The proscription of Palestine Action: An explainer

In a week’s time, publishing a piece like this could land you in prison for up to 14 years.

If the home secretary Yvette Cooper successfully proscribes Palestine Action (PA), it will become illegal to write an article with links encouraging readers to sign petitions or make donations to PA’s legal fund, or to wear an article of clothing that suggests membership or support.

This is a terrifying moment for civil liberties in the UK. We stand on the brink of widespread criminalisation of protest activities and restrictions on our freedom of expression. 

Those who engage in the struggle for Palestinian liberation face the full force of the British state – a state that is providing direct military and diplomatic support for the genocide being perpetrated against the Palestinian people, which has left hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children killed or injured by Israeli occupation forces. 

For years, PA activists have taken great risks to disrupt the military-industrial complex profiting off the mass extermination of Palestinians. Reportedly PA has caused a total of around £55 million of damage to military equipment. For many this has come at the cost of their own individual freedom – a number have been remanded in custody, some for over 10 months, awaiting trial. 

Direct action is a tactic that has long been employed by protest movements when democratic processes have failed to enact the popular will. Criminalised in their own time, such activists will often later be lauded by an establishment that once persecuted them. Take, for example, the Suffragettes – a group whose violent activities in pursuit of women’s political rights went far beyond those of PA, yet the same home secretary who now seeks to outlaw the latter not long ago paid homage to those “who fought for so many women to have their voices heard”.

While the overwhelming majority of the British population are opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza and the UK government’s continued licensing of arms to Israel – only about one in eight people are against the imposition of a full embargo – efforts within and without parliament to seek a change in policy by conventional means have fallen on deaf ears beholden only to the interests of the defence industry and Israel lobbyists. We must do whatever we can to fight the injustices faced by Palestinians and the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements, which all form part of the same interconnected system of oppression. 

Vashti Media stands with Palestine Action in the fight against proscription and the fight for Palestinian liberation. Below, our editors have written a comprehensive explainer of PA’s history and place within British anti-war activism, the government’s prior use of criminal and counter-terror measures against the group, the public response to the home secretary’s announcement, and the available legal options to fight proscription.

For those engaging in protest and fundraising in the coming days and weeks, be sure to understand your rights. Netpol has published helpful guidance to inform protestors of their rights in this new legal context. 

The Vashti Editors

What is Palestine Action?

On 30 July 2020, a group of activists broke into the UK headquarters of Elbit Systems in London and sprayed its interior with red paint. Elbit is Israel’s biggest arms company. The activists targeting Elbit called themselves Palestine Action, and stated their commitment to “ending global participation in Israel's genocidal and apartheid regime”. 

In the half-decade since that launch, PA has carried out a series of direct actions aimed at Elbit, its subsidiaries, and other manufacturers of weapons and weapon components. PA forced the closure of an Elbit factory in Oldham in 2022, and in 2024, the sale of its Tamworth site. Other targets have been symbolic. In 2024, activists spray-painted and slashed a portrait of Arthur Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge, and “abducted” two busts of Chaim Weizmann from the University of Manchester.

Before March 2024, Elbit was recording sales of $1.2 billion (£875 million) a year to the Israeli ministry of defence. That month, its chief executive told Reuters it expected the assault on Gaza to bring in another $500 (£365) million a year. 

PA members have occupied factory floors and roofs, smashed windows, thrown paint, damaged machinery, and cut internet wires, resulting in delays to production and major costs. The government’s hysteria around PA’s most recent action – in which two activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint over two planes – forgets that protests of this kind, aiming to disrupt the machinery of war, are not uncommon in recent British political history.

Between 1981 and 2000, activists surrounded RAF Greenham Common to protest the site hosting nuclear weapons. Sometimes they blockaded its gates to prevent movement in and out. On New Year’s Day 1983, they broke into the base and danced on top of the missile silos.

Greenham’s women were followed by activists organised as Trident Ploughshares, who broke into a British Aerospace factory and caused over £1.5 million in damage to training jets destined for Indonesia in 1996, during its occupation of East Timor. They were acquitted by jury, after arguing that they sought to prevent the British government from supporting a genocide.

In 2003, with the Iraq War looming, another group broke into RAF Fairford and damaged equipment there. Keir Starmer defended one of them in court. From 2003 to 2010, a Brighton campaign, Smash EDO, saw activists “decommission” a factory they said supplied weapons components to Israel.

