The Labour government at Westminster proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is a ridiculous undemocratic move by a government that only exists to perpetuate war and capitalism.
Two Palestine Action members damaged some war planes at a UK air base in protest against the genocide in Gaza and the escalation of the conflict into Iran. This led immediately to the government taking steps to put the protest group on a par with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State. A frightening overreach.
This coming from ex human rights lawyer Kier Starmer, a man who defended protestors who broke into an RAF base in 2003 and damaged planes in protest against the war in Iraq. Now his government is saying that people who throw paint at military aircraft are in the same category as those that fly commercial airlines into civilian buildings as happned in 9/11.
And Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, who stood up in parliament wearing suffragette ribbons to celebrate the fight for women to get the vote – the same movement that carried out direct action protests and caused all kinds of ‘nuisance’ for the governments of the day. What do they say about the liberals? They support every social movement apart from the present one.
A solidarity protest in London was attacked by the police with several arrests made on spurious grounds. The police were clearly spoiling for a fight and saw the government’s proposed ban as an excuse to do what they wanted.
Earlier in the day the chief of the Met Police Sir Mark Rowley had issued an outrageous statement saying the planned solidarity action left him “shocked and frustrated” that people would come out in support of Palestine Action. Shut up Sir Rowley, it isn’t your place to offer opinions on whether people should attend demonstrations or not.
The Labour government has kept the Tories draconian anti protest laws and sought to expand them. They have presided over the prosecution of peaceful protestors on conspiracy charges, landing them five years in prison (before they reduced that on appeal) – the longest prison sentence for non-violent protest ever handed down.
They are also going after the Irish rap group Kneecap for ‘supporting terrorism’ by allegedly having a Hezbollah flag on display at a gig. This government is one of the most illiberal ones for many years – targetting musicians for waving a flag is another example of the dangerous overreach of these police-politicians.
Reactionary wave
The clamp down on protest rights is happening as part of a global reactionary wave, a move towards authoritarian regimes that clamp down on civil and political rights and are seeking to roll back the gains of the last 50 years around women, LGBT and Black people’s rights.
As late capitalism gets worse, with greater wealth inequality, collapsing public services and horrific genocidal violence, more governments are imposing harsher laws and restrictions on our freedoms. They can see that social crises are growing but the politicians in power only want to protect the interests of a small group in society – the billionaires and capitalists.
The far right – normally free speech advocates when it comes to say anything racist or transphobic – back these moves, seeing them for what they are – an attack on working people and progressive voices fighting for a better world. The far right pose as anti establishment fighters but they are in reality just fighting on behalf of their super rich pay masters like Elon Musk and Arron Banks.
Diversion
Of course the proscription of Palestine Action is also to focus attention away from the genocide in Gaza and the escalation of war in Iran. Israel is effectively a rogue state, completely ignoring any principles of international law and expanding the war from Gaza to Iran on the spurious grounds that Iran might be developing weapons of mass destruction (those of us around in 2003 for the Iraq war movement will remember this same rhetoric!)
We are fighting for a better world for all and we won’t let government proscriptions or police violence or far right terror threat intimidate us. There are some many struggles against the crises of late capitalism and they are growing. We can link these struggles up to point to how capitalism and class society based on hierarchies of wealth and power are at the root cause of so many of these issues.
Some people say they want to leave the country. The reality is there are not many countries in the world that are not heading in this authoritarian direction. We have to fight where we are, working together to build powerful social movements and political parties that can contest for power to overthrow the capitalists and their state.
Simon Hannah is a socialist, a union activist, and the author of A Party with Socialists in it: a history of the Labour Left, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay: the fight to stop the poll tax, and System Crash: an activist guide to making revolution.
Palestine Action, it was announced on Friday, is set to become a proscribed group. The announcement was made less than twenty four hours after the group broke into RAF Brize Norton, “decommissioning two military aircrafts”. The rationalisation given for the group’s target was that “from Cyprus, British planes collect intelligence, refuel fighter jets, and transport weapons to commit genocide in Gaza”.
This is not a decision that has been made on a whim: it is the latest act in a campaign by the British state to quell movements of direct action who block the international trade of killing machines. It is a decision made precisely because of the Israel lobby in the UK, and those who receive payments from them. In many other countries this kind of “anti-terror” policing would be called corrupt, anti-democratic, and authoritarian, but it is the modus operandi for Starmer’s government.
Palestine Action was started in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, the latter of whom is currently facing charges from August 2024 under the same Terrorism Act of 2000. The group has since undertaken some of the most impactful direct action campaigns in British history against Israel’s arms manufacturers and their backers.
Perhaps their most influential campaign has been the fight against Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer. Elbit specialises in the manufacture of systems for aircraft used by the Israeli Defence Forces, as well as in the creation of what it describes as “the backbone” of Israel’s drone fleet.
The campaign has successfully led to the closing down of their London HQ and numerous factories across the country, such as Leicester, Oldham, and Tamworth. It is difficult to quantify just how much financial damage has been done to Elbit, but there is no doubt Palestine Action have put a major dent in the supply of weapons from the UK to Israel.
As a result, however, they’ve attracted a substantial amount of attention from some of the British establishment’s most vile figures. Once John Woodcock (Lord Walney) was finished allegedly sexually harassing his staff, he was appointed independent advisor on Political Violence and Disruption in 2020. And in his detailed report, he called for Palestine Action, amongst others, to be banned or heavily restricted due to the harm they cause to “companies and their staff”, and the “detrimental effect they have on local economies”. It was utter nonsense then, and it is utter nonsense now.
Terrorism is a charged term. Some scholars dedicate their careers to studying its origins, manifestations, and effects. The definition of terrorism is hotly debated still, though there are some key aspects on which most scholars (like David Rapoport and Martha Crenshaw) agree. Broadly, terrorism involves violence and intimidation against non-combatants (i.e., civilians) in pursuit of a political outcome. How on Earth, then, does Palestine Action fit this definition?
