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New Statesman
2 days ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
Labour's misguided assault on Palestine Action
Metropolitan Police officers surround a demonstration against Palestine Action's proscription as a terrorist organisation, before arresting the in Parliament Square on July 12, 2025. Photo byAt the weekend (12 July) more than 70 people were arrested under anti-terror legislation at protests in support of the now proscribed organisation, Palestine Action. The group are the first non-violent, direct action group to have been designated a terrorist organisation in the UK, and are now listed alongside Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the neo-Nazi group National Action – a member of whom is currently serving a life sentence for planning the assassination of former Labour MP, Rosie Cooper, in 2018 – under the Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The proscription of Palestine Action is not only a wildly disproportionate act against a group whose targets have been confined to the state and corporate infrastructure that supports the Israeli military. It is sure to have chilling effects on the already dwindling right to protest. The proximate cause, as Huw Lemmey has convincing argued, is the 'wider effort to limit jury nullification', where a jury acquits a defendant as a matter of conscience regardless of whether or not they have broken the law. Fearing embarrassment if 'the chasm between government policy and public opinion' is exposed by a jury acquittal, the government has decided it is better off avoiding juries altogether. Even so, there is a wider context at work. The action against Palestine Action is merely the latest punitive measure against non-violent protesters. In July last year, five activists from Just Stop Oil were sentenced to between four and five years for conspiring to block traffic on the M25 – imprisoned, in effect, for being on a Zoom call, and for far longer than many who are convicted of serious sexual assault or other violent crimes. While those prosecutions began under a Conservative government, the sentences were handed down weeks into Keir Starmer's term of office. Tellingly, the former human rights lawyer refused to intervene, while his home secretary Yvette Cooper has since defended the Tories' 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and its 2023 Public Order Act, which introduced even more draconian anti-protest legislation. It was only action by the civil rights group, Liberty, that got some of regulations contained in the 2023 act quashed. On the right, meanwhile, the case of Lucy Connolly, who was sentenced to a 31-month jail term for inciting race hate after calling for protestors to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, has become a minor cause célèbre. While the claims that she is a 'political prisoner' are clearly absurd, her lengthy sentence has only served to further erode trust in Britain governing institutions. Labour are, of course, no strangers to this kind of social authoritarianism. Between 1997 and 2010, New Labour pursued a brand of authoritarian populism that even Keir Starmer has yet to reach. The socially restrictive measures introduced under Blair and Brown include the issuing of Asbsos for low-level social intimidation, the effects of which were further exacerbated by a 'name and shame' campaign that included the targeting of children as young as 10, the failed attempt to extend detention without charge to 90 days for terror suspects, and the escalation of police stop-and-search powers. Yet then, as now, it is who is targeted, and who evades justice, that shines the starkest light on the priorities of the British political system. While elderly grandmothers are thrown in jail for holding placards on public streets, others far more guilty of degrading the fabric of British society get away scot-free. Here I must confess something of a certain personal stake. In 2013, my second cousin was sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly stealing thousands of pounds while running a sub post office. Of course, what we now know is that he was just one of around 1,000 innocent people who were falsely prosecuted due to failures in the Post Office's Horizon IT system. At least 13 of those implicated have subsequently taken their own lives. Yet the people who hold ultimate responsibility for this national scandal, the largest miscarriage of justice in British legal history, have, beyond public opprobrium and the odd lost directorship, continued to avoid justice. The question of jail time has barely even been raised. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The same is true of water bosses. Only three people have ever been prosecuted for obstructing the Environment Agency in its investigations into sewage spills, none of whom even received a fine for doing so. Hundreds of cases of illegal spilling have been identified in the past few years alone; all occurred as privatised water firms paid out billions in dividends, while cutting back services, raising prices and saddling debt amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds onto the stricken companies. The government's recent water bill does strengthen its powers, but we are yet to see them utilised – all while groups like Palestine Action feel the full force of the state. All of this is deeply damaging to the public's faith in government and its institutions, already at historical lows. Last month it was revealed that just 19 per cent of the public think the British political system needs little or no improvement, while only 12 per cent trust governments to put the country's interest before their party's. The rot started long before Starmer's premiership. As Dominic Cummings, hardly a left-wing populist, has repeatedly and correctly stressed, one of the long-term factors in this was the absence of any institutional accountability for those behind the 2008 financial crisis. The shadow of 2008, long and ever darker, stretches across the contemporary social and economic landscape. We still live in the world made by the crisis. Yet repeated governments, both Labour and Conservative, have failed to face squarely the damage it has caused, let alone those who caused it. This government has acted most aggressively against the 'working people' it claims to serve. Being responsible, knowingly, for the false prosecution of over thousand people gets you just 15 minutes of televised infamy, while those who spray red paint on a few airplanes, not to mention those who do no more than wear the name of a now disbanded organisation on a t-shirt, face prosecution and jail terms of up to 14 years. It is clear evidence of a government that doesn't know who it represents, and deserves every ounce of scorn poured on it. [See also: Welcome to hot Palestine Action summer] Related
The Guardian
05-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
What next for climate activism now Just Stop Oil is ‘hanging up the hi-vis'?
