Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has just announced plans to proscribe Palestine Action, branding the organisation and its supporters “terrorists”.
By Tom Costello
This is an extraordinarily draconian measure, which would make membership of PA punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. It would also place the group on legal par with the likes of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the neo-Nazi terrorist National Action.
The whole of the workers’ movement must now be mobilised in defence of Palestine Action and the anti-war movement more generally. All unions should pass emergency motions declaring support for Palestine Action at the next available opportunity. Local branches should also pass these policies. Such acts in and of themselves would make consistently implementing the ban exceptionally difficult. But beyond offering symbolic support, the unions must mobilise their members to get behind the anti-war movement, including by supporting workers’ action to physically stop arms being sent to Israel.
This is an unprecedented attack on civil liberties in the UK – even in the context of the many new restrictions placed on the right to protest and strike under the last government. This is the first time in modern history that a non-violent domestic protest movement has been proscribed. So what is the great ‘terrorist offense’ that PA supposedly stands guilty of? Spray painting two military planes at an RAF base highlighting the role of the British military in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Starmer is quite happy to class this harmless and justified act as terrorism, but would not apply the term to Netanyahu’s bloodthirsty regime, which stands responsible for well over 100,000 dead since October 7 alone. This ongoing genocide includes the recent gunning down of hundreds of Palestinians seeking aid. Water, food and medicine supplies have been almost completely cut off.
Starmer’s government is not only complicit in Netanyahu’s war of extermination. He’s actively aiding it. Between December 2023 and March 2025, over 500 British surveillance flights have moved over Gaza, with the purpose of gathering intelligence for the Israeli military. Refuelling aircraft have been moved in recent weeks to the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus to provide logistical support in the war against Iran. The government has even gone so far as to provide direct training to IDF soldiers on British soil.
In spite of the occasional crocodile tears and token calls for a ceasefire, Starmer’s government is completely tied to the heel of US imperialism. Starmer has exposed himself as Trump’s loyal poodle.
Mass resistance to lift the ban
This repression comes not from a position of strength, but of weakness. Polls repeatedly show that a majority of people in Britain want to see arms sales to Israel ended, and Starmer’s support for Trump/Netanyahu’s war against Iran is extremely unpopular. Shifting the attention to the criminalisation of a direct action group is a classic tool in the divide-and-rule playbook.
The proscription can be defeated, but the movement needs to urgently escalate. Socialist Alternative members took part in the first protests outside Westminster demanding an end to the proscription of PA, with hundreds turning out on a last-minute basis.
These attacks are clearly designed as a prelude to much wider criminalisation of the right to protest and organise, which will be aimed not just at anti-war activists, but the workers’ movement as a whole. Rank-and-file union members should call on their unions to mobilise, fund and build for a mass national demonstration in solidarity with PA, and calling for an end to the genocidal war.
We say:
- No ban on Palestine Action! Free the Fulton 18 along with all jailed Palestine and climate activists.
- Trade unions should immediately pass policy declaring support for Palestine Action, opposing the ban, and reiterating opposition to the Israeli regime’s genocidal onslaught
- Organise workers’ action to shut down the war machine! Close down the industries of death. Stop the transport and shipping of arms.
- Welfare not warfare! Billions for the NHS, education and pay rises, not for war! No hikes in military spending.
- Nationalise and decommission the arms industry! Democratic planning and workers’ control to provide a just transition for workers in affected industries. Use existing skills for green technology and production, with full union rates of pay.
- Capitalism means war and repression. Fight for a socialist world!
