Protestors defy the proscription of Palestine Action in Parliament Square on 5 July. Photograph © Pat Gaffney
Local campaigners to join protests over Palestine Action ban in London and Hastings
Local anti-genocide campaigners are planning to join a mass protest in London in defiance of the government ban on Palestine Action on Saturday 9 August – and some are planning to take a stand closer to home. Gabriel Carlyle reports.
Earlier this week the group Defend Our Juries announced that over 500 people had signed-up to take part in a peaceful protest in London this Saturday, holding-up signs saying “I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action” in Parliament Square.
More than 200 people have already been arrested under the Terrorism Act – many of them for holding such signs – since the government’s decision to ‘proscribe’ the non-violent protest group Palestine Action using the Terrorism Act at the beginning of July.
Last week the High Court granted permission for a judicial review of the law which will be heard in November. Among other things, campaigners have argued that conflating non-violent direct action with terrorism has a chilling effect on everyone wishing to speak out against genocide and engage in peaceful protest.
In a statement issued on 2 July Amnesty International ‘condemn[ed] the Government’s decision to ban Palestine Action under anti-terror laws, as an unprecedented legal overreach.’ The statement continued: ‘Instead of taking draconian measures to shut down direct action protesters and criminalise anyone who expresses support for their actions, the Government should be taking immediate and unequivocal action to put a stop to Israel’s genocide and end any risk of UK complicity in it.’
The ban – which received overwhelming support from MPs, including Hastings’ MP Helena Dollimore – has also been condemned by UN experts, cultural figures including Steve Coogan, Paul Weller and Tilda Swinton, and hundreds of lawyers.
Heartbroken
One local woman planning to travel to London to take part is Ursula Pethick, an 89-year-old grandmother who says she is ‘heartbroken about what is happening to the Palestinians’. ‘I am shocked that the government has passed a law which: (a) states that we who use the words of support for those Palestinians are deemed to be terrorists; and (b) the loss of our right for peaceful protest. Yet another sign of a vanishing democracy.’
A second, Leah Levane – a former Labour councillor from Hastings and a leading member of Jewish Voice for Labour – said: ‘I feel it is important to stand up and be counted and this is something I can do, as a retired person with no job to lose or small child who might be taken into care. As we said in our Jewish letter to the PM and Home Secretary: Proscribe genocide not protest.’
Participants face potential arrest under terrorism legislation, as has already happened to several local campaigners, including myself.
Yesterday, 6 August, the Defend our Juries website was taken down as the result of pressure on the web host from a person or group suggesting that hosting the site may be a breach of its terms and conditions. In the meantime, Defend Our Juries have provided advice for people considering taking part in the protest via a separate weblink.
Dee Howard
Hastings protest
Two local campaigners, Ian Stewart and Dee Howard – who are supporting the action in London but are unable to travel – told HOT that they are planning to carry out their own protest against the ban on Palestine Action in Hastings town centre at 3pm on the same day.
Ian, who is a longstanding trade union and Palestine campaigner in the town, now in his 80’s, said: ‘Look at what they are doing in Palestine. It’s not the people trying to stop the genocide who are the terrorists. I can’t believe that a group putting pink paint on a military plane is being called terrorists but the war criminals killing kids in Gaza are allowed to get away with it. I think the police and the government have lost their marbles’.
Dee, who is also a disabled rights campaigner, was equally scathing about the new law. ‘It’s ridiculous’, she said. ‘I’m not scared of Palestine Action hurting me or anyone else. They are not the terrorists!’
John Lynes, who at 97 has taken part in more than his share of protests for civil liberties, said: ‘As a Quaker and as a Jew, I was sorry that diminished mobility prevented me from going to London in solidarity with victims of the proscription of Palestine Action. I am delighted to support local action in Hastings in sympathy.’
High Court Judge says Palestine Action: not a terror organisation in the ‘colloquial’ meaning of the term…
In an article in the London Review of Books, David Renton writes: “Palestine Action is not a terror organisation, as [High Court Judge] Mr Justice Chamberlain accepted in the injunction proceedings, in the ‘colloquial’ meaning of the term. That observation, from which the courts have so far declined to draw any conclusions, is likely to be central to future hearings. Proscription does significant damage to the freedom of expression of members of Palestine Action…
The court’s concession that the group’s members are not terrorists in the ordinary sense of the term is significant and its importance will increase: any finding that proscription is proportionate will be hard to sustain at future appeals, as examples of excessive policing are likely to increase…
If members of a group have always refrained from acts of violence against people, restriction on their speech, with a possible sentence of fourteen years in prison for membership alone, is harder to justify.”
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