On the morning of Valentine's Day 2022, Hannah Hunt stood at the gates of Downing Street to announce the start of a new kind of climate campaign, one that would eschew mere protest and instead move into 'civil resistance'. Last week, three years and thousands of arrests later, in a neat tie-up exemplary of Just Stop Oil's (JSO) love of media-savvy stunts, Hunt went to the same spot again – this time to announce the group would be 'hanging up the hi-vis'. In the history of UK climate activism, there has been perhaps no more polarising a campaign. Derided as 'eco-zealots' in the Daily Mail and condemned as 'selfish' by the Sun, which even sent a reporter to testify against them in court, JSO is as likely to be remembered for the chaos it caused as for its victories. The group's tactics of blocking roads, halting sports events and targeting national treasures enraged politicians, pundits and the public alike. By 2023, polling showed 64% of people disapproved of JSO. Despite the demonisation, the impact of this relatively small group of peaceful protesters is in little doubt. Its campaigners kept the issue of new fossil fuel production on the agenda of even the least environmentally minded news outlets. Indeed in the group's parting statement, members claimed to have been 'one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history', saying that their key demand for a moratorium on new oil and gas licences was 'now government policy'. And perhaps more significantly, JSO proved there was a group of people in the UK prepared to endure public opprobrium – and often prison – to raise the alarm about a crisis that experts warn threatens the future of humanity. So why stop now? For Graeme Hayes, a sociologist at Aston University, who has spent years covering Just Stop Oil, the end of the campaign came as no surprise. It followed the same pattern as its forerunners, Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Insulate Britain. 'It is in the DNA of these organisations that they do not carry on long term,' Hayes said. 'Not least because the people involved, even in the best of worlds, tend to find that they exhaust their energies, that the constant wider social conflict they face is intense and takes its toll.' That wider social impact has been intensified by the introduction of some of the most draconian laws around the right to protest in UK history. In 2022, MPs passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, a direct response to XR's mass protests, giving police an armoury of new powers to impose conditions on demonstrations. The following year, in a direct response to the likes of JSO, parliament passed the Public Order Act, creating a series of offences targeting direct action, as the government simultaneously lowered the threshold of disruption at which police could intervene in a protest from 'serious' to 'more than minor'. At the same time, courts are handing down increasingly harsh sentences, prosecutors have sought more severe conspiracy charges, and the government has taken action in the courts to narrow the scope of defences available to protesters. Katy Watts, a lawyer at the human rights organisation Liberty, said: 'That has all created this climate in which it is harder to engage in protest, particularly some of those specific direct action tactics. It's harder to lawfully demonstrate on the streets, and the penalties or the consequences for committing protest offences have become more and more severe.' The cost to activists has been substantial. According to JSO's data, over three years their supporters were arrested about 3,300 times. Seven are serving jail sentences, of up to four years, and a further eight are on remand awaiting sentencing. 