Other, less confrontational forms of activism equally represent a disruption to the pipelines on which modern war and repression depends. The anti-apartheid boycotts of the 1990s sought to force South Africa into economic isolation. Scottish factory workers refused to service Chilean planes after Pinochet’s 1973 coup. Even the conscientious objectors of World War I sought to make unavailable a fundamental part of the war machine: themselves. 

PA’s methods fit squarely within this proud tradition of protest movements. That four people have now been arrested in relation to the break-in at RAF Brize Norton on the suspicion of "the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism” is, in the words of PA’s spokesperson, “an unhinged reaction to an action spraying paint in protest at the UK Government arming Israel's slaughter of the Palestinian people”.

Prior to this announcement, how has the government responded to Palestine Action?  

PA activists have regularly faced arrest during the organisation’s five year history. 

In late 2023, the “Elbit Eight” were put on trial for direct action against weapons factories in the six months after PA’s 2020 founding. The activists faced a total of 32 charges, including criminal damage, trespass with intent to cause criminal damage (burglary), possessing materials with intent to cause criminal damage, encouraging others to commit criminal damage and making threats to commit criminal damage. 

A jury acquitted the defendants of nine charges overall, with two individuals cleared of all charges they personally faced. It convicted one activist of criminal damage and was unable to decide on the remaining twenty three charges. 

Earlier this week, Declassified revealed that Elbit Systems pressured then policing minister Chris Philp to pursue a retrial of the remaining six defendants. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) complied, ordering a retrial that is due to begin in 2027. 

Subsequent trials have brought both legal victories and defeats for PA activists.

In April 2024, the “Solvay Three” were convicted of criminal damage and ordered to pay a partial fine following their 2021 occupation of the Solvay factory in Wrexham that produces components for Elbit drones and F-35. The sentence was deliberately lenient and the judge expressed her understanding and support for the defendants. In June 2024, two activists were acquitted of criminal damage for their 2021 occupation of drone manufacturer UAV Tactical Systems in Leicester. They successfully argued their case through the common law defence of necessity, contending that the activity of the factory was a war crime and that their actions were necessary to protect the life and property of Palestinians. 

In August 2024, however, the “Thales Five” were sentenced to between 12 and 16 months prison for their June 2022 occupation of the French arms manufacturer Thales in Govan, Glasgow. The same month, the first of the “Filton 18” were arrested for the alleged destruction of equipment in an Elbit Systems site outside of Bristol. All were remanded to prison while they await trial. 

According to the PA website, there are 15 trials of activists currently scheduled between June 2025 and November 2027 and 19 activists currently imprisoned. 

Has the government previously treated Palestine Action's activities as terrorism?

While most of the charges against PA activists have been criminal, the state has previously arrested PA activists under anti-terror legislation. 

This began in 2021, when PA co-founders and “Elbit Eight” defendants Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard were stopped at the UK border upon their return from Ireland under Schedule 7 Counter-Terrorism legislation. The pair were interrogated for hours and Ammori was arrested after she declined to provide her laptop password, though the terror charges were eventually dropped. 

The state returned to its use of anti-terror legislation in the case of the “Filton 18”. While the six activists arrested at the site were not charged under terrorism legislation, but with combinations of criminal damage, violent disorder, and aggravated burglary, the CPS stated that it would submit to the court that these actions have a terrorist connection, which, if accepted, would serve as an aggravating factor in sentencing. 

Police extended the initial detention of these activists through the use of section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 (preparing or assisting a terrorist act) and counter-terrorism police powers in the Terrorism Act 2000. The activists have been denied bail and are subjected to high security protocols due to the invocation of these powers and the CPS submission. 

An additional 12 activists were later arrested in raids under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006. They too have ultimately been charged with criminal, not terrorist offences. However, all 18 have been remanded under counter-terror powers.

Following these arrests, four UN special rapporteurs wrote to the UK government to express their concerns about the misuse of counter-terror legislation in the “Filton 18” case. They write:

“Treating ‘direct action’, albeit involving some violence, as ‘terrorism’ over-states the nature of the conduct and seriously risks chilling the exercise of freedom of expression and opinion and the right to participate in public life, as well as political and public discourse. We are particularly concerned by the inappropriate use of the counter-terrorism legal framework during pre-charge detention, in relation to the security conditions under which detainees are held, and in the context of the potential aggravation of penalties in sentencing.”

