Tag Archives: Palestine action

Alistair Carmichael LibLink: Palestine Action ban reveals Labour’s dangerously authoritarian instincts

By NewsHound | Wed 20th August 2025 - 10:28 am

Alistair Carmichael has criticised the Labour Government for its proscription of Palestine Action. In a recent column for the Scotsman he talked about why he was never able to join the Labour Party:

For all the similarities between Liberal Democrats and Labour, the differences matter too.

Labour has centralising instincts that will always be anathema to liberals who champion community empowerment. Then there is the freedom thing.

Scratch any Labour government and you will find a deep authoritarian streak. It is increasingly apparent that this is every bit as true of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office as it was of those headed by David Blunkett, John Reid and Jack Straw.

He sums up the differences between us and Labour pretty neatly:

For liberals, protecting freedoms of speech, assembly and protest is a given. It runs to the heart of how we see the relationship between the citizen and the state. For Labour, these freedoms are rarely more than ‘nice to have’ when circumstances allow.

He said very much out loud that the Labour decision to proscribe Palestine Action was a mistake:

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged Alistair Carmichael, featured and the scotsman | 2 Comments

“A price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay” – Ed Davey calls out the BS from last night’s White House talks

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 19th August 2025 - 8:23 am

Not going to lie, I don’t often punch the air and squeal during Ed Davey interviews, but he has just been fabulous on BBC Breakfast.

I watched the scenes from the White House last night with a growing sense of anxiety that Trump’s appeasement of Putin was being presented as a good thing and a positive step forward. While it was great to see Zelensky go mob-handed with his European supporters, this did not hide the unfairness and injustice in what was being asked of him and his country: that he should give up vast swathes of territory to an aggressor who had helped himself to it, committing atrocities along the way.

I wanted someone to call out the BS. And along comes Ed on BBC Breakfast and says almost exactly my thoughts.

He said that the idea of Ukraine giving up so much land was “À price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay,” adding “If you appease an aggressor we know from history that this ends in a bad way.”

On the proposed trilateral meeting with Trump and Zelensky, he said:

“it should worry us. They are essentially asking Zelensky to sit down with a war criminal who has invaded Ukraine and continues to kill innocent Ukrainians.”

Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged ed davey and ukraine | 11 Comments

The Liberal Democrats must become the party of civil liberties

By James Gant | Mon 18th August 2025 - 8:55 am

Last week, some 474 people were arrested at a London protest for expressing support for the newly-proscribed Palestine Action; per the Terrorism Act 2000, this can carry a sentence of up to fourteen years in jail. Footage circulating online makes for galling viewing: among those arrested on suspicion of terror offences were retired nurses, a blind gentleman in a wheelchair, and former Guantanamo Bay inmate Moazzam Begg.

What is happening? How did we get here? And most importantly, what is to be done?

The erosion of protest rights

The erosion of the right to protest has not come overnight. The previous Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Act gave police sweeping new powers to impose conditions on protests. Any disruption that causes “serious annoyance” is liable to be shut down; it introduced the statutory offence of public nuisance; and the sentence for blocking a highway was increased from a fine to 6 months in prison. This trajectory accelerated with the Public Order Act 2023, which introduced new offences such as “locking on”, and even criminalised being merely equipped to “lock on”. It also handed police the power to stop-and-search anyone at a protest without the need for suspicion of wrongdoing, criminalised ‘interference with key national infrastructure’ (any A or B road) and introduced the Serious Disruption Prevention Order, a civil order that prevents repeat offenders from exercising their right to protest altogether.

A glimmer of hope came in the form of a legal challenge to Suella Braverman’s attempt to unilaterally change the definition of what constitutes ‘serious disruption’. The High Court found this unlawful. But far from reversing course, the current government elected to take up Braverman’s case, though it ultimately lost in the Court of Appeal. It has pressed forward with the Crime and Policing Bill, which criminalises concealing ones’ identity at a protest, and creates an offence to climb on a specified war memorial or monument of national significance. And now, with the proscription of Palestine Action, it has deployed a national security tool directly against a non-violent protest movement.

What can be done?

It is time for the Liberal Democrats to reclaim the mantle of ‘the party of civil liberties’. Across the political spectrum, “tough on crime” rhetoric is in abundant supply. We will never win the race to the bottom on authoritarian posturing. Instead, we should offer a clear alternative rooted in the defence of this country’s proudest-held principles: individual freedoms, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Five things in particular should be pursued.

The first and most urgent reform is to campaign for repealing the sections of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 surveyed above. We should also campaign to remove overzealous clauses of the Crime and Policing Bill (currently in Committee).

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged civil liberties and right to protest | 16 Comments

Palestine Action arrests: Lib Dems call on terrorism tsar to review law

By The Voice | Fri 15th August 2025 - 8:43 pm

Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson Lisa Smart has written to the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC to ask him to review the legislation that led to the arrest of more than 500 people for expressing support for proscribed organisation Palestine Action.

