Why the government should back down on Palestine Action

The laws against terrorism in the United Kingdom are understandably ferocious, given the gravity of the crimes involved

This raises serious questions about the use of such laws against the organisation Palestine Action, which has been proscribed on the grounds that it promotes or encourages terrorism. This seems disproportionate and is therefore unwise. It risks bringing the law into disrepute, for the acts cited as grounds for the ban only qualify as terrorism at all by an application of the legislation that may go well beyond what Parliament intended.

Palestine Action is a protest movement that has engaged in acts of criminal damage, the most notorious of which was spraying two RAF aircraft parked at an airbase with red paint.The terrorists’ message is: “Do as we say or we will injure or kill you.” Disfiguring an aircraft, where there is no threat to life, is not what people ordinarily mean by terrorism. There is a law against what the members of Palestine Action did, and it is the law against criminal damage, coupled with trespass. If it was a coordinated act, it becomes an unlawful conspiracy. Those who committed it deserve to go to prison.

But in what sense are they terrorists? Bodies like Palestine Action exist because mass movements usually have hotheads at their outer fringe. And there is undoubtedly a mass movement in Britain appalled by the actions of the Israeli government towards the citizens of Gaza. It seems probable war crimes have been committed.

While the public at large may not agree with Palestine Action’s unlawful behaviour, it “knows where they are coming from”. Proscribing it as a terrorist organisation is to turn a deaf ear to a widespread feeling of anger and dismay, and risks that anger being turned against the government itself.

The legal definition of terrorism includes “action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation” (Terrorism Act 2000). It may be for the benefit of Palestine Action, and therefore a terrorist act in itself under this law, to protest at – or even just argue against – the organisation being proscribed. Indeed this article, if it was read as in some sense likely to benefit Palestine Action or offer it support, could itself be illegal. That cannot be the law in a free country. The government has over-reacted, and should back down.