UK

Nigel Farage and the proscription of Palestine Action

DECEMBER 3, 2025

By Tom London

The significance of the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribing Palestine Action as a “terrorist organisation” on 5th July 2025, goes beyond even the issue of the utmost gravity of the genocide in Gaza.

On 2nd December 2025, a three day case ended at the High Court in which Huda Ammori, one of the founders of Palestine Action, challenged the proscription by way of a Judicial Review. The court’s judgement will be given at a later unspecified date.

Nigel Farage, who may well be Prime Minister after the next election, will hope the Government successfully defends the case. This proscription sets an extremely useful precedent for a future repressive regime: Don’t like an annoying protest group? Use the Palestine Action example and proscribe them as ‘terrorists’. 

A leaked Home Office document shows that Cooper was warned that the proscription may be seen as “a creep of terrorism powers into the realm of free expression and protest”. 

There is a great difference between being regarded by the state as a ‘terrorist’ as opposed to as a ‘criminal’. A ‘terrorist’ has far fewer rights at every stage throughout the police, prison and court process. Furthermore, anyone else who shows support for the ‘terrorist’ is themselves liable to arrest and imprisonment.

Six of the members of Palestine Action in prison awaiting trial, are on hunger strike now over their conditions. Human rights organisations, UN special rapporteurs and author Sally Rooney have all appealed to the UK government to address the “shocking mistreatment” of these six and of all the Palestine Action members in prison.

Cooper’s proscription was extraordinary. Until then, being proscribed as a terrorist group had been reserved for organisations which use terror or the threat of terror against civilians to seek to obtain their aims: like the IRA, Al Qaeda or ISIS.

Palestine Action were a totally different kind of organisation. They were a non-violent direct action group. Their aim was to stop the genocide in Gaza. They did not target people; they targeted arms factories and a RAF base. In particular, Palestine Action targeted factories in the UK owned by an Israeli company, Elbit Systems. They damaged weapons and planes that would be used in Gaza. 

They committed criminal damage and associated crimes, and just like the Suffragettes, Martin Luther King and the civil rights activists, and many others, they would have expected to be sent to prison for those crimes.

In the middle of the night of 20th June 2025, Palestine Action did something both audacious and humiliating for the British government. They cut through the fence at RAF Brize Norton, the largest RAF base in the UK. They then jumped on electric scooters and sprayed red paint on two Voyager aircrafts, which had been used in relation to the genocide in Gaza.

Three days later Cooper announced that she was going to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group. 

Cooper has since sought to justify the proscription by saying she has information which is not in the public domain that Palestine Action “is not a non-violent organisation”. In effect, she is saying ‘trust me’. In a democracy, the authorities need to be transparent, particularly when people’s liberties are at stake. 

The UK’s two largest human rights organisations, Liberty and Amnesty, were granted permission by the High Court to take part in the Judicial Review and argued that it was not reasonable to proscribe Palestine Action.

Private Eye has reported that a baseless story that Iran was funding Palestine Action was placed in the Times and the Mail by a PR firm working with Elbit Systems.

Since Palestine Action was proscribed, a remarkable campaign of civil disobedience has taken place. Over the last few months at locations across the UK, people have sat quietly and held up placards with the following words, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. They know that under the terrorism legislation, they are liable to arrest and a maximum of 14 years in prison.

It is humbling and inspiring to observe these protests. They have been extremely dignified. A large proportion of those arrested have been in their 60s, 70s and 80s and most have not been arrested before. The total number of arrests is more than 2,700.

If the court finds that the proscription was unlawful, all these arrests and later detentions will also be found to have been unlawful.

The paucity or complete lack of media coverage of the hunger strikes and the protests is all of a piece with the media’s general failure to properly report the genocide in Gaza. Despite the so-called ceasefire, the genocide continues.

Peter Hain, now a Labour peer, made a powerful speech in the Lords against the proscription. He said:

“In 1969-70 I was proud to lead a militant campaign of direct action to disrupt all-white racist South African rugby and cricket tours. 

“No doubt I would [today be] stigmatised as a ‘terrorist’… Mandela was labelled a ‘terrorist’ by the apartheid government, by Thatcher, by US and other Western governments …

“Suffragettes attacked shop windows, Government buildings, and political party offices, sometimes using hammers, stones, or iron bars. They also set fire to unoccupied buildings such as churches, railway stations. They even attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey.

“Frankly, Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison.

“Now look at real terrorists: Al Qaeda and Islamic State. Our Labour government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or Al Qaeda, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong. 

“Frankly, I am deeply ashamed.”

Over and above the central issue, two unusual aspects of the Judicial Review have caused particular concern. One is that the judge who had granted permission for the case to proceed and who was expected to hear the trial, was replaced at the last moment by three judges whose records suggest they would not be sympathetic to Palestine Action. It is comparatively rare for such a late switch of judges and there was no explanation.

Second is the use of the Closed Material Procedure. This is routinely used in terrorist cases on national security grounds. But the issue in this case is precisely that Palestine Action should not have been designated as a terrorist organisation. Under the Closed Material Procedure, Huda Ammori and her lawyers had to leave court at a certain point and can never know what was said in their absence. If allegations were made against her or Palestine Action in this secret evidence, she is unable to rebut them. How can that be a fair trial? A procedure which may be justified in cases involving undoubted terrorists like Al Qaeda, is not self-evidently justified in this case.

Justice in every case needs not only to be done but also to be seen to be done. Given the Government’s support for genocide in Gaza, despite this being in conflict with British public opinion, it is understandable that many feel unable to rely on the good faith of the British state.

A Farage government may one day proscribe as ‘terrorist’ a non-violent protest group and use secret evidence against them, citing Palestine Action as a precedent.

Tom London is an activist based in north London.

Image: c/o Labour Hub