Branding Palestine Action terrorists ‘completely ludicrous', say supporters
Hundreds gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday where Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, is asking the High Court to temporarily block the Government from proscribing the group as a terrorist organisation.
Among the fluttering flags of green, black, white and red were demonstrators holding signs saying 'Free Palestine' and 'We are all Palestine Action'.
Others masked themselves in sunglasses and a keffiyeh while speakers took turns to address the crowd through a PA system.
Sara, who was standing on the edge of the crowd, said many of the supporters present were carrying 'a lot of rage and anger' about the violence in Gaza.
She said: 'We think that the British Government needs to stop funding the genocidal regime in Palestine against Palestinians.
'They need to listen to protest groups instead of this massive overreach which is trying to stifle legitimate resistance and protest against one of the most horrific instances of violence against humanity in our time.'
One woman, who preferred not to be named, stood in the shade next to a pile of pink boxes containing cupcakes decorated with Palestinian flags.
She said she was raising money to send to a friend in Gaza because the price of basic food there has become so high.
Speaking outside court, she said: 'I think it's completely ludicrous that the Government is, rather than stopping supporting a genocide that is happening, they would rather criminalise people who are trying to stop it on the Government's behalf, seeing as though they are not doing anything.
'They have a legal obligation under the Genocide Convention to do all they can to prevent genocide. And they are choosing to, rather than follow their obligations, remain an active participant in this genocide.
'So civilians of conscience have decided to take up the mantle instead and do what they can.'
David Cannon, chairman of the Jewish Network for Palestine, stood wearing a sunhat and bore on his shoulder a white banner adorned with a Palestine flag and the name of his organisation.
His Jewish upbringing made him proud of Israel, he said, until he realised that the conflict in Gaza has been a 'slow-burn genocide for the last 80 years'.
He said: 'Israel is founded on stolen land and stolen lives. It has not only stolen Palestinian land and lives, it has also stolen the identity of Jewish religion.
'So it's vital that there is a Jewish voice saying there is nothing Jewish about apartheid, nothing Jewish about ethnic cleansing, nothing Jewish about genocide.
'The (UK) Government are desperate to stifle free speech which is trying to point out the truth. It's a desperate action and it may well backfire.'
Not every protester outside the court building was there in support of Palestine Action.
A small group stood across the street, next to several police officers, holding up a blue and white banner that said 'there is no genocide in Gaza'.
Mark Birbeck, from the pro-Israel group, called Our Fight, said they do not support the aims of Palestine Action but neither do they support them becoming a proscribed terrorist organisation.
Speaking on the street, he said: 'We don't actually support proscribing Palestine Action.
'We don't think they are a terrorist organisation, and in fact our argument is that it makes a mockery of what terrorism is.
'It's bizarre that (the Government) is presenting this as some kind of aggressive step.
'My suspicion is that Palestine Action are going to run rings around them.
'These people know what they are doing.
'I don't agree with them, I don't agree with their politics, but they've been doing this for years.
'Our argument against Palestine Action though is not that they are terrorists, but what we do believe they are doing is trying to claim the moral high ground and effectively they are doing that to isolate Israel.'
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
14 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Europe is scrambling to form a united front and regain relevance in the Iran crisis
Exposed as divided and marginalised during the Iran crisis, European nations are scrambling to retrieve a place at the Middle East negotiating table, fearing an impulsive Donald Trump has diminishing interest in stabilising Iran or the wider region now he believes he has achieved his key objective of wiping out Tehran's nuclear programme. On Tuesday the EU's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, was the latest senior European figure to phone the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, offering to be a facilitator and urging Tehran not to leave the crisis in a dangerous limbo by keeping UN weapons inspectors out of Iran. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has even broken a three-year silence to speak to Vladimir Putin about the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, including how a deal could be struck between Iran and the US on a restricted civil nuclear programme. Macron has been involved in Iranian diplomacy for a decade and came close to engineering a rapprochement between Trump and the then Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, at the UN general assembly in 2018. But Iran, faced with what it regards as craven European support for Israeli and American airstrikes that killed more than 930 people and injured as many as 5,000, is not placing much faith in the continent's ability to influence the White House. For Europe, this signals a slow slide into irrelevance. The three major European powers known as the E3 – France, Germany and the UK – were once key fixtures in Iran's diplomacy and played a central role in brokering the Iran nuclear deal, which they signed alongside the EU, the US, China, Russia and Iran in 2015. Europe had little input in the US's recent negotiating strategy with Iran, led by Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and was given just over an hour's official warning before