London
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Large crowds of individuals protesting the British authorities’s determination to ban the activist group Palestine Action gathered in London’s Parliament Square on Saturday, in a present of continuous assist because it was designated as a terror organization in July.
London’s Metropolitan Police Service instructed NCS it couldn’t present an official headcount for the demonstration however shared an estimate of 1,000 to 1,400 protesters, broadly in step with the numbers given by the organizers.
Police arrested protesters to chants of “shame on you” and “you’re supporting genocide” from fellow demonstrators, in line with the UK’s PA media information company, with officers forcing their approach by way of crowds to make the arrests.
The police presence was strengthened partway by way of the protest, PA reported. No arrest figures for Saturday have but been given by police.
As public support for calls to overturn the ban grows, and fuels a wider debate on civil liberties and authorities overreach, right here’s what to find out about the group:
Palestine Action is a UK-based group that goals to disrupt the operations of weapons producers linked to the Israeli authorities.
It was based by Huda Ammori and local weather activist Richard Barnard in 2020, when the group took its first motion to close down the UK operations of Elbit Systems – Israel’s largest weapons producer – and said its dedication to “ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime.”
Elbit Systems UK – which is at the moment bidding for a £2 billion ($2.7bn) British protection ministry contract – didn’t reply to NCS’s questions on Palestine Action, however stated in a press release that “national security is our priority and we are proud to partner with the British armed forces.”
Since its founding, Palestine Action has additionally, amongst different actions, occupied, blockaded, spray painted and disrupted the Israeli-French drone firm UAV Tactical Systems and the world arms large Leonardo. It has slashed and spray-painted a portrait of former British international secretary Arthur Balfour – whose 1917 declaration expressed London’s assist for establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in British-mandate Palestine – at Trinity College, Cambridge, and “abducted” two busts of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, from the University of Manchester.
However, it was the group’s late June 2025 motion – when activists broke into Britain’s largest airbase, RAF Brize Norton, and vandalized two Airbus Voyager refueling planes with paint and crowbars – that spurred critical authorities motion.
Days later, then-UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – who turned international secretary on Friday in a cabinet reshuffle – designated Palestine Action as a terror group, putting it on equal footing with organizations comparable to Hamas, al Qaeda and ISIS – sparking condemnation from United Nations consultants, human rights teams, and politicians.
The UK authorities, citing an evaluation from the nation’s Joint Terrorism Assessment Centre, stated that Palestine Action had crossed the line from protest to sabotage. Cooper framed the move as essential to safeguard nationwide safety, stating that Palestine Action is “not a non-violent organization” and has a historical past of “unacceptable criminal damage.”
But British authorities have had their eyes on the group for a while.
In May 2024, an impartial authorities assessment on political violence and disruption in contrast Palestine Action and local weather activists Just Stop Oil to “terror groups” and really useful their actions be banned.
“Banning terror groups has made it harder for their activists to plan crimes –- that approach should be extended to extreme protest groups too,” stated John Woodcock, the assessment’s creator, who sits in the United Kingdom’s higher legislative chamber as Lord Walney.
In an interview with NCS, Woodcock stated that the designation was “justified and proportionate.”
“I take real exception to that idea of this being a peaceful protest,” he stated. “The definition of terrorism absolutely encompasses the kind of economic damage for a political cause which Palestine Action have systematically carried out.”
Woodcock was a paid adviser to lobbying teams that signify arms producers and fossil gasoline corporations. Also the former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, he has shrugged off any perceived battle of curiosity, telling NCS that “we ought to be able to say it’s not okay to break the law and to terrorize working people.”
Palestine Action is believed to be the first direct-action group to be designated a terrorist group in the UK. The ban implies that displaying assist for the group carries a most sentence of as much as 14 years in jail.
While the group has promoted “disruptive tactics,” it has stated their actions are focused at properties, not folks. The UK Home Office has not offered proof for its claims that Palestine Action has used weapons and prompted critical damage.
Civil liberties campaigners throughout Britain and past swiftly condemned the designation, warning that making use of terrorism legal guidelines to such a bunch dangers chilling free speech and meeting, whereas additionally setting a harmful precedent for protest rights.
Amnesty UK has slammed the transfer as “a disturbing legal overreach,” arguing that present legal legal guidelines might tackle property injury with out invoking terrorism.
Amnesty additionally argues that the ban suppresses expression throughout the wider pro-Palestinian motion, an assertion that the authorities rebukes.
In July, UN human rights chief Volker Turk referred to as to elevate the ban, saying that it raises considerations that UK counter-terrorism legal guidelines “are being applied to conduct that is not terrorist in nature and risks hindering the legitimate exercise of fundamental freedoms.”
How have protests and arrests unfolded since the proscription?
Since the terror designation, greater than 700 people have been arrested at solidarity protests throughout the UK, the place folks carry indicators that learn: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
On August 9, greater than 500 folks had been arrested in London, the largest mass arrest in the British capital since the Nineteen Sixties.
Nearly half of the 532 folks arrested that day had been 60 or older, police stated. Almost 100 folks arrested had been of their 70s, and 15 extra of their 80s.
While the majority of protesters arrested are unlikely to do jail time, Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones instructed the BBC final month that “anyone showing support for that terrorist organization will feel the full force of the law.”
In London alone, 114 folks had been charged for his or her assist of the group as of September 1, in line with the metropolis’s Metropolitan Police pressure.
Ahead of Saturday’s demonstration, counter-terrorism officers in England and Scotland raided the homes of seven spokespeople from the activist group Defend Our Juries – which has been instrumental in organizing the protests – arresting and charging all of them with terrorism offenses. The transfer got here earlier than a scheduled information convention about the protests.
An upcoming judicial review, scheduled for November, might reply that query.
In granting the authorized assessment, London High Court Judge Martin Chamberlain stated in July that it was “reasonably arguable,” that the ban had disproportionately interfered with Palestine Action’s proper to freedom of expression, meeting and affiliation underneath the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Chamberlain added that Cooper, who introduced ahead the proscription order, might have consulted the group previous to the transfer.
Meanwhile, many rights organizations warn the determination marks a pivotal second for the way forward for protest rights in the UK.
“If this unprecedented, authoritarian proscription is allowed to stand, there is a clear danger that it will be used against other groups the government of the day does not like – whether that be racial or climate justice groups, disability rights groups or trade unions,” a Defend Our Juries spokesperson stated.
NCS’s Mick Krever, Isobel Yeung and Billy Stockwell contributed reporting.