On July 3 the legislation to proscribe the direct action group Palestine Action passed the Lords. An article was published that had the following warning in its last paragraph.

“The police could face ridicule if they enforce the law, and the charge of selectiveness if they don’t. “Are we saying they should arrest thousands of people for wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt?” asks Mr Squirrell. “Is Sally Rooney a terrorist?””

Was this the Morning Star? The Canary? Some other easily dismissed left-wing outlet? No, it was, of course those swivel-eyed anti-capitalist revolutionaries at, er,  the Economist.

(photo is Reuters, used by the BBC here)

At time of writing, two months later, retired headteacher Jon Farley has been arrested for a placard with a Private Eye joke (see podcast interview here – he was also interviewed in the Morning Star), someone else has been arrested and then swiftly de-arrested for wearing a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt, and Sally Rooney has said she’s going to continue donating to Palestine Action.  And, of course, over 500 people were arrested on Saturday 9th August, mostly under Section 12 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, with a further demonstration organised by Defend Our Juries scheduled for Saturday 6th September.

I am going to set out “how we got here”, and then follow it up with 

1. the two choices facing Starmer/Cooper (I’ve decided not to portmanteau them into Starper, for now at least)
2. Some observations and speculations on what might happen next (these are probably not worth a bucket of warm spit – the future always surprises me). And
3. the “what is to be done?” question.

How we got here

History is long. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly long it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way back to the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000, but that’s just peanuts compared to history.  If you really want a grasp on how the British State responds to “extra-parliamentary” activity (Luddites, Chartists, Suffragettes, environmental protests) then there are lots of resources – I would recommend Plots and Paranoia by  Bernard Porter, Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (review here) and also flag Spycops by Glenn Hustler (which I’ve not read yet).  Other suggestions very welcome (e.g. this).

Reading these you will see a pattern worth understanding – those who run the show, either elected or unelected, have fear and contempt for the great unwashed who dare to challenge them. If the challenge is restricted to voting, then that might be tolerable (unless they might win, in which case further action will be required as both Harry Perkins and Jeremy Corbyn found out).  But if the challenge involves physical disruption and/or mockery, then expect to be surveilled, arrested, smeared, killed or, worse, transported to the colonies.  

This is how it has been for a very long time. There was no golden age where the “right to protest” was ever respected by our lords, masters and mistresses. The next time some hapless Labour hack intones those words, remember this (and laugh at them).

Recently we’ve seen this with both Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. You don’t have to agree with their tactics or their ‘theory of change’ (I didn’t – see here and here) to see the State response to them as one of, well, fear and contempt.

The contempt is inculcated from day one, through prep schools, posh schools, Russel Group and Oxbridge Universities – aimed at people with the wrong accents, the wrong educations, the wrong perspectives having the gall to question their betters. The fear comes from the knowledge that if enough of these people persist (insert that Chomsky quote here), then the power of the elites might be significantly constrained, or even abolished. Clutch pearls. 

In terms of the Latest Starmer Fuck-up  (LSF), the problem has been that 

1. Police budgets and clearly the budgets for perimeter defence around air bases etc have been cut
2. Palestine Action (founded in 2020) was able to both plan and execute actions which embarrassed the government/state and made it look weak

Alongside this, judicial overreach on keeping juries in the dark led to the creation of Defend Our Juries (DOJ) in 2023 (anything that joke Ross Clark of the Spectator thinks “disturbing” is worth at least a casual look). It is DOJ that is co-ordinating the mass-arrest protests in London (other people are doing arrestable actions in various places, including Manchester, Norwich etc etc).

Presumably the London Review of Books will run a long piece knitting all these stories together, and it will be shared dozens of times. Whatever. 

The two choices facing Starmer/Cooper

It’s clear that there was significant pressure and lobbying to proscribe Palestine Action over the past few years.  Starmer and Cooper seem to have resisted over the last year while in office, because of their foundational and extremely deeply-held attachment to civil liberties….

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  I crack me up sometimes.  No, the delay is, imo, best explained by their fear. They cannot be so dim as to not see that it was – as per The Economist article – high risk (can they?). They feared it would, er, blow up in their faces.  

The action at Brize Norton seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s book, and pitched us into this LSF. And here we are.

[Fun fact – “Palestine Action” (do I get nicked for even typing the words? Not yet…) is an anagram of exactly what this LSF is – “inept escalation,” as per Philip Hoy.]

