Last month Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, used the blunt instrument of the Terrorism Act to classify Palestine Action as a proscribed organisation. For anyone who doubted that the move was a political misstep, the weekend’s protests provided a vivid illustration of its predictable consequences.
Within minutes of the start of an anti-Israeli demonstration in Parliament Square, police had no choice but to arrest those openly expressing support for the group, with many inciting their own arrest by brandishing signs that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. By the evening, 522 people had been detained, the most arrests at a single event since the poll tax riots. Dozens of police officers were called upon to carry off some activists, allowing them to pose as the apotheosis of the politically oppressed martyr.
This unseemly spectacle was avoidable. It was unwise from the outset to ban Palestine Action, a disorderly group of ideological vandals, when other bona fide hostile military groupings, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remain unproscribed under British law. The dubious decision to elevate Palestine Action to the rank of groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda risks lending unearned legitimacy to the perception that pro-Palestinian political speech is being curbed. It also risks playing into activists’ hands by colluding in their self-conception as middle-class freedom fighters. They are no such thing. The police officers deployed to Westminster acted properly in making hundreds of arrests. Brazenly championing a known terrorist organisation is a crime that cannot go unpunished. That Palestine Action’s supporters were handed such an opportunity to promote their agenda is the real cause for regret.
And a letter:
Sir, The home secretary proposed to ban Palestine Action on the ground of “unacceptable criminal damage” after they infiltrated RAF Brize Norton (“Palestine Action’s rise from ashes of Corbynism to public enemy No 1”, Aug 9). In the 1980s when I was UK commander of the RAF Greenham Common cruise missile base, I had a £250,000 annual budget to repair damage done by peace protesters to the perimeter fence. We had a strong Ministry of Defence police presence to stop intruders, often in a rather Benny Hill fashion. The intruders were left in no doubt that if they tried to infiltrate the secure storage area with its 96 nuclear warheads, they would be shot by US air force military police, who were a mean crowd. There were thousands of such protesters “threatening” the base, but their freedom of speech was always respected and I never heard anyone in Whitehall or the Pentagon suggest that they should be classed as terrorists.
Wg Cdr Andrew Brookes (ret’d)
Mick Hartley 
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