the Israeli and US attacks. The one meeting that the E3 foreign minsters held during the crisis with Iranian diplomats in Geneva on 20 June proved a failure and was followed by the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. France claimed it helped Israel repel Iranian drones. Trump crowed afterwards that 'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one.' From the Iranian perspective, Europe has long been a disappointing negotiating partner, repeatedly failing to show any independence from the US. When Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal in 2018, the E3 condemned the move in a joint statement issued by its then-leaders, Angela Merkel, Theresa May and Macron. But it did nothing effective to pursue an independent strategy to lift European sanctions on Iran as it had promised. The fear that European firms trading with Iran would be put under US sanctions was too great. The view from Tehran, it was felt, was that Europe's timidity left it with no choice but to follow the policy of nuclear brinkmanship, including gradually increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium. At the start of Trump's second term, the E3 plus Kallas tried again to insert themselves into the process by holding three low-key meetings with Iranian negotiators. But Araghchi was always angling to speak to Washington, telling the Guardian of his discussions with the Europeans: 'Perhaps we are talking to the wrong people.' After Trump indicated he was willing to speak to Iran bilaterally and showed some flexibility about Tehran's right to enrich uranium, Iran cast Europe aside. Iran believes Europe played a role either through naivety or complicity in opening the door for the Israeli attack by tabling a motion of censure at the board of the UN nuclear inspectorate, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such motions have been passed before at the IAEA and usually led to Iran retaliating by increasing its stocks of enriched uranium. But the 12 June motion was different – for the first time in 20 years the board found Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Europe had to take that step to use its right as a signatory to the 2015 deal to reimpose sanctions on Iran before expiry of the deal on 15 October. Because of the way the deal was negotiated, neither Russia nor China can veto Europe reimposing sanctions. America is no longer party to the deal so this power to reintroduce UN sanctions is Europe's diplomatic re-entry point into the Iranian file. European diplomats insist that the IAEA censure motion was necessary, and that they had no option owing to Iran's mounting stocks of highly enriched uranium that had no possible purpose in a civilian nuclear programme. Europe also still hoped the talks between the US and Iran, mediated by Oman, would bear fruit, and had not foreseen the US giving Israel the green light to attack. Since the Israeli strikes, European unity has frayed further. Britain has largely opted for opacity, but it was obvious from what ministers did not say that the government's legal advice was that the Israeli attack could not be justified as an act of self-defence under the UN charter. France openly asserted that the attack was unlawful. By contrast, Germany endorsed all that Israel has done. At the G7 summit in mid-June, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said: 'This is the dirty work that Israel is doing, for all of us.' Germany's foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, told parliament that 'Israel has the right to defend itself and protect its people. Let me say clearly that, if Israel and the US have now managed to set back the Iranian nuclear programme, it will make Israel and its neighbourhood more secure.' Asked by the newspaper Die Zeit if he believed Israel's actions were lawful, he said Germany did not have the same quality intelligence sources as the US and Israel, but he had to trust their belief that Iran was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon. 'They told us that, from their perspective, this is necessary – and we must accept that.' Such remarks have left Iranian diplomats spitting about European double standards over the sanctity of international law. By contrast, Enrique Mora, the EU's point person on Iran from 2015 to early 2025, has written a scathing piece in which he says Israel has killed nuclear diplomacy and Iran's nuclear knowledge cannot be destroyed. He wrote: 'If Iran now chooses the militarisation of its nuclear capabilities, if it now decides to move toward a bomb, it will do so following a clear strategic logic: no one bombs the capital of a nuclear-armed country. June 21, 2025, may go down in history not as the day the Iranian nuclear programme was destroyed, but as the day a nuclear Iran was irreversibly born.' There are different strategies Europe can pursue. It can, like Germany, show Iran there is no daylight between the E3 and Israel and assert that Iran can only have a civil nuclear programme that excludes domestic enrichment of uranium. It can press ahead with the reimposition of sanctions and hope that Iran buckles. Alternatively, it can champion a compromise that Tehran can wear. In a recent statement, the European Council on Foreign Relations said 'maximalist demands on Iran – including negotiating over missiles now viewed by Tehran as its main deterrence umbrella – will likely push the country to use every means still available to reach nuclear breakout. A more viable endgame would involve a return of wide-scale inspections by international monitors and an immediate, substantial roll-back of Iranian uranium enrichment. The goal should be Iran pursuing this enrichment through a regional consortium backed by the United States.' That is broadly closer to the French position. Europe will never hold sway like Israel or the US, but it has one last chance to help create something durable, and prevent the Iranian crisis becoming a nuclear proliferation crisis for the whole region.