The argument progresses even more infuriatingly when considering that even the Prime Minister stated in a tweet, soon after the action, that the break-in was an act of “vandalism”, not terrorism. No people were harmed during the process, the activists’ only targets were the aircraft used to wage war on civilians in Gaza. In contrast, Israel’s campaign has directly targeted civilians for the political end of grasping and holding greater land and resources, in violation of international law. Its terroristic genocide in Gaza is an ongoing aberration to everything these same politicians and commentators claim to stand for.
The death toll in Gaza is close to 63,000 at time of writing, and that is likely an underestimate. Men, women, and children whose lives have brutally severed short, whilst those with serious influence in the West watch on. That is what Palestine Action and other campaigns are attempting to stop. And because their choice of inanimate targets is both effective and ethical, the British government is attempting to ban them and legally smear them as a terrorist organisation.
If the proscription is not defeated by public and political pressure, it will be the precedent for a much broader attack on the right to protest, affecting everyone who has ever engaged in politics even indirectly. The right to take collective action is gradually being carved out of our public lives, and we cannot allow that to continue.
If you thought RAF jets were owned by the RAF, think again.
The RAF squadron targeted for a repaint by Palestine Action due to its involvement in supplying Israel’s genocide, does not in fact belong to the RAF at all. It belongs ultimately to Polygon Global Partners LLP, a Hedge Fund.
Through a chain of seven cutout companies, which I will take you through, the direct ownership is with Airtanker Ltd, which gives its address as RAF Brize Norton. It owns, maintains and operates the RAF’s Voyager refuelling aircraft, which have been providing mid-air refuelling to the Israeli Defence Forces as well as carrying, in their cargo role, munitions to the IDF.
Note that Airtanker Ltd states that five of the Voyager aircraft while available to the RAF: “can also be made available to other parties. This can include providing military capability to other nations…”.
Whether the aircraft have been operated by the RAF on behalf of the Israelis, or whether they have been “provided to” the IDF direct, is an interesting question. Is this designed to build in plausible deniability for the UK government?
Eight of the Voyager Aircraft though fully painted in RAF livery, actually are the property of Airtanker Ltd.
It is not plain whether the other six – also the property of Airtanker Ltd but only occasionally used by the RAF – are also in RAF livery. The company does not show any photographs of jets not in RAF livery.
So who owns Airtanker Ltd? Well, the “person with significant control” on the Companies House register is Airtanker Holdings Ltd. They own over 75% but less than 100%. It would be interesting to know who owns the rest.
So who owns Airtanker Holdings Ltd? Well, it is owned – more than 25% and less than 50% – by Airbus, which provides the actual aircraft, and more than 25% and less than 50% by Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd, which presumably provides finance. As both own under 50% it would be interesting to know who owns the rest, and why.
So who owns Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd? Well, Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd is owned by Equitix Holdings Ltd, a company at the same address in the City of London.
So who owns Equitix Holdings Ltd? Well, Equitix Holdings Ltd is owned by Pace Bidco Ltd, a company curiously enough also at the same address.
So who owns Pace Bidco Ltd? Well, Pace Bidco Ltd is owned by Pace Topco Ltd, a company which turns out to be also at the same address!
So who owns Pace Topco Ltd? Well, here, we finally get the name of a human being. It is a Mr Reade Griffith whose address is given as Polygon Global Partners LLP, 4 Sloane St, London.
On another page of the register a Mr Reade Eugene Griffith is given as a Director of Pace Topco Ltd, presumably the same person. This would also appear to be the same individual as the E Griffith Reade who is listed as – amongst other interests – the 10% owner of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.
Polygon is a hedge fund. It would appear likely from the register to be either Polygon or Griffith’s umbrella hedge fund Tetragon that owns these liveried RAF aircraft. We have therefore simply no idea who the investors are: it could be anyone from Blackrock to Kim Jong Un. The true ownership is deliberately shrouded in secrecy.
This spaghetti tangle of ownership of RAF aircraft is rather surprising to those of us who naively believed that RAF military aircraft belonged to the RAF, and that the hundreds of billions of pounds the state lavishes on “defence” was used to do things like buy military jets, rather than make rich financiers still richer.
The long tree of subsidiary companies is not only to disguise ownership. At every single stage it provides opportunity for tax avoidance and for other forms of corruption, like consultancy contracts or directorships handed out to the contacts or nominated go-betweens of the politicians and senior civil servants. If you saw a company called Pace Bidco Ltd were giving a remunerative consultancy to the son of an ex-government minister, or to a firm registered to his local landlord, why would that ring alarm bells or connect to the RAF?
To be plain those are entirely hypothetical examples. I am not accusing Pace Bidco Ltd of anything. I merely explain the system.
Defence spending is more prone to corruption than any other form of spending and that is why venial politicians are always extremely keen to boost it. No UK politician has ever proposed to increase defence spending by more than Keir Starmer, who wants to lift it by £120 billion a year.
The RAF’s Voyager aircraft are effectively being provided under the Private Finance Initiative. Exactly how much money the hedge fund managers and this string of companies are taking out of the defence budget is hard to know.
One particularly surprising fact is that it is plain that the private companies are also providing the RAF ground crew. Who employs the flight crews is not entirely clear.
That such an obviously rotten and corrupt arrangement exists in the RAF I had no idea. Some British military personnel are in fact contracted mercenaries. It gives new context to the active RAF involvement in the Genocide in Gaza.
Palestine Action’s excellent act of resistance in vandalising this Hedge Fund Air Force has brought all of this to our attention. Which is yet a further reason to be grateful to Palestine Action.