So, do Starmer and Cooper escalate or try to de-escalate? Do they double down or try to climb down?  There are no safe options for them.

Presumably there are prolonged, confused, tense and sometimes heated meetings going on all through Whitehall, Westminster and Labour HQ about this – whether to double down, and if so, how.  The more you double down, the more you paint yourself into a corner, the higher the stakes and the harder the crash if/when it comes. Are there any cooler heads, any “wise old birds” being listened to, who have something concrete to offer (as opposed to vague platitudes).

Double down

It seems for now that Cooper is ignoring the “When you’re in a hole, stop digging” advice that a tolerably intelligent eight-year old might offer her. Instead, she’s adopting the Bear Hunt approach – she can’t go over it, or under it, so she’s going to go through it.  (see also the Big Fool Says to Push On). Whoever drafted her article in the Observer last Sunday clearly didn’t run it past a good lawyer (or she did and the good lawyer waved it through in the hope it will sink her?).  Defend Our Juries have written to the Attorney General, with a compelling (imo) case that she is in contempt of court. In that article Cooper also called what is being done as “crimes against humanity,” This will no doubt make her next knees-up with Labour Friends of Israel an interesting vibe.

Even those the vast majority of those people who still have Labour Party membership cards (who ARE these people?) think the proscription was wrong.  But presumably Cooper has the same contempt for Labour Party membership that ministers (especially Cabinet ministers) have always had). 

If they’re going to double down then presumably we will see further attempts to smear Palestine Action – it’s not clear what these would be – the “possibly funded by Iran” insinuation didn’t land.  They can (and will anyway, on general principles) continue to attempt to disrupt the activity of Defend Our Juries and associated groups (getting websites taken down, spamming, bot armies etc).

They could try to smear those being arrested as “unrepresentative renta-mob”, (see Clare Hemming’s letter here)  but the images of blind people and vicars getting nicked for hold a placard may have reduced the effectiveness of this. 

If I were writing a sub-Tom Clancy novel, I’d have a “false flag” operation, where goons did something genuinely terroristic and claimed it as a Palestine Action action, in order to deter people from publicly supporting it.  But even in a novel, you’d have to cope with the fact that this could very likely backfire, and squeamish people within the security state who had had knowledge of it might leak to journalists (not everyone who works for the security outfits is an enthusiastic cheerleader for authoritarianism and genocide). A false-flag, even a really sophisticated one, is risky af.  That’s not to say none will happen.

They could try to “sabotage” the 6th by having lots of fake sign-ups (as per those Trump rallies) in the hope that under 1000 people will turn up and can be managed. This may well be tried but is not, I think, going to “work.”

Physically stopping the September 6th event from happening (using some Public Order Act to prevent people congregating in Parliament Square) is going to be tricky – if people are already up for being arrested, then they may not disperse. Putting up physical blockades (even if just police vans) is a terrible image, and doesn’t prevent people from holding protests elsewhere. They’d look scared, bullying ridiculous and weak, over and above the current level.

Climb down

If doubling down is risky, climbing down is even harder. It may be that Cooper, in her Observer piece last Sunday began setting the stage for a blame-shifting exercise –  “clear advice and intelligence given to me earlier this year from the UK’s world-leading counter-terrorism system, based on a robust assessment.” No mention was made of only having 45 minutes warning…. 

“I was following advice”  is unlikely to work, in the same way that Tony Blair wasn’t able to escape blame for the invasion of Iraq by pinning it on “security assessments.” People have old-fashioned ideas about ministerial responsibility, despite (because of?) the general slipperiness of ministers and Prime Ministers over the last decades.

Delaying prosecutions might work, at least to buy some breathing space. This is what is being advised/urged by the usual suspects. 

So, how to get out of it?  

Telling the police not to arrest people on Saturday September 6th (if the protest happens – it’s “conditional’” on a thousand signing up) creates all sorts of awkwardness with regard to the cases of people who got nicked (on August 9th or elsewhen).. You look weak, the police look weak, it creates an ugly precedent. It might be that the police arrest and then de-arrest people regardless of whether they’ve provided their details. Who knows?

Basically, as best I can see, there needs to be a ‘get out of jail” (ha ha) card for Cooper on which is written either “we have received further advice” OR “a judge says we can’t do this.”

On the former, the Liberal Democrats have written to Jonnathan Hall (KC, fwiw) asking him to ‘review’ things. According to the press release “ A separate letter has also been sent to the Home Secretary from Lisa Smart calling on Yvette Cooper to order an independent investigation by Jonathan Hall into the legislation.”