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Rachel Reeves says she cannot rule out autumn tax rises after ‘damaging' week
Rachel Reeves has said it is impossible for her to rule out tax rises in the autumn budget and insisted she never thought about quitting despite a turbulent week for her and the government. In an interview with the Guardian, the chancellor said 'there are costs' to the watering down of the welfare bill and acknowledged it had been a 'damaging' week for Downing Street. The chancellor's tears in the Commons on Wednesday spooked the financial markets and raised questions about her future in the job, but No 10 quickly weighed in behind her, saying she and the prime minister were in lockstep. Reeves said she had never considered resigning her position, despite being the focus of some Labour backbench anger over her handling of the economy, saying: 'I didn't work that hard to then quit.' She said she regretted going into prime minister's questions in tears after a 'tough day in the office' but hoped that people 'could relate' to her distress. 'It was a personal matter but it was in the glare of the camera. And that's unfortunate, but I think people have seen that I'm back in business and back out there,' she said. 'I went to prime minister's questions because I thought that was the right thing to do, because that's where I always am at lunchtime on a Wednesday. You know, in retrospect, I probably wished I hadn't gone in … [on] a tough day in the office. But, you know, it is what it is. But I think most people can relate to that – that they've had tough days.' Her challenging moment in parliament came in the same week that a backbench rebellion forced the government to drop key welfare cuts, which leaves Reeves with a £5bn black hole to fill in the country's finances. 'It's been damaging,' she admitted. 'I'm not going to deny that, but I think where we are now, with a review led by Stephen Timms [a work and pensions minister], who is obviously incredibly respected and has a huge amount of experience, that's the route we're taking now. 'That's the right thing to do. It is important that we listen in government, that we listen to our colleagues and listen to what groups outside are saying as well.' Timms is working with disability groups to reform the personal independent payments (Pip) system, which had been the target of government cuts until the huge backbench rebellion drove the government to drop them. Reeves said the government had learned lessons about bringing MPs and the country along with them in the run-up to what is widely expected to be a difficult budget this autumn ahead. 'As we move into the budget for the autumn, I do want to bring people into those trade-offs,' she said. Asked whether she was prepared to rule out tax rises, she said: 'I'm not going to, because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that. We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement. So we'll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.' While tax rises could be on the table, Reeves signalled that her fiscal rules would remain and that 'we'll continue to keep that grip on the public finances'. But she stressed the need to accompany this with a strong explanation of how the Treasury's choices fit with Labour values. 'I'm not going to apologise for making sure the numbers add up,' she said. 'But we do need to make sure that we're telling a story, and a Labour story. We did that well in the budget and the spending review, we increased taxes on the wealthiest and businesses. In the budget last year, I made it really clear that priorities in that budget were to protect working people, to invest in the NHS and to start rebuilding Britain.' Some within government and the Labour party have been pushing for either a reconsideration of the fiscal rules or rethinking the remit of the Office for Budget Responsibility, which produces two forecasts and rulings a year on whether the rules have been met. Asked whether she would consider one forecast instead of two, Reeves said: 'We are looking at how the OBR works, but I think it is really important to have those independent economic institutions, because if you start undermining those … and getting rid of the checks and balances on a government, I do think that is risky. But the International Monetary Fund have made some recommendations about how to deliver better fiscal policymaking. And obviously I take those seriously.' The IMF has suggested that while the OBR could still produce two forecasts, it could be possible to only have one annual assessment of whether the chancellor is hitting her fiscal rules. However, government sources suggested that any changes could be more along the lines of more regular exchange of information to reduce last-minute changes like those in the spring statement. Reeves also spoke of her drive to reduce child poverty but she would not be drawn on whether she would lift the two-child benefit cap. Keir Starmer has said the government 'will look at it' but experts have warned it could be more difficult given the hole left by the U-turn on the welfare cuts. The chancellor said she wanted to reduce child poverty but was 'not wedded to any specific policy', adding: 'I think people can see how serious I am about making sure that all good kids get a good start in life by what we did in the spending review just a few weeks ago.'
The Guardian
19 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Who's really to blame for Labour's troubles – Rachel Reeves or the invisible PM?
