Demonstrators opposing a ban on protest group Palestine Action are stepping up pressure with a week of demonstrations across the UK.
The plans centre on the display of signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, for which protesters could face arrest under UK terrorism laws.
The High Court will next week review a challenge to the proscription mounted by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori, after a failed attempt by the UK government to block her appeal.
Palestine Action was designated a terrorist organisation by the UK in July after four of its activists broke into an RAF airbase and vandalised two military planes, causing an estimated £7 million ($9.2 million) of damage.
This followed a series of demonstrations, described by the group as “direct action”, at sites associated with Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, which has manufacturing and administrative bases in the UK.
The proscription triggered a backlash from critics who say it is a misuse of the law. Nearly 2,000 people have been arrested at mass demonstrations, during which they defied the ban by openly expressing support for the group, and 170 have been charged.
“We're trying to reveal the violence and repression that comes if you speak out against genocide,” said Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer and founder of campaign group Defend Our Juries, which has been organising the protests.
Mr Crosland was arrested in September and charged with addressing a meeting that supported a proscribed organisation, but is not involved in organising this week's protests.
But he believed the issue would have a lasting impact. “This will not be forgotten,” he told The National. “Already 2,000 people have been arrested for holding signs opposing genocide. There has not been anything like this in modern British history.”
Testing police response
Farmer and charity leader Oliver Baines says he will be among those holding signs in Truro, south-west England, on Tuesday.
He joined because he views the ban as wrongly linking Palestinian solidarity with terrorism.
“Equating solidarity with Palestine and opposition to genocide with being a terrorist is a gross insult to all peace-loving people,” he said.
Part of his and other campaigners' motivation is also to test the police response.
He said police had initially arrested eight people at a Palestine Action rally in July but then had a “change of policy” at subsequent demonstrations, with one officer describing protesters as “lovely and peaceful”.
“Devon and Cornwall Police pride themselves on their community policing, so a group of local residents sitting in silent vigil opposing genocide was always going to create a dilemma for them,” he said.
“Our argument was never with the police but with the UK government, with its shameful attack on our civil liberties and with its appalling record of complicity in the continuing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank,” Mr Baines said.
Defend Our Juries says the week of demonstrations aims to show that the right to protest are under threat.
“The actions are intended to restore fundamental rights in relation to protest and freedom of expression in the UK ahead of and during the judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action,” the group said in a statement. Policing of the ban has been “inconsistent” across forces, it added.
London’s Metropolitan Police has arrested people at demonstrations outside parliament, but in some other cities, including Truro in Cornwall and Northern Ireland’s Derry, no arrests were made.
“Will local police forces choose Met Commissioner Mark Rowley’s approach of arresting everyone, no matter the cost to community relations, the force’s reputation, overtime costs and officer burnout?” Defend our Juries asked.
“Or will they take the Devon and Cornwall Police approach and decide that the threat posed by peaceful cardboard sign-holders did not warrant arrests under terrorism legislation?
Institutional scepticism
The protests and their capacity to trigger mass arrests also hit the heart of major national crises that the Labour government has pledged to fix.
Among these is freeing up prison spaces so there is “always space to lock up the most dangerous offenders”. But the government's emergency early-release scheme has faced a backlash.
There are also major backlogs at UK courts, with victims and defendants often waiting years for a trial.
Palestine Action supporters have been charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in prison.
The government also faces growing pressure from terrorism and legal experts to reverse the ban.
Last week, a three-year review of Britain’s terror laws found the “broad scope” of the definition of terrorism created “uncertainty and overreach in its application”.
“A definition that relies heavily on discretion risks inconsistency, perceptions of unfairness and the treatment of legitimate protest as terrorism,” said the report by the Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law.
It recommended narrowing the definition to acts “intended to coerce, compel, or subvert” and that the threshold for property damage “should apply only to conduct causing serious risk to life, national security or public safety”.
The High Court found Ms Ammori had legitimate grounds to argue that the ban was an infringement on her freedom of speech, when it granted her the right to challenge the proscription in August.
Scottish counter-terrorism officials concluded that Palestine Action “has not been close to meeting the statutory definition of terrorism” and former diplomat Craig Murray has also launched a legal challenge in Scotland's court against the ban.
