asea of flags being flown at Glastonbury to the horror of the Israel Lobby and their bought and paid for mouthpieces. One of its members, Mo Chara, became the subject of a police probe under public order laws, he’d been charged for a terror offence, unwittingly flying the flag of a proscribed group, in this case Hezbollah, though those charges were ultimately dropped after legal pressure, as also reported by Skwawkbox.
What links these cases—Palestine Action, Kneecap, Bob Vylan—is the state’s concerted effort to erase the line between legitimate protest and extremism. Whether through terrorism legislation, criminal investigation, or media scapegoating, the effect is the same: to delegitimise the message by demonising the messengers. This is not about public safety. It is about narrative control. And the narratives most fiercely protected are those that insulate Israel from criticism and justify the British state’s complicity in foreign atrocities and that is a point that Bob Vylan have made themselves excellently in a statement of their own:
‘Today, a good many people would have you believe a punk band is the number one threat to world peace. Last week it was a Palestine pressure group, the week before that it was another band.
We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine. A machine who’s own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.
We, like those in the spotlight before us, are not the story. We are a distraction from the story. And whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction.
The government doesn’t want us to ask why they remain silent in the face of this atrocity? To ask why they aren’t doing more to stop the killing? To feed the starving?
The more they talk about Bob Vylan, the less time they spend answering for their criminal action.
We are being targeted for speaking up. We are not the first. We will not be the last. And if you care for the sanctity of human life and freedom of speech, we urge you to speak up too.’
Every word of that a truthbomb. Much solidarity to the Bobs.
But why now? Because the government’s timing for all of this is no accident either. Since the Israeli assault on Gaza intensified following the events of October 2023, mass mobilisation in the UK has surged. Millions have marched. Sit-ins have shut down pro Israel interests. Direct actions have disrupted the arms industry. Palestine Action in particular has forced multiple Elbit Systems sites to close. They have become not just an irritant, but a threat to Britain’s pro-Israel foreign policy and its lucrative arms trade.
Rather than engage with this public anger, the Starmer government has chosen to silence it, to try and crush it. The Public Order Act, new anti-protest laws, and now the use of terrorism legislation against non-violent protest all signal a slide toward authoritarianism where dissent is outlawed if it threatens entrenched interests. A democratic state cannot claim to be open and free while simultaneously banning political resistance under the pretence of counterterrorism.
The implications for democracy are serious. If Palestine Action can be designated a terrorist group, then so too can environmental activists who block roads, trade unionists who strike at critical infrastructure, or students who occupy university buildings in protest. The threshold for what constitutes terrorism is being eroded—not expanded to meet new threats, but contracted to stifle our freedoms. At its core, this is about power: who holds it, who challenges it, and what tools the state will use to maintain it.
Meanwhile, media institutions like the BBC have largely abdicated their role as watchdogs. The failure to broadcast politically charged performances, the selective framing of protests, and the parroting of government narratives all contribute to a climate of manufactured consent. The public is not being informed; it is being managed. Journalistic integrity has given way to political expediency, and the result is a news landscape increasingly divorced from reality.
Yet, resistance is growing. Palestine Action’s legal battle may yet yield a victory. Artists and musicians are using their platforms to speak out. Cultural figures, including actors and writers, are openly defying the government’s crackdown. Even in the face of legal threats, new protest groups are emerging, armed with humour, courage, conviction and political clarity. The attempt to criminalise dissent may have the unintended consequence of radicalising and uniting previously disparate or apathetic people who are increasingly seeing this move for what it is.
If this moment proves anything, it is that the British state is not afraid of violence—it is afraid of effectiveness. Palestine Action has exposed the machinery of complicity. Kneecap and Bob Vylan have punctured the veneer of cultural neutrality. Together, they have forced a reckoning that those in power are desperate to avoid. The more effective the dissent, the more ruthless the crackdown.
So as we await the court’s interim ruling on Friday and the outcome of the judicial review later this month, the public must ask difficult questions of these authoritarians who choose to preside over us in this offensive and appalling and repressive way. Is this the kind of society we want to live in—where painting over a warplane is treated as terrorism, but selling it to bomb children is business as usual? Where calling out genocide is criminal, but enabling it is a diplomatic priority, a national security matter and in the national interest?
The proscription of Palestine Action is not just a legal act, that shows not all laws are fit for purpose, but it is also a political test of our values. And it is up to all of us to determine whether or not we will pass it, because the price of failure for society could be a high one.
The BBC is particularly at fault in this, as raised a moment ago, but their failures run much deeper and have been exposed for all to see now, as they run away from showing a documentary on life as a medic in Gaza, for fear it is too critical, saying that it doesn’t meet editorial guidelines, to which Channel 4 have said rubbish, and just to show the BBC up further, as well as inform us in a way the news rarely does, they’re going to air it tomorrow night! Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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