Left Foot Forward
Half of those arrested were aged 60 or over, data has revealed
According to Metropolitan police figures, over half of those who were arrested were aged 60 or above, including 100 in their 70s and 15 in their 80s.
A blind disabled man was also among those arrested. Labour has come in for fierce criticism for proscribing Palestine Action last month and for the mass arrests at the weekend.
Saturday’s protest was organised by Defend Our Juries, which is campaigning to have the ban lifted through “mass actions” where protesters hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Since it was proscribed as a terrorist organisation, it is now an offence to show support for Palestine Action. All but 10 of the arrests were for displaying supportive placards or signs.
In a social media post, Defend Our Juries said that 474 people had been arrested so far, but that hundreds more left before it was due to end. It added that “the sheer numbers of people” made it “extremely difficult” for police to enforce the ban.
In a later statement, the group said: “We can now confirm that every arrestee from the Lift The Ban sign-holding action has been released. None have been charged.”
On X, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana, who is setting up a new left-wing party with Jeremy Corbyn, praised the protesters, writing: “Heroes. Every single one of them.
“Keir Starmer, Yvette Cooper, David Lammy — and the rest of this Labour government enabling genocide — aren’t fit to lace their boots.”
Moazzam Begg, an ex-Guantanamo prisoner, who was arrested on suspicion of being an al-Qaeda member and later released without charge, attended the protest and was among those arrested.
He said: “I’m no stranger to arrests under nonsensical terror laws. But yesterday was something else.
“Under the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square, I was one of 474 silent protesters arrested by an army of police.”
In a statement following the mass arrests, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the government’s decision, saying: “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority”.
She added: “The assessments are very clear – this is not a non-violent organisation”.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
Hundreds gather at the Parliament Square to support the ”Palestine Action” group, with many demonstrators taken into custody during the protest on August 9, 2025, in London, United Kingdom. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency]
The UK government on Monday defended its decision to ban Palestine Action, warning that anyone showing support for the organization “will feel the full force of the law,” Anadolu reports.
Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones said the group, which has been designated a “terrorist organization,” carried out violent acts and posed a threat to public safety.
Her comments came after a large demonstration in London over the weekend opposing the ban during which police arrested 532 people. Official figures show that 348 of those detained were aged 50 or over.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Davies-Jones said: “I want to thank the police for their bravery and their courage in carrying out their diligent duties in the line of public protection, and I want to state that the right to peacefully protest in this country is a cornerstone of our democracy, and of course, we respect that.
“But with regards to Palestine Action, they are a proscribed terrorist organization and their actions have not been peaceful. They have violently carried out criminal damage to RAF aircraft. We have credible reports of them targeting Jewish-owned businesses here in the UK, and there are other reasons which we can’t disclose because of national security,” she said.
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“But they are a proscribed terrorist organization and anyone showing support for that terrorist organization will feel the full force of the law.”
In June, the government announced a ban under the Terrorism Act 2000 after activists from Palestine Action spray-painted planes at a Royal Air Force base, an act being investigated under counter-terrorism laws.
The ban was later passed in the House of Commons and the House of Lords in July.
Palestine Action describes itself as a direct-action network targeting companies involved in supplying Israel’s military.
The UN high commissioner for human rights also publicly criticized the UK’s decision to ban Palestine Action.
And the UN special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights has been granted permission to intervene in the judicial review.
The High Court has granted permission to Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, to bring a full judicial review against the order of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, banning the group as a terrorist organization.
Holding a placard is not ‘terrorism’
AUGUST 1O, 2O25
By David Osland
At some point in the mid-1980s, I rocked up at a National Organisation of Labour Students conference raffishly clad in a T-shirt celebrating Brigade Rosse, a Kensington Market knock-off version of a garment originally hand-stencilled by Joe Strummer of The Clash.
The ensemble was tastefully topped off with a fake leopardskin neckerchief, skin tight leather jeans and motorcycle boots, and I recall spending an inordinate amount of time backcombing my barnet to complete the look.
How stupid of me. Brigade Rosse were an Italian terror faction of the period, who murdered 50 people in Italy in the name of Marxism-Leninism. Sporting their logo on my chest was ostentatious posturing on the part of a youthful idiot.
On top of that, I must have looked a dick and the fashion police would have had me bang to rights. But at that time, my garb would have been of no concern to the actual Old Bill.
Forty years later, I wouldn’t be able to take that for granted. In Belfast yesterday, a 71-year-old woman was busted for wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt.
This, in a city which only weeks previously had seen Orange Lodge marchers traipse around brandishing the flag of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a paramilitary faction that killed hundreds of Catholics during the Troubles.
The cops were even more heavy-handed in London, where 476 were arrested for carrying placards demonstrating support for Palestine Action, with many taken into custody.
The group was earlier this year proscribed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper under the Terrorism Act 2000, a piece of legislation that dates back to the New Labour era.
Her decision came after Palestine Action activists broke into RAF Brize Norton earlier this year and daubed jet fighters with red paint. The aim was to symbolically highlight RAF reconnaissance flights over Gaza and the alleged subsequent provision of intelligence to the Israeli government.
The incident will have been costly, although the proclaimed price tag of millions of pounds looks heavily inflated. But the key point is that nobody was harmed in any way; what we witnessed seems more akin to what earlier generations would have regarded as non-violent direct action.