She is not the first chancellor to cry in public, and may not be the last. But Rachel Reeves is the first whose tears have moved markets. No sooner had the realisation dawned that she was silently weeping – over a personal sorrow she won't be pushed into revealing, she insisted later, not a political one – as she sat beside Keir Starmer at Wednesday's prime minister's questions, than the pound was dropping and the cost of borrowing rising. The bond traders who forced out Liz Truss's hapless chancellor still clearly rate her judgment and want her to stay, even if (perhaps especially if) some Labour MPs don't. Yet it is an extraordinary thing to live with the knowledge that a moment's uncontrolled emotion can drive up the cost of a nation's mortgages, just as a misjudged stroke of the budget pen can destroy lives. The most striking thing about her tears, however, was Starmer's failure to notice. Intent on the Tory benches opposite, the prime minister simply ploughed on, not realising that his closest political ally was dissolving beside him. Though within hours, a clearly mortified Starmer had thrown a metaphorical arm around her, and Reeves herself was back out talking up her beloved fiscal rules as if nothing had happened. But it's the kind of image that sticks: her distress and his oblivion, an unfortunately convenient metaphor for all the times he has seemed oddly detached from his own government. Quite aside from whatever private grief she is now carrying, Reeves has for years been shouldering an exhausting load. From the start, she and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, did an unusual amount of the heavy lifting on behalf of their oddly apolitical leader – and in government the stakes have only risen. McSweeney, a natural fixer now jammed faintly awkwardly into a strategist's role, was once credited with near-mythical influence over Starmer, but for months is said to have been struggling at times to get the boss's ear. Reeves, meanwhile, has ended up by default running much of the domestic agenda, while Starmer focuses on foreign policy crises and a handful of big issues that passionately exercise him. Since even close aides and ministers complain of never really knowing what he wants, the result is a Treasury-brained government that tends to start with the numbers and work back to what's possible, rather than setting a political goal and figuring out how to reach it. Perhaps that makes sense to the City, but not to Labour MPs frogmarched through a series of politically toxic decisions with no obvious rationale except that the money's got to come from somewhere. To many of them, Starmer appears at best like a kind of political weekend dad: largely absent from everyday life and reluctant to get involved in political battles, but swooping in at the last minute to issue orders. Complaints of Downing Street dysfunction have been a staple under at least the last four prime ministers, but there's a weakness at the core of this No 10 that is putting the rest of government under undue strain, like a runner trying to push on through an injury who ends up pulling every other muscle in the process. On the left, there is growing talk of trying to force a 'reset' in spring, if next year's Scottish and Welsh elections go as badly as they assume: force Reeves out, let radicalism in, fight Reform's emotive rightwing fire with a form of leftwing populism perhaps loosely resembling what the Democrats' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani are doing in the US. It's exactly what the markets fear, judging by their reaction to Reeves' temporary wobble. But even Labour MPs who'd never go that far are growing restless for change. Just raise taxes, cries this week's New Statesman magazine, echoing a widespread view that the fiscal straitjacket imposed by Reeves is killing the government. I argued for the same thing in the Guardian back in March, and haven't changed my mind. But the political cost of doing so is arguably higher now than it would have been then, when tax rises could plausibly still have been framed as an emergency response to Donald Trump pulling the plug on Europe's defence and forcing Britain to rearm, rather than as an admission that the government can no longer get its spending plans past its own backbenchers. In their understandable frustration, however, some fail to ask why Reeves holds the iron grip she does; why Treasury thinking isn't more often challenged by No 10. If this government's mistakes often have her fingerprints somewhere on them, then so do many of its successes. Last week, I was at a housing conference, surrounded by people still euphoric at getting everything they asked for in last month's spending review: unprecedented billions poured into genuinely affordable and social housing – with emphasis thankfully for once on the social – with a 10-year settlement from the Treasury, creating the long-term certainty they need to make it happen. Angela Rayner fought like a tiger for it, but Reeves made the money happen, and the result will change lives. Children who would have grown up in grim, frightening temporary accommodation will have safe, permanent homes. Vulnerable people will escape the clutches of unscrupulous landlords and first-time buyers will climb ladders otherwise out of reach. It's everything a Labour government exists to do, but as with so many unseen good things happening – on green energy, say, or transport – the money didn't fall from the sky and won't be there in future if an ageing and chronically unfit population carries on consuming welfare spending or health spending (the next big battleground, judging by the detail of Wes Streeting's 10-year plan) at current rates. To a frustrated Treasury, this week's rebellion was evidence that Labour MPs don't live in the real world, where hard choices must be faced for good things to happen. But, to the rebels, it's evidence that the Treasury doesn't live in their real world, where vulnerable people struggle with deep-rooted health problems only aggravated by being pushed into poverty, and the Greens as much as Reform are threatening to eat them for breakfast over it. There is some truth in both arguments. But that's precisely why it is ultimately a prime minister's job, and nobody else's, to draw all the threads of the government together: to balance political yin against economic yang, such that neither dominates or bends the project out of shape. Chancellors come and, eventually, even the best go. But sometimes it's only then that you can really tell whether the problem was ever really the chancellor. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
