10.07.2025

Pushed into action around arms production and exports

Defend right to protest

Proscribing Palestine Action marks yet another attempt to silence those raising the alarm over the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Those MPs voting against an increasingly authoritarian government are to be congratulated, argues Ian Spencer

On July 2 - the day that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the proscription of Palestine Action - she posed, without a hint of irony, for a photo opportunity in the colours of the Women’s Social and Political Union.

That was a group which used direct action to win the right to vote for women and whose ‘merch’ is available in the Houses of Parliament gift shop. The suffragettes also used a couple of bombs, which killed four people, and attempted to set fire to Lloyd George’s house, among other actions, but were never proscribed. Yet now MPs have voted by 385 to 26 to ban an organisation which has harmed no-one, but tries to prevent the UK from enabling genocide in Gaza.

Labour MPs who voted against the ban were Diane Abbott, Tahir Ali, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Clive Lewis, Grahame Morris, Nadia Whittome, Kim Johnson and Richard Burgon. Others, who had already had the Labour whip removed, were John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana. Then there was Jeremy Corbyn and his Independent Alliance, the Greens and the Lib Dems. The Scottish National Party abstained.

Zara Sultana, who recently resigned from the Labour Party - allegedly to form a left-of-Labour mass party with Jeremy Corbyn - said during the parliamentary debate that banning PA “lumps a non-violent network of students, nurses, teachers, firefighters and peace-campaigners - ordinary people, my constituents and yours - with neo-Nazi militias and mass casualty cults”. A spokesperson for PA said: “We are confident that this unlawful order will be overturned. As United Nations experts have made clear, spraying red paint and disrupting the British-based operations of Israel’s largest weapons firm, Elbit Systems, is not terrorism.”

Terrorists

Banning PA puts it legally in the same category as al Qaeda, Islamic State and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. On the day the PA ban came into force (July 5) David Lammy was being photographed shaking hands with Ahmed al-Sharaa, interim president of Syria and long-time leader of HTS! Lammy was the first UK minister to visit Syria since the outbreak of civil war, which began 14 years ago. But, of course, Lammy had been given permission to go - after all, Donald Trump had already signed an executive order lifting sanctions on Syria at the end of June and I daresay there are lucrative contracts to be had for ‘rebuilding’ the country.¹

The PA stunt that sparked the ban was its high profile (and for the Royal Air Force, highly embarrassing) breach of security at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire on June 20, in which two aircraft were redecorated with red paint, symbolising Palestinian bloodshed. Allegedly there was also damage done with crow bars. The ever-reliable BBC assures us that the action caused £7 million worth of damage to Voyager aircraft, which are used for refuelling and transport.² The RAF routinely flies over Gaza for surveillance purposes.

Four PA militants were arrested and appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court on July 3, where they entered no pleas and were remanded in custody. As they were led away, the packed public gallery applauded their actions and there were chants of “Free Palestine”. All four will appear before the central criminal court at the Old Bailey on July 18 at 10am. They will surely receive the support of those who salute their courage and resourcefulness. Prior to proscription, charges against those arrested in PA interventions tended to be for criminal damage or conspiracy to commit criminal damage. From now on the charges will be based on the Terrorism Act 2000.

On July 4, high court judge Justice Chamberlain denied PA’s request for a temporary block on proscription. Raza Husain KC, barrister for the PA, said: “This is the first time in our history that a direct-action civil disobedience group, which does not advocate violence, has been sought to be proscribed as terrorists.”³ At the time of writing, the Crowd Justice page, funding the legal opposition to the proscription of PA, had raised over £300,000 from more than 8,000 pledges.⁴

On the day the banning of PA came into force 29 people were arrested at a large demonstration in Parliament Square, where some held up placards reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” These included the Reverend Sue Parfitt, an 83-year-old retired priest, who now faces charges under the Terrorism Act 2000 and potentially 14 years in prison.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign has issued a statement on the banning of PA:

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 in an illegal war. One of the lawyers who made this case was Keir Starmer.⁵

Since the proscription of PA, another group, named ‘Yvette Cooper’ in ‘honour’ of the home secretary, has sprung up to carry out direct action to disrupt the arms supply to Israel. On July 4 it targeted Time Logistics, which transports weaponry for Israel’s biggest weapons firm, and posted on X a video purportedly showing a lorry belonging to the company daubed with red paint.⁶ ‘Yvette Cooper’ already has over 6,000 followers on X and describes itself as “A direct action group aimed at ending British complicity with genocide. Our name is a parody, but the mission is real.”⁷

Effective

Of course, the real reason for the ban on PA is the fact that not only has it been effective symbolically in shaming the arms manufacturers who enable the genocide: it has also had members acquitted by juries who were not afraid of being guided by their conscience. This should come as no surprise. Most British people (around 57% in a recent poll) now support a total arms embargo on Israel. Half support supermarkets boycotting Israeli goods (already carried out by the Cooperative), while only 16% are opposed.⁸

Information obtained by PA, using a freedom of information request, has also revealed that the government had come under pressure from Israel to ‘do something’ to prevent interruption of Israeli arms production and commerce in the UK. It is clear that pressure was being brought by Israeli embassy officials and representatives from Elbit Systems to push the police into cracking down on PA, as well as on the judiciary, to make it harder to use a jury’s freedom of conscience to reach a verdict. Inconvenient for those attempting to stamp out protest.⁹

Another factor in the proscription of PA may well have been its effectiveness in shifting the PSC in the direction of action against arms production in the UK. PA was founded in July 2020 and has carried out numerous attacks on companies such as Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, which has numerous sites and sub-contractors in the UK. However, the PSC has always resolutely opposed the use of illegal action and tends to focus on demonstrations, the BDS campaign and attempting to influence politicians.

However, in June the PSC called for action against the arms factories making weapons for Israel. This led to protests outside Lockheed Martin UK in Havant, Hampshire and a range of other plants. A welcome departure for the PSC. It is imperative to influence workers in the arms industries. However, moralistic grandstanding will not do the job. We should not expect workers acting as individuals to make themselves unemployed. But the unions, not least the GMB, can be won to oppose Israeli genocide and back an arms embargo imposed from below. Transport workers are particularly important here. In Italy, France, Morocco and Greece, among others, dockers have interrupted the supply of military materiel intended for the IDF.

On July 8 dock workers at the port of Piraeus in Greece said they will refuse to unload a container ship carrying military-grade steel to Israel when it arrives on July 12. Enedep, the union of dockworkers, declared:

The dockworkers of Piraeus will not be complicit. We will not unload military steel from the Ever Golden - no to Greece’s involvement, freedom for Palestine. The port of Piraeus is not an advanced outpost of the US, Nato, the EU or the war profiteers. It is not a transhipment station for deadly cargo. It is a place of work and struggle for the working class. As we have done in the past, we will not unload a single inch of this murderous cargo.¹⁰

In the meantime, Israel seems intent on creating a giant concentration camp in what was once the city of Rafa. The plan by defence minister Israel Katz is to move 600,000 and eventually the whole 2.2 million population to a “humanitarian city”. One Israeli human rights lawyer condemned it as nothing less than an “operational plan for a crime against humanity. It’s about population transfer to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip in preparation for deportation outside the strip.”

Trump seems to be on board. Benjamin Netanyahu - the indicted war criminal with a warrant out for his arrest - has said: “We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realise what they always say - that they wanted to give the Palestinians a better future.”¹¹ In return, Israel will nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize - which even by Nobel standards, would be one of the most disreputable ‘honours’ ever seen l