Selective bigotry

I saw a short video where a UK policeman was arresting someone for supporting Palestine Action, an organisation which is all about trying to prevent the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The person being arrested asked if it was because she supported Palestinians, and the copper said that it was. She also asked if she would be arrested if she supported Israel and the copper replied that she wouldn’t. So in the UK you can be arrested for protesting against the murder of thousands of Palestinians but conversely, if you carry a placard saying that Palestinians, even newborn babies, are all terrorists and deserve to suffer by starving, being bombed, being shot, and now freezing, that is perfectly acceptable¹.

This is all down to their Prime Minister Kier Starmer, and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (and their donors) who have proscribed the activist group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation because of vandalism. This criminalises the group’s existence, making it a crime to be a member of the group, or to support it in any way. Palestine Action emerged in 2020, first making the news when its members broke into and sprayed red paint on the UK headquarters of Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence contractor. Subsequently, the group has sprayed paint, blockaded or otherwise vandalised a number of institutions it sees as complicit in Israeli military actions, including a Lockheed Martin facility and two Barclays bank branches. In June 2025 they broke into Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton and spray painted two jet aircraft. The group’s website describes it as a “direct action movement committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”².

The UK’s list of proscribed groups currently contains over 80 organisations, from radical Islamists such as al-Qaida to neo-Nazis such as the Base. The Terrorism Act 2000, under which Palestine Action has been proscribed imposes serious punishments on members, including up to 14 years in prison. Even wearing clothing or holding a placard supporting a proscribed organisation can be punished by up to six months in prison or a fine of up to £5,000. For a group to be proscribed, it needs to be determined by the Home Secretary to be “concerned in terrorism”, which basically means committing or planning terrorist acts. The definition of terrorism essentially means the politically motivated use or threat of actions to intimidate the government or public through violence or destruction, including “serious damage to property”².

Proscription of an organisation needs to be debated in parliament. This requires a process to be gone through, which includes:

1. Home Secretary’s Decision: The Home Secretary decides to proscribe an organisation if they believe it meets the statutory test of being “concerned in terrorism” under the Terrorism Act 2000.
2. Draft Order Laid: A draft ‘Proscription Order’ is then formally laid before Parliament.
3. Parliamentary Debate: Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords debate the proposed ban.
4. Approval: The Order must be approved by a resolution of both Houses for it to become law.
5. Effect: Once approved, the organisation is added to the list of proscribed groups, making it illegal to belong to or support them³.

To see how ludicrous this decision from the Labour government is, this story illuminates it. At a demonstration, one Miles Pickering, an engineer from Brighton, was arrested by the coppers for wearing a T-shirt with what appeared to be the Palestine Action logo on the front. It was only after he arrived at Scotland Yard did the coppers realise they had embarrassed themselves. It turned out that instead, the logo on the T-shirt read “Plasticine Action” and inside the letter “o” was an image of the stop-motion (plasticine) character Morph giving two thumbs up. Below this were the words “We oppose AI-generated animation”. Apparently, a senior officer asked the arresting officer if he could arrest Pickering. The arresting officer said: ‘No, I can’t.’ And they said: ‘Why not?’ He said: ‘Because he hasn’t got Palestine Action written on him. He’s got Plasticine Action written on him.’ About five minutes later, the arresting officer approached him again and said: ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.’ Pickering said: ‘What’s the good news?’ The officer said: ‘I’m de-arresting you.’ So, Pickering said: ‘What’s the bad news?’ The officer said: ‘It’s going to be really embarrassing for me’. Pickering said: “It’s like we are just going to mock you for your ridiculous decision to proscribe a protest group. It’s just so important that our rights to protest do not get diminished”⁴.

How you overcome this proscription of Palestine Action is a difficult problem. One way to make it difficult (or embarrassing) for the coppers is to keep changing the name, or use all of them together: e.g. Levantine Action, Eastern Mediterranean Organisation (EMO), Bibi Bollocking Coalition (BBC), Israel Deconstruction Force (IDF), Yvette Cooper Investigation Committee (YCIC). This could help separate the organisation coordinating the demonstrations from Palestine Action.

Disinformation could also help, perhaps by something like allowing the coppers to find a membership list, with all sorts of bogus names on the list; for example: Boris Johnson, Ed Balls (Cooper’s husband), or any other politician. Also, there are dyes out there who when they get wet permanently change from white to red, and also note that the islands called the Bahamas have their last five letters in a certain order. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for a copper who arrested someone for supporting a proscribed organisation, only to find that the arrested person was fond of the Bahamas.

However, Section 3(6) of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows the Home Secretary to specify by order that an alternative name or alias is to be treated as another name for a proscribed organisation listed in Schedule 2 to the act. The Home Secretary can make an order where they believe the proscribed organisation is operating under that alternative name or that an organisation operating under a name not included in Schedule 2 is for all practical purposes the same as the proscribed organisation. As far as I can ascertain, this does not need to go through parliament⁵. How long this takes, I don’t know. However, having numerous names would be a way of embarrassing the government or the police, or both.

I have tried to understand why Keir Starmer has behaved as if he is a Mossad mole. He has said he is a Zionist ‘without qualification’, and that he supports the right of Israel to exist as a homeland⁶. This right to a homeland apparently does not extend to Palestinians, who are being murdered in their many thousands by Israel. Starmer was raised by an atheist father, and an Anglican mother, and is an atheist⁷, but his wife, Victoria, is Jewish and his children are being raised in the Jewish tradition. Some of Victoria’s family still live in Israel⁸.

In 2005, Starmer won the Bar Council’s Sydney Elland Goldsmith Award for his outstanding contribution to pro bono work in challenging the death penalty across the Caribbean and also in Uganda, Kenya and Malawi⁹.

It seems he is not now so concerned with the death penalty, which has been imposed on many thousands in Palestine simply for existing. Maybe it was because he wanted the Jewish vote, which he did get¹⁰.

It is ironic that Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer, but when you are a politician and it comes to garnering votes, human rights come stone cold motherless last.

Sources

1. https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera/videos/if-you-are-in-support-of-palestine-you-are-breaching-your-conditions-watch-as-a-/1341319343679095/
2. https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-what-it-means-to-proscribe-a-group-and-what-the-effects-could-be-259619
3. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/61578/1/Accepted_manuscript.pdf
4. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/18/protester-arrested-wearing-plasticine-action-t-shirt-palestine-gaza-protest
5. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/proscribed-terror-groups-or-organisations–2/proscribed-terrorist-groups-or-organisations-accessible-version
6. https://www.ottawajewishbulletin.com/jewish-world/keir-starmer-elected-leader-of-british-labour-party
7. https://web.archive.org/web/20240508193925/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/09/10/atheist-keir-starmer-avoids-reference-god-pledge-loyalty-king/
8. https://thejewishindependent.com.au/a-jewish-family-in-10-downing-street
9. https://web.archive.org/web/20191021105651/https://www.awardsintelligence.co.uk/awards/knighthood-former-director-of-public-prosecutions-keir-starmer-qc/
10. https://www.vashtimedia.com/labour-jewish-voters-jpr-poll-keir-starmer/