3 days ago
I was arrested for backing Palestine Action – here's what I learned about Labour
Photo by Henry Nicholls/AFP
'I do not want Labour governments anywhere in the world to be looking like and modelling themselves on autocratic, sub-fascist governments all around the world,' warned Jonathon Porritt, who advised King Charles on environmental issues for three decades, and chaired Tony Blair's Sustainable Development Commission, in an interview on the New Statesman Podcast.
The climate and social justice campaigner was one of 532 people arrested during a protest in support of Palestine Action in Parliament Square on Saturday 9 August. The direct action group was banned and classed as a terrorist organisation by the government in July after activists broke into the Brize Norton airbase and vandalised RAF aircraft.
Having worked with campaigners for Just Stop Oil, another direct action group, Porritt said he has become 'more and more concerned that this government was not only as authoritarian as the preceding Conservative government, but even worse…
'I saw exactly how this authoritarian streak in Labour works these days. How deep it goes. And particularly in the Home Secretary herself, who I have honestly had very little faith in for a long time, despite her endless assertions about how massively impressed she was as a politician by the Suffragettes and how important the model of the Suffragettes was to any radical, progressive politician in the Labour movement.'
Porritt, who chaired the Sustainable Development Commission – an independent advisory body that reported to Tony Blair – said he was surprised at the current Labour administration's willingness to proscribe Palestine Action and arrest hundreds of people for sitting in silence with cardboard signs reading: 'I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action'.
'It does surprise me, I've got to admit. And maybe it's my continuing naivety that I still somehow think a Labour government is doing to do better on the human rights end of things than a Conservative government,' he said.
'I did know the Blair government well because I was chair of the Sustainable Development Commission during that time. Although there were many things that Tony Blair was responsible for that I profoundly disagreed with, I can't honestly say that I detected an implacable lurch towards authoritarianism under his government.'
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Porritt also discussed plans in early September for another silent 'sign-holding' protest in support of Palestine Action, with the aim to have a thousand people arrested and make the government a 'laughing stock'.
Listen to the interview in full on the New Statesman Podcast.
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