Britain once jailed suffragettes. Now it jails Palestine activists

Middle East Eye

4 days ago

On a quiet Saturday in London, beneath the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square, police arrested 83-year-old Reverend Sue Parfitt. Her crime? Holding a placard that read: 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.' She smiled as they took her away - dignified, calm, unafraid.
She was one of more than two dozen people arrested that day - many of them women and elderly, most carrying nothing but banners and conscience.
Their 'offence' was to stand in solidarity with Palestine Action, the group newly branded a terrorist organisation by the British government, despite never having harmed a single person.
Its methods? Spray paint, red dye, road blockades - all part of a non-violent campaign to end Britain's role in arming Israel's destruction of Gaza.
The irony is almost unbearable: this proscription was ordered by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and backed overwhelmingly in parliament on the very anniversary of women in Britain winning the right to vote. Most female MPs voted to criminalise Palestine Action - and many of them later smiled for photos celebrating the suffragette legacy of militant resistance.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
That legacy wasn't meek.
The Women's Social and Political Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, planted bombs. They disrupted postal services, set fire to public buildings and politicians' homes, smashed windows, handcuffed themselves to railings, attacked Church of England buildings, and vandalised golf courses and male-only clubs. They disrupted political meetings, broke the law, and starved themselves in protest.
Silencing dissent
Palestine Action has never come close to such tactics. And yet today, it is labelled a terrorist threat.
As Baron Peter Hain put it: 'Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison [to the suffragettes' actions].' But while most female MPs today celebrate the suffragettes in words, they vote to criminalise their spirit in action.
One of the few exceptions is Baroness Jenny Jones, a Green peer who has been outspoken in her defence of Palestine Action and searing in her condemnation of Britain's complicity. She is everything the suffragette legacy demands: principled, defiant, willing to speak uncomfortable truths in a chamber soaked in political cowardice. She stands with those resisting oppression - not those funding it.
UK arrests 83-year-old priest for backing Palestine Action and opposing Gaza genocide Read More »
She is the type of female legislator who was in Pankhurst's mind when she spoke at one of her trials: 'We are here, not because we are law-breakers; we are here in our efforts to become law-makers.'
And it is no surprise that while the likes of Cooper target campaigners - including women such as Parfitt and the cofounder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori - Jones calls out the state's duplicity: the criminalisation of protest, the arming of apartheid, the silencing of dissent.
As she put it in parliament: 'If you want Palestine Action to disappear, then stop sending arms to Israel and giving military support to a foreign government engaged in ethnic cleansing.'
This isn't just hypocrisy. It's a violent moral inversion.
At the same protest on Saturday stood a Welsh nurse who only weeks ago was at the Rafah border pleading with Egyptian security forces to let him through into Gaza to facilitate aid delivery. Now back in the UK, he continues to protest - heartbroken, undeterred.
This is the face of the movement: ordinary people moved by the extraordinary obscenity of genocide, and by the complicity of their own governments in enabling it.
Growing movement
Just a week earlier, punk duo Bob Vylan sent shockwaves through Glastonbury by chanting 'Death to the IDF' on stage, referencing the Israeli army. The words were echoed by thousands and broadcast live on the BBC.
Palestine was everywhere at the festival - in lyrics, on flags, spoken from the stage. The crowds cheered. The establishment panicked. Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushed to condemn the chant, and even the White House weighed in.
What the same western political establishment has failed to condemn, of course, are the crimes giving rise to those chants: the bombs dropped on hospitals, mass starvation, and body parts in rubble.
Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war
Two days later, London's high court ruled it lawful for the UK to supply parts for F-35 fighter jets - the very aircraft used to flatten Gaza.
The message was unmistakable: chanting against genocide perpetrators is a scandal. Arming a genocidal army is lawful.
Yet despite every effort to suffocate the pro-Palestine movement - police vans, proscription orders, media blackouts - it is only growing.
A long-suppressed BBC documentary on Palestinian medics, which the broadcaster delayed and ultimately dropped, was finally aired by Channel 4. It showed in harrowing detail the systematic targeting of doctors and hospitals by Israeli forces. As commentator Gary Lineker said: 'The BBC should hang its head in shame.'
The people are already ahead of their leaders. And sooner or later, the leaders will follow - whether they want to or not
Meanwhile, Haaretz, Israel's own paper of record, published testimonies from Israeli soldiers describing how they were ordered to shoot starving Palestinians gathered for food. Not militants - children, parents, civilians.
The body count in Gaza now exceeds 56,000. And Britain is arresting the people trying to stop it.
But the tide is turning. Public opinion is not just shifting; it is collapsing around the western establishment. In the UK, net favourability towards Israel is now at -46. Nearly half of Britons believe Israel is committing genocide, while a majority support the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Across Europe, it's the same, with net favourability towards Israel at -44 in Germany, -48 in France, -54 in Denmark, -52 in Italy and -55 in Spain.
In the US, the shift is also stark. A Pew poll conducted in March found that 53 percent of Americans now view Israel unfavourably, a rise of more than 10 percentage points from three years ago. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that four in 10 Americans now believe Israel's problems are 'none of our business.'
Unstoppable shift
The battle to liberate Palestine is no longer being fought solely in Gaza or the occupied West Bank. It is being waged just as critically in the heart of the western world: between an increasingly awakened public and an establishment determined to suppress it.
The Israeli project is not a self-contained national affair. It is, at its core, a western colonial enterprise. And the last two years have exposed how deeply its survival depends on the political and military sponsorship of western governments - above all, the United States.
This is why the frontline now runs through London, Paris, Berlin and Washington - through parliaments, universities, media outlets and courtrooms. It is a battle for moral authority, a contest between power and truth. And its outcome will shape the fate of Palestine.
But history teaches us something else too: that the most transformative struggles - from the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage, to the civil rights movement - were won not because the powerful saw the light, but because the public made them feel the heat. And that public pressure, relentless and sustained, forced open doors long held shut.
So it will be with Palestine.
The people are already ahead of their leaders. And sooner or later, the leaders will follow - whether they want to or not.
Public opinion will, in time, impose its will on those in power. It may take years. It may come slowly. But this shift is already underway, and it is unstoppable.
History is watching. And when Palestine is finally free - as it will be - the names remembered won't be those who armed Israel with bombs. It will be the ones they tried to silence. The ones they arrested. The ones who marched. The ones who healed.
The ones like Reverend Sue Parfitt, who smiled as they took her away. The ones like Baroness Jenny Jones, who refused to betray what justice means.
We will remember who stood on the side of freedom - and who stood in its way.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.