The people! United! Will never be defeated!
You gotta fight! For your right! To proooooo-test!
First off, apologies to my paid subscribers — I know you’re used to having all my content exclusively for your eyes, but this week I’m going a little off my usual beat, and I want my words to stand as a matter of public record for reasons that shall soon become apparent. For anyone reading me for the first time, welcome! I usually spend Tuesdays ranting about the ways in which geopolitics and development intersect with travel and tourism, mostly in Southeast Asia, so this week’s newsletter isn’t a taste of what you’ll get if you decide to subscribe. (Thursdays are travel guides, Fridays are bar and restaurant reviews, Sunday is a link-drop, so you get four pieces a week for your £6/month.)
Where the River Thames runs through Oxford, it’s called the River Isis. I never bothered to find out why that’s the case when I was living there, but it’s been that way for centuries. They’ve got the Isis Tavern for drinking in, they have Oxford Isis cheese to eat, and back in 2001 and beyond I worked for a tiny imprint called Isis Publishing (we produced large-print and audio versions of popular titles for the blind and partially-sighted), meaning that I have years of payslips showing me to be an employee of Isis, which always gets a laugh down the pub.
I am about to become a proper terrorist in the eyes of the British government, and I sincerely hope that you are too. Yup, this week I am inciting terrorism in my newsletter, so strap in and enjoy the ride!
Britain (like many countries) has a rich history of non-violent direct political action. We celebrate our suffragettes, without whom women would have taken far longer to secure the vote. We have nostalgic pride in the women of Greenham Common, a multi-decade set of camps at an RAF base protesting against nuclear weapons. While Pride is now a corporate monolith (less so now, thanks to the rising tide of small-mindedness and selfishness manifesting itself around the world), its roots can be found in protest. In recent years, Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion have been two high-profile groups carrying the can for non-violent direct action (whatever you think of their methods you can’t argue about their success in getting the word out and attracting media attention to their cause).
Non-violent direct action and acts of civil disobedience have proven to be successful in this country, and they have a history of moving the needle.
Crucially, Britain has a history of protests taking place on or around military facilities, and while hands are wrung endlessly in the op-ed pages of right-leaning newspapers, the response has typically been to charge protesters with offenses like breaking and entering or criminal damage, logical and apposite responses to the “crimes” committed.
In 2003, our current Prime Minister — noted human rights lawyer *cough* Sir Keir Starmer — famously defended an activist accused of breaking into RAF Fairford with a view to disabling equipment ear-marked for use in the invasion of Iraq. The Fairford Five caused significant damage, shattering windscreens on support vehicles, smashing instrument panels, cutting brake cables… While different offenses took place across different evenings, all five were charged with criminal damage (which seems to fit the crimes committed, no?).
Eventually, in 2007, two of the Fairford Five were acquitted in the British High Court on the grounds that their actions were a reasonable attempt to prevent war crimes being committed — the very argument that Sir Starmer had made in defending his client, Josh Richards.
Eighteen years down the line, Starmer leads a government that is trying to brand Palestine Action a terrorist organisation on a par with Al Qa’ida, the Atomwaffen Division, Boko Haram, Islamic Jihad, and a whole host of fundamentalist organisations promoting Islamist or white supremacist ideologies. Palestine Action is guilty of throwing paint and smashing some windows.
Should the government get their way, supporting Palestine Action will be an act of terrorism worthy of up to 14 years in prison. Let me remind you at this point that British prisons are so overcrowded we don’t have room to keep rapists or violent offenders inside, but apparently there’s now space for the hundreds of people who joined me last week at a protest in support of the group, where we were guilty of sitting in the street and blocking the flow of traffic around Trafalgar Square while shouting ‘we are all Palestine Action’.
Since Israel’s genocidal counter-offensive began on 8 October 2023 I have been to more pro-Palestine marches than I can count. Last summer every city I visited happened to have a march on the day I was there, so obviously I joined in. Plus there have been the monthly national marches in London, and occasional smaller protests in between.
At each and every one I have been surrounded by an atmosphere of peace and joy, people dancing the route and setting chants to music. Old people, young people, white people, brown people, football clubs for Palestine, Jews for Palestine, gays for Palestine. Each and every one has been a glorious celebration of the breadth of British support for the Palestine cause, and I have never felt cause to be threatened. The police encounters I have had all left me with the impression that the piggly-wigglies may have been supervising the march because it was their job, but that the boots on the ground largely agreed with our position.
And then there was the Palestine Action protest, featuring hundreds of people on a Monday, rather than tens of thousands of us on a Saturday. I’d arrived at the site with a homemade anti-tear gas kit in my bag, because something told me I might need it. Before I made it to the centre of the crowd I saw protesters on the ground, a woman being dragged away by police. No idea who was the instigator, nor what had happened, but it was clear that the tone of policing at Trafalgar Square was at the opposite end of the scale to that I’d experienced at the bigger marches.
Activists were walking through the crowd handing out cards explaining our rights in the event of arrests, all the while explaining that — despite what les flics were saying — our presence at this protest was not illegal, we were not yet terrorists, and that supporting the group (vocally, financially, or by writing ranty Substacks) was not yet illegal.
Whatever your position on Palestine, I hope that you are as outraged as I am that a group guilty of nothing more than criminal damage (and perhaps a little light B&E on an army base) could be classed as terrorists. Non-violent protest and direct action are just about the only tools we proles have at our disposal, and to have them taken away is morally reprehensible. Doing so is the final proof (were it needed) that the British Labour Party has long since abandoned its founding principles and voter base. Support Palestine Action while you still can, and if you can’t bring yourself to do that then find a cause you do give a shit about and find a way to join in.
First they came for the activists, and I did not speak out, for I was not an activist…
Further reading
UK Government Policy Paper: Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations
Judge grants Palestine Action urgent hearing to try to stop ban taking effect
Further viewing
This documentary on Palestine Action (I’m off to see it tonight) is going to be illegal to watch or distribute soon, so pay to stream it online while you still can!
Right there with you. I can't safely go back to the States for similar reasons. I'd probably be fine, but--my record is out there.
It is shaming that we're being led down an unrecognisable, unBritish path by a Prime Minister who once fought against exactly what he wants to jail us for