On Monday of this week, the British home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced plans to outlaw the campaigning group Palestine Action, placing it in the same legal category as ISIS and Boko Haram. Cooper intends to ram through the proscription before the end of June. If she succeeds, not only will membership of Palestine Action be a criminal offense, but mere verbal support for the organization could also be punished with a lengthy prison sentence.
Palestine Action has a record of carrying out direct action at Israeli-owned arms factories in Britain. Most recently, its members sprayed red paint on British warplanes at a Royal Air Force base, in protest of Britain’s role as “an active participant in the Gaza genocide and war crimes across the Middle East.” The move to define it as a terrorist organization is a disgraceful authoritarian measure from a Labour government that fears having its own complicity with crimes against humanity exposed in the courts.
In her statement announcing the ban, Cooper claimed that the graffiti at the Brize Norton air base was part of “a long history of unacceptable criminal damage” carried out by members of Palestine Action. In reality, Cooper is worried that state prosecutors might not be able to convict members of Palestine Action on charges of criminal damage. Criminalizing the group itself is a way to avoid having their arguments tested by the British legal system.
As Cooper and her boss, Keir Starmer, will understand perfectly well, the charge of criminal damage has more than one element. It’s not enough to…
Auteur: Daniel Finn