'We think there have been 180 instances of remand and/or prison sentences handed down,' a JSO spokesperson said. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion More may yet be sent to jail. Trials for JSO actions are scheduled through 2025 and 2026 and, for those who took action with Insulate Britain, into 2027. Roger Hallam, the co-founder of XR, Insulate Britain and JSO, is one of those who has been at the sharp end of the state crackdown. He was jailed for five years for a conspiracy to block traffic on the M25. His sentence was recently reduced to four years on appeal but he remains behind bars. Reflecting on the end of JSO, Hallam told the Guardian that building the group had been 'the most fulfilling period of my life, working in a culture of dedication to the common good, rooted in respect, service, and trust. 'While our impact may seem marginal and the crisis worsens, this is not due to a lack of effort – thousands have been arrested, hundreds imprisoned, facing the most repressive laws in modern UK history.' Many within the movement believe they are at a similar inflection point to the one activists faced after the first wave of XR protests, when the radicals who went on to found Insulate Britain and JSO split from those who felt the need to moderate their actions. Some groups, such as Shut the System, have departed from the model of accountability espoused by JSO and XR in favour of a clandestine approach, inspired by counterparts in Europe and the writings of the radical social ecologist Andreas Malm. Other groups have taken a different tack. The Citizens Arrest Network, which has non-violently targeted the chief executives of polluting companies, aims to shift the legal accountability away from activists and to those it sees as responsible for the crisis. 'I think something like XR would be more difficult now,' said Nuala Lam, a longtime climate justice activist who was involved with XR and now helps run the Citizens Arrest Network. 'The possibility of having a broad diverse movement where people from different backgrounds can get involved at different levels has been severely limited.' Several people involved in XR and JSO told the Guardian the challenge now was to mobilise the 'climate-aware majority' – the large proportion of the population that is aware of the coming crisis, are deeply afraid about what it means for their own lives and that of their children, but are yet to take action. Sam Nadel, the director of Social Change Lab, which researches the impact of protest, sees a continuing role for radical groups. He says groups such as JSO can have a 'radical flank effect', driving support for more moderate counterparts. 'In our 2024 Nature paper, we found that awareness of a Just Stop Oil protest made people more likely to support Friends of the Earth,' Nadel said. 'People exposed to Just Stop Oil's actions were also more likely to engage in pro-climate activities like volunteering, donating to charity, or contacting their MP. The message? Even unpopular groups can have positive and widespread ripple effects.' Hallam acknowledges that despite the efforts and sacrifice of those involved in JSO the climate crisis is getting worse. However, he said the true failure lay not with activists but with 'the liberal class – journalists, doctors, lawyers, civil servants – who refused to stand by their professed values and engage in civil resistance. 'Now, the UK faces devastation, with the Gulf Stream at risk of collapse within decades and billions of lives in jeopardy. The political order will not survive what is coming … Our elites have abandoned us. Only ordinary people can remake our world. And while we may have less, we will have spirit – and that is what truly matters.'
