Last month, four members of Palestine Action broke into an RAF base and vandalised planes allegedly used in surveillance over Gaza. They were arrested and charged, as they should be. But instead of letting the courts do their job, the government took extra steps to vilify the group’s cause.
In one sweeping vote, Yvette Cooper’s proscription order lumped Palestine Action together with two quite different groups – a white supremacist militia and a neo-Nazi death cult. No room for nuance. No distinction between property damage (a recognised form of civil disobedience) and murderous extremism.
Supporting Palestine Action in any form – from a t-shirt to sign to a tweet – could now land you in prison for 14 years. That’s four more than the sentence for protesting in Putin’s Russia.
Celebrities, journalists, human rights lawyers, and the United Nations have stepped in to condemn Cooper’s move. Even the Telegraph’s editorial team, certainly not sympathisers with PA’s cause, called it a “misuse of the law.”
While vandalising military property is obviously a crime, spraying paint is not – by any recognised definition – terrorism. Disagreement with government policy should not land you in a police van.
Frankly, it’s astounding that even needs to be said.
The steady decline of our right to protest is just one more indicator of a backsliding democracy.
