Something very serious, and truly dystopian, happened after midnight on Saturday morning in the UK.
And it’s highly telling that the British media spent nothing like as much time discussing it as they did, say, the whole Glastonbury fiasco last weekend.
But the media deliberately wants to downplay the seriousness of this event – and prefers for the highly significant implications to not be widely discussed.
What are we talking about? The proscribing of protest group Palestine Action as a *terrorist* organisation – a move so palpably absurd that it feels like it can’t possibly be true.
But it is. And this is the UK in 2025.
And the implications are more important than either the government or the establishment media is telling us.
The ban – which came into effect on Saturday – means that ‘supporting’ Palestine Action is now a criminal offence, and membership or ‘expressing support’ for the group is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Let’s repeat that: *14 years* in prison. For being part of a non-violent protest group. In the UK.
Overnight, all these people who the previous day had belonged to an entirely legal group exercising the right to protest were turned into ‘terrorists’.
Their website immediately went offline and social media accounts were shut.
Let’s be blunt here too: throwing some red paint on two RAF planes is NOT an act of ‘terrorism’ – we all know that, don’t we? And anyone who’s trying to claim otherwise is an idiot.
At worst, it’s vandalism. Property damage. Trespassing. But not ‘terrorism’.
So why is everyone pretending it is? The only answer to that is a sinister one.
But Palestine Action – a collective of anti war and anti weapons proliferation activists that has never been involved in any act of violence – is now classed by the British state in the same category as Al Qaeda, the Islamic State group, Boko Haram and others.
That’s how easy it is. And that’s how absurd this is.
See these pictures below: of these ‘terrorists’ being arrested. Can’t you see what a threat they are?
But the precedent is now set: next week they could decide that any group they choose is now a ‘terrorist’ organisation. And I’ve been warning about this for years now.
The fact that it’s Yvette Cooper, Kier Starmer and the Labour government that took this action – and not the Tories, despite all of Suella Braverman‘s calculated demonisation of protesters – shows the obvious continuity within the two party system.
Saturday afternoon, particularly bold supporters of the group protested in Parliament Square, with at least twenty people being arrested – all under the Terrorism Act. All they were doing was holding up placards and chanting.
Under the new rules, everything from ‘chanting slogans’ to waving flags or wearing or posting certain symbols could lead to arrest under the Terrorism Act of 2000 (which they keep amending every year now it seems, in order to go after more people).
Again, to reiterate the point: a peaceful protest group has been completely outlawed and erased, and is now regarded as a terrorist organisation.
And the British media has been virtually silent. There’s been pretty much no opposition or dissent in regard to the government’s move.
Pretty much no news channel debates, no radio call-in shows to discuss the significance of it, no journalists expressing concern.
Again, contrast this to the days of excessive coverage and manufactured outrage that last weekend’s Glastonbury nonsense created. By the way, Wall of Controversy covered the Palestine Action story a few weeks ago here.
But 14 years? For supporting a protest group?
Just to put that into context, in the UK it is common for some violent offenders, sexual crimes, and drug offenders, including trafficking, to get 10 years or less.
According to statistics for England and Wales, in 2023/24 the average custodial sentence length for sexual offences in England and Wales was 69.5 months, or just over five years. Other crimes that carried high prison sentences were robbery offences at 45.2 months, and drug offences at 41.4 months.
But be a member of a non violent protest group and potentially get 14 years?
This is the type of shit that happens in Russia. It’s the type of shit that happens under the military dictatorship in Egypt. And now apparently the UK too.
But we should’ve raised more alarm when they started detaining journalists under the same Terrorism Act (which I examined here last year).
Also, the broad narrative that this extreme crackdown by the government was provoked by the RAF Brize Norton incident (where two planes were sprayed with red paint – oh, the horror) appears to be a deception.
According to the BBC report, the plan to use the Terrorism Act on the protesters was already in play long before June. It’s reported that ‘Mr Justice Chamberlain said an assessment on whether to ban the group had been made as early as March, and “preceded” the incident at RAF Brize Norton…’
So they were already going to do this – the Brize Norton incident on June 20th was just used as a public pretext.
What else to say?