Yeah, idk. To paraphrase the police chief in Jaws “you’re gonna need a bigger escape clause.”

A judge has given the co-founder of Palestine Action the right to do a judicial review.  At the moment this is to be heard in November.

I do NOT know how these things work, but I would not be at all surprised if there aren’t some shiny-faced SPADs being dispatched to plead, (I imagine some crying and grovelling with clasped hands), for the Judicial Review to be bumped forward.  

Regardless of when this Judicial Review happens, I would also not be surprised if the Government “forgets” to file some paperwork in time or in some other manner scuppers itself (sending the office junior etc etc) so that the Judicial Review reverses the proscription. If ever there was a time a government would heave a sigh of relief at losing a court case, it would be now.

I don’t know how judges think. I don’t know how keen they will be on providing a bunch of stupid weak politicians with a way out of self-inflicted injury. We shall see.

If the judges give Starmer and Cooper a way out, and they take it, well at this point, the Daily Heil would get to run TWO of its favourite headlines (perhaps they’ll do two souvenir editions on the same day?)  “Starmer U-turns Again” and alongside it “Sack These Activist Judges.”

Beyond that, I don’t know what the “climb down” options are. If you’ve read this far

1. Thanks
2. Tell me what I’ve missed/got wrong.

Observations and Speculations

The challenge for predicting what the “State” will do is that there isn’t a single unitary “they” sending out orders to the Crown Prosecution Service, to Individual police forces etc. 

There are doubtless many MANY meetings going on within Government, the Labour Party, the security state, the judiciary etc etc about how to get out of this mess.  Accounts of some of these will be available in about 40 years at The National Archives, if that still exists in a 3 degree world). Others will be leaked, more speedily, to Private Eye. Others accounts still will be spun in insta-”journalism” books that are thrown onto the conveyor belt of best-seller-remainder bins-charity shops-landfill.

The fear must be that if Cooper doesn’t back down then it brings the whole State into disrepute. There’s only so many white middle-class grannies you can nick before you begin to look very dodgy.  But if she does back down (and gets pushed under a bus, metaphorically, for her troubles), there’s still a strong sense of overreach and incompetence. Trust and deference continue to erode, and the “tinderbox”™ gets drier.

Obviously, there are events, dear boy, events. A ceasefire in Gaza might be forced upon Netanyahu (though then his court case resumes and his government falls?) Even if there IS a ceasefire, I don’t see it meaningfully reducing the heat around the Palestine Action proscription. We shall see.

Finally, here are some suggestions of what to expect

• Expect to see more MPs trying to regret/explain away their votes in favour of proscription (“but it was bundled, waaaaaah.”)

• Expect different police forces to take different positions (there will doubtless be intense pressure on some sort of consistency though, with the exception of Northern Ireland).

• Expect well-timed leaks about plummeting police morale, and fears around retention, community relations etc

• Expect to see more people, including some celebrities, but mostly hoi polloi, coming out and daring the state to arrest them.  

• Expect to see various tedious groupuscules trying to bandwagon on the issue to recruit to their terrible parties.

• Expect smears of individuals and groups, regardless of truth, decency or, well, anything.  The media machine wants red meat, all the time.

What is to be done?

As individuals (and groups!) we will have to decide whether we are happy with this government changing the meaning of the word “terrorism” – as per the Proscription Review Group’s warning in March that a ban on Palestine Action would be

“novel and unprecedented”, because “there was no known precedent of an organisation being proscribed… mainly due to its use or threat of action involving serious damage to property”.

If we are, then we will have to get used to blind wheelchair users being lawfully (for now) arrested.  We each have to decide whether this government is to be trusted with such power.  If we are, fine, then; all we have to do is sit back and it will take that power, consolidate that power and (ab)use that power – see Bernard Porter’s book, among many others.

If not, well, there are consequences for action, which you would be well advised to inform yourself about and consider.

Finally, we should also remember that there is a world beyond Britain, and whether its slide into authoritarianism is slowed, halted or even, somehow, reversed.

There is a world where many tens of thousands of Gazans are dead, many more left with profound physical and mental scars. A world where Israeli society is riven by deep divisions, and the actions committed against Gazans (and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories) have a way of boomeranging as suicide, domestic violence and despair.

Meanwhile, we continue to burn fossil fuels and the carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere, with all that that entails.