My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (12.8.25), adding to the widespread outrage at the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. It’s important to get this into print on the day the newspaper carries an article quoting Labour government ministers as saying PA is violent and has “caused significant injury, although cannot give soecific details at this stage”. Liars!

The unedited version below:

Starmer’s government has re-written the definitions of both terrorism and hypocrisy. At the same time as he announces UK readiness to formally recognise the people of Palestine he is arresting UK citizens protesting against the genocide and eradication of Palestinian people.
Starmer and his apparatchiks have achieved a ground-breaking conjuring trick. Even the greatest circus acts have never managed to ride two horses going in opposite directions at the same time. A completely fresh take on two-faced forked-tongued politics.
Last Saturday, 466 people were arrested in London under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act for silently displaying the following words on white card: “I Oppose Genocide, I support Palestine Action”. The numbers arrested as “terrorists” were predominantly older people, ready to risk their liberty and life opportunities to challenge not only genocide abroad but the affront to democracy at home in the proscription of protest group.
Terrorism has long been understood as the intentional use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term emphasises the aim to instill fear to pursue political goals, and using fear as a strategic tool to influence decision makers.
Non-Violent Direct Action cannot be interpreted thus. Spraying paint on machines of war or factories producing such machines highlights the deadly capacity of the objects whilst not threatening or producing fear in any rational human being. Sitting cross-legged with a hand written paper sheet is not an act of terror. Pointing-out a complete sea-change in State law away from democracy and towards authoritarianism is never illegitimate. This is thoroughly peaceful protest.
Government ministers here and across the world are using the term “genocide” to describe what the Israeli State is doing to over two-million people across the Gaza Strip, and increasingly inside the West Bank – the two regions that comprise Palestine.
Having already killed at least 60,000 Gazans, Israel is inflicting purposeful malnutrition resulting in hundreds of child-deaths, preventing access to potable water, and now about to force the evacuation of one million from central Gaza to crowd together with another 1 million in the South – an open air crowded prison without food, sanitation, much shelter or any utilities.
This is what terrorism actually looks like but on a mass scale. Israel is instilling fear in an entire population in order to pursue political goals – in this case the illegal invasion and colonisation of another land, a people recognised by the United Nations.
The UK, with a history of driving establishment of Israel by force, from the point of the Balfour Treaty in 1919 through to the terrorist establishment of the first Israeli government in 1949, is complicit in today’s terrorism. The UK produces the suicide drones that kill Gazans indiscriminately each day, and supplies the parts that keep the incessant FA32 jet flights across the Gaza Strip to identify targets. These actions produce mass terror in the pursuit of political ends: Greater Israel and the eradication of an entire people.
The overwhelming majority of the countries of the world have condemned Israel’s actions. The millions across Britain who have protested non-stop throughout the past 21 months have forced MPs to question Britain’s actions and demand we “Stop Arming Israel!” But Starmer offers lip-service only to the potential of challenging the far-right Apartheid racist-colonialist Israeli government, whilst arresting those who act on his words. Hypocrite!
We have two priorities, to defend the right to protest at home and demand freedom for Palestine!
Trade unions need to step-up to defend the right to protest in this country. Arrest and proscription of Direct Action places our right to strike for workers rights in serious jeopardy – after all, picket lines and protests outside workplaces are forms of Non-Violent Direct Action! If they come for Peace protesters in the morning, they’ll be calling union activists “terrorist” by nightfall.