The criminalisation of protest, and also the disturbing expansion of the ‘terrorist’ definition/framework, are subjects I’ve been writing about here for years.
In this article from January 2023 titled ‘The UK’s War on Protest and Protesters‘, I wrote:
‘I’m not sure it’s coincidental that most of the media devoted so much time to vilifying protesters or complaining about protesters causing inconvenience and disruption… and spent very little time at all discussing the government’s alarming moves against the right to protest…’
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 was passed by the Houses of Parliament in April 2022. And was described by one journalist as ‘the single greatest legislative threat to British liberties in our lifetime‘.
Alarms were raised at the time by multiple organisations, including human rights organisations, some journalists, and some members of parliament: which I explored at the time, writing also that ‘while all of this anti-protester legislation has been worked on by the government, a parallel campaign has been run in both right-wing media and online social media to demonise protesters too: whether it’s Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, or any of the other protest groups populated mostly by young people…’
‘That’s not a coincidence. The government and parts of the media seem to be, as ever, working hand in hand to advance an agenda…’
In this article last August titled ‘The Sinister Reframing of Terrorists & Terrorism‘, I wrote the following:
‘What’s scary is that this could happen to any of us in the future, if this abuse of or reframing of terms and language continues. And the language of justification is twisted: for example, I’ve had videos removed from YouTube for ‘glorifying terrorism’ – which of course I have never done… Journalists, whistleblowers, bloggers, content producers, protesters… can all now be dealt with if need be under the pretext of being equated to ‘terrorists’ or somehow supporters of terrorism…’
In this article from 2017 about the dangerous police state being created by the then Tory government, I wrote the following.
So what is a ‘terrorist’?
It is interesting how expansive the definition can be. Today we might think of a ‘terrorist’ as a bearded jihadi swearing allegiance to ‘ISIS’. But what about tomorrow?
A former head of the NSA (of which Britain’s GCHQ is, according to Ed Snowden, a subsidiary) and CIA even compared privacy advocates and anti-surveillance activists to terrorists.
Public Intelligence notes a flyer created by the FBI and Department of Justice to encourage reporting of suspicious activity, which highlighted that ‘espousing conspiracy theories or anti-US rhetoric should be considered a potential indicator of terrorist activity.’
So here’s what we need to keep asking: why do they keep expanding the definition of ‘terrorism’?
We all know what terrorism is, don’t we? And nothing ever done by members of Palestine Action has even come close to being a ‘terrorist’ act.
Well, as I wrote three years ago, they’re slowly trying to outlaw and suppress public protest or dissent of all types: and the harsher the punishment (and the more absurd the charge), the more scared every potential dissenter or ‘troublemaker’ will be.
And expanding the definition of terrorism continuously is clearly designed to catch more and more people in the net.
Since this classification of Palestine Action as a terrorist group was both deliberately extreme and completely unnecessary (those paint throwers could’ve been charged with other crimes), one can only assume this is just the beginning.
Eventually they might be coming for all kinds of other people – troublemakers like you and I included.
With Palestine Action, they’re testing the water: and setting the new precedents.
The result is this: terrorist doesn’t mean terrorist anymore: it just means whatever sort of person the government of the day decides is a problem.
That’s what happened this weekend in the UK.
The fact that hardly anyone seems to be up in arms about this (especially in the compliant media) is just further indication that this country is headed down a bleak path – but with full media complicity.
Hear, hear! Although just to write two words of support appended to an article of tacit support for a peace activist group feels like a risk somehow. This is how insane this law actually is. As I keep thinking and commenting in various places: what has happened to my country? Indeed, everything this nominally Labour government does is totally disgusting to me.
Liberal democracy, it is not. This is becoming hardcore corporate fascism. Meanwhile, as peaceful protesters heroically trying to stop a genocide and anyone who offers support to them is threatened with 14 years imprisonment, the real terrorists – the headchopping salafist formerly known as al-Qaeda and ISIS – has been anoited as the proxy head of our new regime in Syria. Not only liberty and democracy, but evidently satire too is now dead. I am genuinely lost for words (which perhaps is the safer option).
Another excellent piece Saj, and thank you as always for the link which is greatly appreciated. Take care.