‘I'm proud to have made this stand': over-60s arrested at Palestine Action ban protest explain their decision

The Guardian

15 hours ago

In recent weeks, hundreds of people have been arrested for taking part in demonstrations organised by the campaign group Defend Our Juries. Their alleged crime is calling for an end to the ban against Palestine Action, which has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Yvette Cooper, the home secretary.
One striking detail among those detained is their age. Half of those arrested at the largest protest yet, in Parliament Square in London on Saturday, were 60 or older. Some said they had taken part to give a voice to younger people who have more to lose by breaking the law, some simply felt they must challenge the government's stance.
The Guardian has spoken to some of these protesters.
'The government is looking [like] such idiots,' said Deborah Hinton, a former magistrate. 'I mean when people say, 'What's your status?', and then I say, 'Well, I'm on bail for terrorism', they look at me as if the situation is farcical. I think they [ministers] are making themselves look an absolute joke.'
Hinton was arrested at a 19 July demonstration in Cornwall arranged by Defend Our Juries (DOJ). A former member of the Parole Board, she was awarded an OBE in 1994 for services to the community. She said she was already involved with DOJ because she was worried about the erosion of free speech and the right to protest, but the banning of Palestine Action was a 'red line'.
She said: 'In my view, Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation. I lived through the IRA and the bombing in London when you had to leave shops and leave museums because bombs might go off any minute. Frankly, that is what a terrorist organisation is. This is not a terrorist organisation, it's a direct action organisation, like the suffragists, like the Greenham Common women, like many other organisations.
'If people do direct action and they cause criminal damage, then you arrest the people, you charge them [under existing laws], and that's that.'
As well as free speech concerns, her longstanding support for the Palestinian cause led her to risk arrest. 'What's going on in Gaza has gone beyond anything that one could possibly have imagined,' said Hinton. 'I can't even think about it, it's too awful.'
Hinton said she was shaking as the officers moved down the line of placard holders arresting each person as they went. An officer then told her that if she put down her placard she could leave without further action.
'I knew I couldn't do that, but it was such a temptation because it was so terrifying,' said Hinton. 'I've been a very law-abiding citizen and very respectful of authority all my life but I knew I had to do this and it was my duty to do this.'
Hinton said it was right that her generation were putting themselves on the frontline. 'Young people are going to jeopardise their careers,' she said. 'They won't get a visa to go to the [United] States. They won't get a visa to go to most other countries because they'll have terrorism on their record.
'People like me, who are elderly, we can afford it. I'm very sorry not to go and be able to visit my niece in America but it's not the end of the world. Young people shouldn't be doing this, we should be doing this. We should be taking the responsibility.'
John McGowan, a Catholic priest, said that when Yvette Cooper was in opposition he felt she 'spoke for me'. But asked what he would say to the home secretary now, he replied: 'For goodness sake, don't call these people terrorists because they're not terrorists.
'The focus shouldn't be on Palestine Action. The focus should be on what the government isn't doing for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.'
McGowan, a Carmelite and parish priest of St Joseph's in Chalfont St Peter, was one of 532 people arrested at the demonstration in Parliament Square on 9 August, the largest against the proscription of the organisation to date.
He said he had written in his diary a week or two before the protest that he would like to be arrested in support of the cause, so when the demonstration was announced it was the opportunity he was looking for.
He attended wearing his Roman collar, identifying himself as a priest, and met a Baptist minister there who was also arrested.
After being detained, McGowan was placed in a police van where there were two female officers that he said were 'polite, and almost apologetic. I sat down, and I felt very calm and almost serene.' When the van drove away, he said people cheered in support of him and the two other protesters in the vehicle, banging on the van and making the heart sign to them.
'It was a strain, but exhilarating as well. It was an extraordinary day, I've never had a day like it in my life but I'm glad I did it. In my conscience, I was clear it was the right thing to do so I take that as my guiding light. If I get a criminal record, I don't care.'
He said he was not expecting any recriminations from the Catholic church and had experienced a moving response from his congregation.
'I was in two minds whether to tell the people in my church what I'd done but I'm the kind of person that likes to share these things and so I did,' he said. 'I was really nervous but at the end of mass I said: 'Look, I went to the demonstration, I got arrested' and they applauded me. I was almost in tears.'
A former British army colonel and ex-military attache, Chris Romberg cut an unlikely terrorism suspect even among hundreds of other retirees arrested in Parliament Square in relation to Palestine Action.
Yet it is this background – along with the fact that his father and grandparents fled Nazi Germany in 1938 – that motivated him to join the protest, leading to his arrest under the Terrorism Act.
'This year saw the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces. What they found shocked the British people,' said Romberg, who himself saw action in the Falklands war with the commando regiment and was mentioned in dispatches.
'What we are seeing now in Gaza, 80 years on, is equally shocking. As a former officer in the British army, I am horrified that the government is misusing our armed forces to be complicit in the genocide rather than to end it.'