The matter could more appropriately have been handled by charging those involved with criminal damage. That is itself a serious offence, which can attract prison sentences of up to ten years.
But the logical if ludicrous corollary of Cooper’s designation is that any expression of support for Palestine Action now constitutes terrorism.
As a result, hundreds of people motivated by revulsion at Israeli brutality in Gaza could potentially end up behind bars for the crime of holding a placard.
Were that to happen, it would mark one of the worst incursions on civil liberties this country has seen in peacetime.
As Amnesty UK correctly pointed out on X: “The arrest of otherwise peaceful protesters is a violation of… international obligations to protect the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.”
Approval or disapproval of the actions of Palestine Action is beside the point here. The right to express disagreement with government policy has traditionally been extended across the political spectrum.
That is why Covid conspiracy loons are given permission to organise rallies in Trafalgar Square. That is why racists get to picket asylum seeker hotels. It is why overtly fascist parties are allowed to propagate their evil creed.
None of these arrested yesterday were engaged in anything that equates to terrorism in any plain English sense of the term. They were not concocting ricin in their kitchens. Nor were they churning out letter bombs in their spare bedrooms, or even collecting funds for those intending to do so.
Their treatment is entirely disproportionate to anything that happened in Parliament Square on Saturday. If they are ultimately charged, the hope must be that commonsense prevails among the juries that will hear their trials. But the likelihood is far greater that an example will be made of them.
Once waving a placard places Quaker pacifists in the same moral and legal category as those who blow up kids at an Ariana Grande gig, a precedent has been set that harms us all.
David Osland is a member of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP and a long-time left wing journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter at @David__Osland
Image: Protest outside Downing Street on July 25th 2025, c/o Labour Hub.
By Ben Folley
The Labour Government’s approach to the Israeli genocide in Gaza came under fresh scrutiny this week as Keir Starmer announced,
‘the UK will recognise the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a ceasefire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a Two State Solution. And this includes allowing the UN to restart the supply of aid, and making clear there will be no annexations in the West Bank.’
Starmer’s announcement, conditional on terms the Israeli Government was not expected to be prepared to fill – and which they immediately condemned – effectively commits the UK to recognising the State of Palestine in September.
The decision is a significant shift. It happened following months of repeat demands by Labour and left MPs to act against Israel’s military action, in terms of strict measures to pressure Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza, but also through recognition of the State of Palestine.
That pressure escalated ahead of this week’s reorganised UN Conference on a two-state solution in Israel and Palestine.
Ahead of it, over 200 Labour MPs signed a letter by International Development Select Committee chair Sarah Champion on Friday 25th July. Cabinet Members were also making clear to journalists their support for the demand.
Starmer felt pressured to act and having met Trump on Monday and held a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, he announced his proposal.
It is a shift of policy that is to be welcomed. But the manner of its introduction has generated hostility – not only from Israel’s supporters, but also supporters of the Palestinians.
Starmer has made state recognition a bargaining chip – and a threat of punishment for Israel – to be deployed in six weeks time – if it does not cease its military action and allow the UN to restart aid. And he has done so because he was at risk of isolation from too many of his own MPs.
But the reality is, state recognition is not the most urgent issue for the Palestinians of Gaza, or in fact the Palestinians in the West Bank.
The threat of state recognition, and his conditions, have already been condemned by Netanyahu and Israel and will not be effective in securing the ceasefire required.
Those conditions set out do highlight the key issue of the situation on the ground in Gaza – where the stranglehold on aid delivery by Israel means the UN has now declared that famine conditions have taken hold, and the sytematic displacement and destruction of people and homes through military action is widely identified as amounting to genocide.
The numbers dying from starvation and malnutrition are mounting. The numbers killed in gunfire whilst queuing for food continues to grow. Palestinian deaths now exceed 60,000.
The UK is right to demand a ceasefire and restoration of aid delivery to the UN but it should be focused on what concrete action it can take which might affect that.
The demand for sanctions – an embargo on arms and on trade has been made repeatedly by MPs. It has been demanded in the Commons Chamber, by Private Members Bill, and by petition to the Foreign Office. Some have urged the government to consider support for a UN peacekeeper role in delivering aid.
There is a debate amongst Labour MPs that those on the left has been insufficiently supportive of the government’s announcement. But the day after Israel rejected Starmer’s announcement, its soldiers reportedly killed 91 Palestinians queuing for food.
But those MPs demanding colleagues show support for the recognition proposal must demand further action from their own government to stop the killing of starving civilians desperately looking for food, as the numbers of casualties continue to rise.
The government has argued that it cannot take action on arms or on trade alone, that it would be ineffective, that it has to act in concert with allies. But this week has shown the potential impact of a domino effect from a new announcement. First Macron, then Starmer, now Canada’s Mark Carney have all made their own announcements regarding bringing forward recognition of the state of Palestine.
The same could happen with sanctions. If the UK could announce new state level sanctions – on arms, or trade, or both – then it may have a limited material impact on Israel – but it may have political significance, if other states follow suit.
It should do what is right and take that action. For those dying on the ground in Gaza, the UK must pull every lever it can.
- Ben Folley writes for Labour Outlook and is on x/twitter and on bsky.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
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