It’s been a rare good month for the forces of not-enabling-mass-murder, as the proscription of Palestine Action is (for now) ruled out of order

~ Rob Ray ~

“EMBARRASSING DEFEAT”, shouted the headlines. Quite possibly, though there’s a big difference between a High Court ruling and a final end to this bizarre self-inflicted wound that Labour has been nervously picking at since 5 July last year.

As of Friday, three senior judges bucked the trend (such grizzled Establishment figures not being known for impassioned defences of activist oiks) and struck down the government’s proscription of Palestine Action after it targeted Israeli arms firm Elbit Systems (as well as its insurers). In doing so they cited both an abuse of authority by Yvette Cooper when she originally pushed it through Parliament, and a breach of the Human Rights Act in its effects on freedom of expression and association.

Coming on the heels of the FIlton Six jury acquittals on 4 February, it caps a miserable week for replacement Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. She has now lost two key court cases against the hated activist left, along with her primary leadership campaign sponsor Morgan McSweeney, who quit as Downing Street’s chief of staff in disgrace over his Mandelson links.

Not being able to do much about the latter, in both Palestine Action cases she has signalled her intention to appeal, sprinkling the official statement about Friday’s result with verbiage about lawlessness, violence, anti-democratic behaviour and terrorism. Which, to remind, is being said about a group that over a half-decade of activity did less physical harm to human beings than a Maccabi crowd at a single away game.

The court did not go nearly as far. While it agreed that terror activities could include “intimidation” via property damage to eg. companies down the supply chain, and highlighted three individual cases in which judges believed “terror” was a reasonable term, it was also very clear that this was not the same thing as Palestine Action as a whole being a terror group.

Despite noting that “Palestine Action has organised and undertaken actions amounting to terrorism” and picking out “the contents of the Underground Manual” as “good evidence of continuing intention to promote the use of violence,” the judges suggested “criminal law is available to prosecute those concerned.”

And in perhaps the most stark line of the judgement, they outright dismissed any suggestion that PA’s activities were severe and sustained enough to back the case Cooper made in such lurid terms last year. “Considering in the round the evidence available to the Home Secretary when the decision to proscribe was made”, wrote the judges, “the nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities, so far as they comprise acts of terrorism, has not yet reached the level, scale and persistence that would justify the application of the criminal law measures that are the consequence of proscription, and the very significant interference with Convention rights consequent on those measures.”

In lawyerly terms that’s proper clip-round-the-ear territory. In ours, it points to a case that should never have been necessary, resulting from a leadership that either wasn’t smart enough to see how its actions formed the thin end of a huge wedge against civil liberties, or didn’t care.

Regardless of the results of any government appeal, this attempted repression of Palestine Action has already proven a (mind-bogglingly expensive) disaster from start to finish, for the government as much as for the fight against Britain’s role supporting and arming the crew of genocidal maniacs who control the Israeli state.

On top of the disgustingly heavy-handed approach that’s been taken to the Filton prisoners who, we should remember, were detained before Palestine Action’s proscription, nearly 2,800 people have been arrested since, most for doing little more than holding a placard.

Even now, despite the overturning of the government’s position, it is still technically illegal to declare your support for the direct action group (we will have to wait and see about a possible quashing sometime in the next week or so). The Met Police, as a halfway house while waiting for that decision, have said they will no longer arrest people at demos but will take details for possible future prosecution.

This could go either way for the government, as there will, for now, be no more footage of people in wheelchairs being carried away or pensioners being dragged off. No doubt this will be a relief to Labour MPs cognisant of exactly how that looked. On the other hand, it may also embolden other people to protest on the grounds the pressure has been working, which makes the case of Labour that banning was necessary in the first place look continually ridiculous.

For the Palestine solidarity movement it has been a mobilising, but also resource-intensive and exhausting fight, not least for those inside the prisons who have in several cases put their own health and life on the line for the simple aim of decent and respectful treatment.

Meanwhile, in both Gaza and the West Bank, we must not forget the Palestinian victims who this has all been about. Mass murder has been continuing, even after a so-called ceasefire, often using the very Elbit manufactured goods that the Labour government has so enthusiastically been protecting.

Labour’s actions have repeatedly enabled and indeed encouraged that behaviour, even to the point of trying to sneak through billions in training contracts for Elbit – a company which has leaned on such support to boast record-breaking profits.

As Freedom has noted throughout the saga of Palestine Action, what we have been watching isn’t just a single case of ministerial overreach. It has been part of a pattern of death enabled, and liberties trampled.

It’s been an astonishing case of a government which was prepared to redefine “terrorism” to the point of utter incoherence just to get at an action group successfully disrupting business as usual. And in doing so, it opened the door to the same happening whenever public dissent gets discomforting in future, under Farage, or Badenoch, or whatever suit inherits the Labour shit sandwich.

Cooper and “human rights lawyer” Starmer have executed an unforgivable piece of cynical brinkmanship which deservedly backfired, but it has already done incalculable damage which will, in future, reap grand rewards for the far right.

But just this once, the judges seem to have recognised that reality, and hopefully will again when the party that never learns goes to the Court of Appeal to try, once again, to defend the indefensible and protect the deplorable.