Claims by Cooper that those protesting 'don't know the full nature' of Palestine Action have also struck a nerve. 'The impression I get is that people are now extremely distrustful of the government,' said Romberg, who left the army in 2007.
'That the home secretary should speak like that and say that she has information but can't tell us what it is reminds me of the Monty Python sketch about the Piranha brothers, where there is a man who had his head nailed to a coffee table because he had broken an unwritten law but they wouldn't tell him what it was.'
The former diplomat's last two appointments were as defence attache at the British embassies in Jordan and Egypt, and he speaks knowledgeably about the region. Since leaving the army, he became active in supporting the Palestinian cause.
Recently, he joined the group Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against the Gaza Genocide, other members of which stood together under a banner during the protest on Saturday.
It was the first time that he has been arrested in his life. Before taking part, he reflected a lot on what he was about to do. 'It wasn't a decision I took lightly and the organisers, Defend Our Juries, made absolutely sure that everybody realised the implications of what they were doing, and yet people felt strongly enough that they were able and were prepared to take that risk.'
Richard Whitmore-Jones readily admits he 'doesn't particularly approve' of the methods deployed by Palestine Action, the direct action group proscribed last month. 'I was brought up to respect property,' he said.
Yet in his next breath, the retired company director makes an argument few might expect from a former executive at the multinational beverage company Diageo.
'I was certainly in horror of vandalism but I have to admit that people have not been listened to on Gaza. There have been enormous marches in London and they have not been reported accurately or were kept off the front pages.
'Palestine Action's methods sit very uneasily with me. It's difficult to accept that vandalism is the only way to go. However, I feel we have to do something and I support their stand against genocide.'
Whitmore-Jones, from East Sussex, was arrested on Saturday having also been previously arrested at another protest organised by Defend Our Juries, returning with the same placard stating: 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.' He has been bailed to appear at a police station in October.
As for the decision to put himself in line for arrest not once but twice, Whitmore-Jones cites being part of a generation whose parents fought fascism in the second world war, which in his own case included an RAF father who became a prisoner of the Japanese.
'I am astonished that we now have a government that has been supporting exactly the sort of actions, in Gaza, which Britain sought to prevent 80 years ago. My father's sacrifice, which he saw as being to prevent other peoples from being invaded and treated badly, appears to be contrary to what our government is doing,' he said.
For much of his working life, Whitmore-Jones was with Diageo, rising to become a property manager and office services manager at the company, retiring in 2003 shortly after it was taken over. He 'came late' to activism for Gaza, going on his first ever march when he was 72.
'I felt better for doing something, though I realised I was doing very little really,' he said, before the proscription of Palestine Action changed everything again for him.
He shrugs off the suggestion that he was now making a sacrifice by facing a potential terrorism conviction and the life-changing limitations that come with it, insisting: 'Look, I'm 74, I don't have a mortgage to get, I don't have a job. I will be a little bit upset about not being allowed to go to America, but I really will live with that. It's the young people that are brave.'
As for his family's views of what he is doing, Whitmore-Jones said: 'It's gone from amusement to absolute firm support and I'm very pleased with the attitude of my children.'
Family, in a way, is also at the heart of his motivation for seeking to oppose Israel's actions in Gaza: 'This is about children the age of my grandchildren having their limbs and their lives taken away.'
After leading a 'wonderful, full life', the TV screenwriter Trevelyan Evans, who has written for a number of BBC sitcoms, is unafraid of being called a terrorist in the courts. 'I'm very proud to have made this stand, whether I'm convicted or not,' he said.
He was among the 532 people, many of them 'old fogies', arrested last Saturday. 'People in my demographic are standing up for those people who can't risk having a conviction on their records for a terrorism offence,' he said.
He felt compelled to take part in the protest to stand up for 'the people of Gaza and Palestine who are being massacred' and to oppose the group's proscription, which he called an 'obviously ridiculous judicial overreach on behalf of the government'.
'They just slapped this ban on them in order to suppress opposition,' he added.
Before the demonstration began last weekend, he jokingly said he got his 'materials for terrorism' ready on the green in Parliament Square. His tools of choice? A pen and piece of paper. 'I never realised being a terrorist could be so much fun,' he said. 'Being out in the open air and meeting new people in a nice central location … it was a convivial atmosphere.'
After the silent portion of the protest ended, Evans said people were 'handing out sandwiches and sun cream' until an officer with 'seven of his friends came round' and told him he was being arrested. They then started to carry him out of the square.
'I hadn't been carried around like that since I was at school,' he said. 'The policeman said: 'You're a bit heavy.' He had to call one of his friends over to help carry me. I thought that was a bit of a liberty.' After this, he was placed in a police van, which he had all to himself. 'I think, on behalf of the Metropolitan police, it was quite generous.'
Evans is on bail awaiting charge. He said the government's decision to ban Palestine Action represented a 'kind of creeping authoritarianism [which is] eventually going to hit a wall, because it's inherently contradictory'.
'If you extend draconian laws, eventually you're going to look pretty stupid. I can see that the government laid itself a trap and walked straight into it.'