What has been the public response to the home secretary’s announcement?

A handful of politicians, including Green party leadership candidate Zack Polanski, and a number of other notable public figures, including the award-winning author Sally Rooney, have been brave enough to vocalise their condemnation of the attacks on PA. 

A group of civil society organisations also expressed their “deep concern” about the government’s “shocking and dangerous” intentions to “crack down on the right of people in Britain to protest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza”, and deplored the UK state for “placing a higher value on minor damage to war planes than on the lives of Palestinians, reflect[ing] the century-long legacy of colonial violence at the heart of the UK Government's stance towards Palestine today”.

Akiko Hart, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the announcement as “a concerning escalation of how the Government treats protest groups and uses terrorism powers. Proscribing a direct-action protest group in this way potentially sets a new precedent for what we do and do not treat as terrorism.”

The Guardian appears to be experiencing buyer’s remorse, having supported the Labour party at the last election to bring about “the future we want to see”, its latest editorial denounced ministers “using terror laws to outlaw protest” as a “dangerous precedent”, with which “the cost will be felt in press freedom, political accountability and the right to resist”.

Whereas the Times and other pro-Israel conservative outlets like the Spectator, have published a string of hit pieces on PA in the lead up and following the home secretary’s announcement.

Cooper has also enjoyed the support of her colleagues on the Labour frontbench, including the foreign secretary and prime minister Keir Starmer, who referred to PA’s act of spray painting planes at RAF Brize Norton as “disgraceful”. While business secretary Jonathan Reynolds – the minister responsible for rubber-stamping arms licences to Israel – refused to rule out that the possibility of a foreign power being behind the group, as unnamed sources at the home office confirmed they would be launching an investigation into the matter, which has been roundly rejected by PA as “sham” built on “baseless claims”.

Within the British Jewish world there has been palpable glee from establishment bodies at the prospect of PA’s proscription. The Board of Deputies – currently embroiled in its own debacle over sanctioning a number of its members for their criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza – was quick to welcome the government’s position, as were other Zionist organisations, such as the Jewish Leadership Council. 

The right-wing Jewish press has given little consideration to the broader implications of the government’s objectives on civil liberties. Instead, we have been offered sensationalist articles and op-eds from the likes of Jewish News, which remain satisfied with flippantly demonising PA and its sympathisers en masse, instilling inflated fear among the Jewish community while discrediting any opinion that does not offer full-throated support for Israel's compounding wars. Similarly, the Jewish Chronicle’s investigations correspondent Jane Prinsley used the Labour government’s framing of PA to insinuate – through leading questions and misleading attributions – that those protesting the decision were inherently supporters of violence, rather than people concerned with the adherence to human rights at home and abroad.

Jewish publications and communal bodies, along with the home secretary herself, have been quick to frame PA as antisemitic for targeting buildings in Jewish neighborhoods, such as a recent action on an office in Stamford Hill. In doing so, they frequently obfuscate the stated intention of the group and the links between those sites and weapons production.

What is the parliamentary procedure for proscription?

In her statement earlier this week formally announcing the government’s plans, Cooper stated her intention of laying a draft proscription order this coming Monday, which will then be debated in parliament on Wednesday and Thursday, and, if passed, is set to come into effect on Friday 4 July. 

Unlike the welfare bill due to be debated in the Commons on Tuesday – which has faced staunch opposition from Labour backbenchers and even the resignation of a government whip, which in turn has forced an embarrassing albeit insufficient climbdown from the government – it seems doubtful a similar situation will arise over PA’s proscription. Given the support from the Tories for the move, any rebellion from those MPs who have publicly spoken out against the government’s proposals will struggle to garner enough support to vote down the legislation. 

Accordingly, getting an injunction from the courts to stop the government from bringing the order to parliament in the first place appears to be the best route to prevent the proscription. As Paul Heron, legal director of the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), told Vashti: “lawyers in the case will seek a judicial review of the decision”, which is a “is a legal process where the High Court will examine the lawfulness of decisions or actions made by public bodies, ensuring they act within their powers, follow fair procedures, and respect individuals’ rights under the law.”