The Guardian
22-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Extremists would not need to create an authoritarian state in Britain: Starmer is doing that for them
If the Trump project implodes, it might take with it the extreme and far-right European parties to which it is umbilically connected. Like all such parties, the hard-right Reform UK poses as patriotic while grovelling to foreign interests, and this could be its undoing. But we cannot bank on it. The UK government must do all it can to prevent the disaster that has befallen several other European nations. If it fails to meet people's needs and keeps echoing far-right talking points, we could go the same way as Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Sweden and Austria. As well as working more effectively to keep Reform out of office, the government should ensure that, if the worst happens and Nigel Farage and his Death Eaters win in 2029, the foundations of an authoritarian state have not already been laid for them. But here too Labour seems perversely determined to prepare the ground for its traditional opponents. Here are three of the consistent features of authoritarian states: the extreme persecution of dissent, the use of parajudicial measures to shut down opposition movements, and the selective application of the law. All three are already widely deployed in the UK. Though they were introduced in their current form by the Tories, they have been sustained and defended by Keir Starmer's party. What this means is that if a hard- or far-right government starts doing what they always do – persecuting minorities and opponents, ripping into public services and the enabling state – and if good citizens take to the streets to defend the people and institutions under attack, the government will be able to round them up and throw them in prison, without the need for a single new law or statute. It will also be able to license blatant disregard for the law by its own supporters, without breaking existing patterns of policing. And Labour will be unable to say a word against any of it, because all this has been happening on its own watch. Let's examine these three elements, and how they are already embedded. Two groups in particular are now subject to the kind of legal sanctions and oppressive policing more familiar in countries like Russia and Belarus: environmental and pro-Palestine protesters. Using a combination of older legislation and remarkable new powers in the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and the 2023 Public Order Act, the police have been able to shut down any demonstration that they, the government or the media deem unwelcome. The measures and penalties are extraordinary. People trying to prevent Earth systems collapse have been sentenced to six months in prison for walking down a street; or five years for discussing a protest on a Zoom call; or have been prosecuted for correctly reminding juries that they have a right to use their consciences; or for seeking to justify themselves in court. Hanging over all such peaceful dissenters is the possibility of 10 years in prison for the remarkably vague offence of 'public nuisance'. That's more than you'd get for most violent or sexual crimes. These are among the most draconian anti-protest measures in any country with democratic features. They are also the most extreme measures in common use in the UK for the past 150 years. The longest sentence received by any of the suffragettes, who engaged in far spikier actions than today's climate protesters, was three months. Those protesting on behalf of Gaza are subject to all these oppressive laws, and then some. The police have used measures in the Serious Crime Act 2015, which were never intended for this purpose, to arrest campaigners against the genocide on suspicion of participating in an organised crime group. It's preposterous and deeply sinister. It's not just that Starmer's government has failed to repeal these grim instruments and applications: it has actively defended them. After her attempt to redefine even mild protest as 'serious disruption' was thrown out by the Lords, the then Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman, did something unprecedented: she reintroduced the measure as a statutory instrument, bypassing parliamentary scrutiny. Liberty mounted a legal challenge, and the high court ruled Braverman's action unlawful. The Tory government appealed. After the election, Labour was widely expected to drop the appeal. Instead it has continued the legal fight to uphold a disgraceful infringement of our rights and freedoms. These laws are accompanied by a wide range of parajudicial measures, such as the injunctions taken out by public bodies and private corporations, which enable protesters to be punished twice for the same crime. This means they face potentially enormous extra penalties. Extreme bail conditions have also been imposed, which can restrict protesters' movements, political freedoms and social lives for years on end. Even worse is the complete abandonment of equality before the law. Whether or not you get prosecuted for protesting is now a function of who you are. If you are a climate protester, you can get away with nothing. If you are a farmer, you can get away with anything. Even when, earlier this month, farmers blocked the road with tractors where the prime minister was speaking, drowned his speech with their horns and forced him to flee, the police let them get on with it. Thames Valley police explained: 'No arrests were made or necessary. The protest has reached its conclusion and the group are now dispersing from the area.' It is unimaginable that a climate protest of this kind would be allowed to reach this 'conclusion'. It would have been immediately broken up, with mass arrests and long sentences. Again, this selectivity is ready-made for the hard right. Farage has been appearing at farmers' protests, using them to advance toxic conspiracy fictions about immigration, just as similar movements did so successfully in the Netherlands. For a century, farmers have been celebrated by the right and extreme right as the true soul of the nation, endlessly threatened by 'cosmopolitans', 'globalists', immigrants, environmental regulators and other 'alien' forces. Farmers have a fundamental right to protest, as we all do. But the blatant double standards in the application of protest law – the real two-tier policing – help to pre-legitimise authoritarianism. It's not just that the Labour government should repeal the draconian anti-protest laws because this would create a fairer society today. It's also because, in failing to do so, it primes the country for authoritarianism. Labour has helped normalise a far-right legal framework. What if a hard-right government sought to capitalise on that? It doesn't take a leap of imagination to see what will happen if the two things come together. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
