If Palestine Action is banned, free speech will follow
THIS may be the last time I’m legally allowed to write these words. If the Home Secretary succeeds in proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, then simply expressing support for the group—or even explaining their actions in sympathetic terms—could carry a prison sentence of up to fourteen years.
That is not hyperbole. That is not paranoia. That is the text of Section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, as amended in 2019. And it means that journalists, commentators, and members of the public are now at risk of being criminalised—not for inciting violence, but for speaking.
Let’s be absolutely clear about the facts. Palestine Action is not a violent organisation. They have not hurt or threatened anyone. Their protests involve trespass, damage to property, and symbolic acts like throwing paint. They have occupied arms factories and military suppliers—businesses which help manufacture equipment sent to Israel. For this, some of them have been prosecuted under ordinary criminal law, and rightly so if offences were committed.
But criminal law is one thing. Terrorism law is another. The move to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist group is a chilling escalation, and a direct attack on civil liberties. It seeks to make association with protest a crime. It criminalises opinion. And by extension, it criminalises journalism that refuses to conform to state orthodoxy.
The government’s messaging is clear: throwing paint at a drone is terrorism, but helping arm a foreign military accused by the UN of acts consistent with genocide is business as usual.
The timing of this crackdown is no coincidence. On the same day that Palestine Action activists sprayed paint on an RAF plane, 23 Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces at an aid distribution site. That massacre was not labelled terrorism. No condemnation came from ministers. But the protest that drew attention to it? That, apparently, warrants national security measures.
The state is trying to flip the moral compass. It wants us to believe that it is extremists—not governments or arms dealers—who pose the real threat to society. And if we accept that logic, we are paving the way for a future where protest is banned, and only state-sanctioned speech is allowed.
As a journalist, my job is to report the truth, to analyse policy, and to amplify voices that challenge the status quo. If I cannot say that Palestine Action has drawn attention to UK complicity in the bombing of Gaza without fearing prosecution, then I am no longer free. None of us are.
Let me be clear: I do not support violence. But I support the right to protest. I support the right to dissent. And I support the right to call out injustice when I see it.
If this article becomes illegal in the coming weeks, let that fact alone be a testament to how far we’ve fallen.