How could the proscription be halted in the courts?

Possible issues that the court could focus on may include reasonableness of the decision, or whether there is insufficient evidence that PA meets the legal definition of a terrorist organisation, and questions over whether the group engages in or promotes terrorism, defined as serious violence or serious damage to property for the purpose of influencing the government or intimidating the public.

As Heron explains, PA’s lawyers would likely point to the fact that “activists have been found not guilty in cases where they have committed damage to weapons that can be used in war crimes. Indeed there is a long history of such actions being successfully defended going back to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the 1980s.”

Furthermore, the home secretary’s decision could be challenged on the grounds that it is “perceived as disproportionate and breaches activists’ own human rights as contained within the European Convention. [...] Proscription is a severe restriction on political expression and activism. If the group’s activities amount to civil disobedience or non-violent direct action (even if disruptive or damaging), banning it may be a disproportionate interference with those rights. It could therefore be argued that the Government in making the decision has failed to strike a fair balance between national security and democratic freedoms.” 

Then there are questions around procedure. According to Heron, “There is an argument to be made that the decision-making process will be rushed, lacked proper consultation, and/or has relied on inadequate or undisclosed intelligence. They might also challenge whether the group was given any opportunity to respond or make representations prior to proscription.”

Finally, PA’s lawyers could argue that the home secretary’s decision has “relied on flawed intelligence or misrepresented the nature of the group’s activities (e.g. conflating non-violent direct action with terrorism)”.

If the High Court judges are persuaded by PA’s position then they will have a number of remedies available to them. They may hand down a quashing order to overturn the proscription order, or a declaration that the proscription was unlawful. Given the time pressure of the impending vote in parliament, PA’s lawyers may seek an injunction to suspend enforcement until the case is decided, prior to any final decision being made by the judges.

If proscription does take place, can the decision be appealed?

If a judicial review is unsuccessful, and the statutory instrument does pass next week, then PA will have the option of seeking deproscription by writing to – you guessed it – the home secretary. She will have 90 days to decide whether to reverse her decision. If she refuses, then it will be possible to appeal the decision to the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission (POAC), and whatever decision the POAC makes can then be taken to the Court of Appeal.

All that is to say, the battle over Cooper’s proscription plans could well be caught up in legal challenges for many months. But were the government to be successful in classifying PA as a terrorist organisation next week, then the group could find itself up against insurmountable obstacles during the period of appealing the decision, such as the seizure of its assets.

What will be the impact on Palestine solidarity activism and protest rights if the proscription goes ahead?

The far-reaching consequences of the proscription on others engaged in Palestine solidarity activism is hard to assess. What exactly might the police deem a sign or symbol of support for PA? Will the UK follow the Israeli regime in banning the waving of the Palestinian flag in public? Are we to see the prohibition of any or all demonstrations outside arms factories, or a total ban on pro-Palestine protests? What then will happen to the hundreds of thousands who have regularly attended rallies across the country? And what will happen to people who write articles like this one? 

As legal scholar Daniella Lock has noted, “Given the large numbers of people it is likely to turn into ‘terrorists’, proscribing Palestine Action could impose a significant burden on the state to increase its surveillance of citizens who pose no threat, at a time when MI5 claims already to have ‘one hell of a job on its hands’.” Will this be a moment in which the contradictions inherent within the British establishment become too much to contain?

What are the limits of legal resistance?

In an email to Vashti, Tasnima from the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) explains: “Legal resistance is a critical tool in the broader movement resisting the proscription of Palestinian organising, but it is not the only one. 

“To prevent the proscription from taking place, what’s most needed is not just courtroom arguments, but visible, collective resistance: protest, political education, direct pressure on MPs, solidarity from trade unions, and principled refusal from academics, artists, and civil society. Legal tools can help delay, expose, or challenge state decisions but they cannot redistribute power on their own. That happens when the public organises, speaks, and refuses to comply and be silent.

“Legal resistance may help carve space for organising or buy time for political mobilisation. But history shows us that unjust laws are defeated through coordinated defiance and sustained public challenge.

“That’s why, while we pursue legal avenues, we’re under no illusions: it is political will and public mobilisation that will ultimately stop this proscription. Our task is to work in solidarity with those building that will from the ground up.” ▼