On the banning of Palestine Action

The persecution of pro-Palestinian activists is being ramped up more and more. On 5 July, Starmer’s government proscribed Palestine Action under the repressive anti-terror legislation for spray-painting RAF planes earlier this year. Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh) of the popular Irish rap band Kneecap is facing charges of supporting a proscribed organisation for allegedly displaying a Hezbollah flag at one of their gigs in London last year. These are just two cases that have received a huge amount of support and publicity.

There is widespread outrage at the government’s banning of a group engaged in direct action against Israeli arms manufacturers in the midst of a genocide. Since PA was proscribed, the group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) has organised several sit-down protests challenging the ban, where hundreds courageously defied repression. However, the problem is that this strategy, inspired by the Gandhian method of non-violence (the protesters gathered at the statues of Mandela and Gandhi in central London), relies on the moral virtue of the oppressor. If two years of genocide have not moved Starmer’s moral compass, it is unlikely that arresting a few 80-year-olds will. This strategy also leads to demoralisation because those arrested are faced with the consequences of a terrorism charge and get embroiled in legal proceedings for years.

This is a lesson from the experience of Just Stop Oil. Following a years-long campaign of throwing soup at paintings and gluing themselves to roads, many JSO activists have been jailed with no discernible result besides some hysterical headlines from the gutter press. And JSO has now completely disappeared from the political scene.

How then should we organise the fightback against the massive state repression? For starters, we should unite all cases together. There are many more activists facing repression for making speeches or social media posts taking a side with the Palestinian national liberation struggle that get far less attention from the left and workers movement. Examples are two students at SOAS as well as Tony Greenstein and journalist Richard Medhurst. Adding to this growing list, on 2 September, police arrested five DOJ organisers for their role in “Lift the ban” protests. The broad support for the most prominent cases needs to be mobilised for everyone facing repression as an important step to strengthening the pro-Palestine movement as a whole.

Moreover, such a defence campaign must also turn to the workers movement. Because of the betrayals of the union leaderships like those of Unite and the RMT, who give speeches at mass protests but refuse to lift a finger in defence of Palestine, some activists in the movement have rejected this perspective. However, the goal is to organise a struggle inside the workers movement and to channel the seething anger in the working class into a defence campaign against the government’s political campaign of repression and austerity. Not only is this the best strategy to defend pro-Palestine activists but also the most effective way to fight against Starmer’s support to genocide.