To cover all her bases, she has also written to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to ask her to order an independent investigation by Jonathan Hall.

She said:

Acts of terrorism, antisemitic hate and violence, and violent disorder should all be punished to the fullest extent of the law and are totally unacceptable. It is right that the police already have the powers to make clear to organisations and individuals that we, as a society, will not stand for it and the consequences will be serious.

In the case of arresting hundreds of peaceful protesters not engaging in these actions, in a country that prides itself on democratic debate, these measures appear disproportionate. The Conservatives clamped down on the right to protest peacefully and this Labour government now risks doing the same.

We must protect the pillars of our democracy and where there is a chance they have been put at risk, we must look again. That is why I am urging the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation to take up this review and if it is found the Government’s actions are indeed chilling freedom of speech then they must change course and address this in legislation.

Here is her letter to Jonathan Hall in full:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged civil liberties | 6 Comments

Palestine Action – a lawyer writes

By Neil Hickman | Wed 13th August 2025 - 2:30 pm

Chambers’ Dictionary defines terrorism as “an organized system of violence and intimidation, especially for political ends, and the state of fear and submission caused by this”. The Terrorism Act 2000 has a rather wider definition. Section 1 includes action designed to influence the government, and includes serious damage to property.

That means that Yvette Cooper was almost certainly within her powers in asking Parliament to proscribe Palestine Action; but the actions of that group are not within the everyday understanding of the concept of terrorism. When I learned of the events at Brize Norton, my reaction was not “I am terrified” but “Whatever was the RAF playing at, that a group of peaceniks could hop over the perimeter fence, walk up to several million pounds’ worth of warplane, and trash it?”

And while proscribing the organisation was probably lawful, it doesn’t seem to have been remotely sensible. Proscription has led to some entirely predictable over-reach, exemplified by Jon Farley’s arrest for holding up a copy of a Private Eye cartoon, and Roger Cauthery being refused admission to the Royal Albert Hall for wearing a small lapel pin bearing the Palestinian flag. And it has also led to an entirely predictable embarrassment for the Metropolitan Police as hundreds of eminently respectable people very publicly hold up placards proclaiming “I OPPOSE GENOCIDE…” The dilemma is that either you arrest all these people and look ridiculous, or you don’t and acknowledge that the law is a meaningless nonsense.

The Terrorism Act 2000 was another in a long line of badly thought out pieces of legislation seeking to address terrorist threats. The first of them, of course, was the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, the first achievement of which was the framing of the Guildford Four. The 2000 Act hasn’t caused too much difficulty up to now because it has generally been applied with good sense. What appears to have been an angry reaction to what was admittedly a serious and reprehensible piece of criminality did not involve good sense.

Interviewing Jonathan Porritt on Newsnight, Victoria Derbyshire rather sententiously suggested that you can’t pick and choose what laws to obey. It’s understandable that history, and the BBC, appears to have forgotten the post-war saga of identity cards. These were introduced as an emergency measure at the outbreak of World War 2. The post-war Labour Government “omitted” to repeal the relevant legislation, and the practice grew up of the Police routinely demanding the production of identity cards whenever they stopped someone. One Harry Willcock, an unrepentant Liberal member of the Awkward Squad, was stopped for speeding and refused “on principle” to produce his identity card. On his appeal from the inevitable conviction before the Magistrates, Lord Goddard, no wet liberal (and indeed, in my book, possibly one of the worst Chief Justices of all time) said:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged featured and harry willock | 13 Comments

Should Palestine Action be a Proscribed Organisation?

By David Morrison | Tue 12th August 2025 - 3:14 pm

Over 500 people were arrested in London last weekend for allegedly showing support for Palestine Action, an organisation proscribed under terrorist legislation. About half of those arrested are reported to be over 65 years of age and many of the arrests were for carrying signs, with words such as “Stop the Genocide – Support Palestine Action”.

Palestine Action was banned as it was responsible for causing costly criminal damage to military aircraft. The Home Secretary has sought to defend the ban by saying Palestine Action is “not a non-violent organisation” and that further information will come out which will justify the ban.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged yvette cooper | 25 Comments

Liberal Democrats should oppose the proscription of Palestine Action

By Paul Walter | Tue 1st July 2025 - 8:55 am

Liberal Democrat parliamentarians should vote against the proscription of Palestine Action.

Yes, members of that group should take responsibility for illegal actions that they take. The law is already quite draconian – especially with the invocation of the Terrorism Act. However, the organisation should not, as a whole, be made illegal in a liberal society where protest is tolerated. Making Palestine Action supporters open to imprisonment is simply unconscionable in modern Britain (and Northern Ireland).

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged civil liberties and protest | 44 Comments

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Tag Archives: Palestine action

Alistair Carmichael LibLink: Palestine Action ban reveals Labour’s dangerously authoritarian instincts

“A price we cannot allow Ukraine to pay” – Ed Davey calls out the BS from last night’s White House talks