Palestine Action's civil disobedience overwhelming London police

With Palestine Action a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK, a September protest attended by 1,500 people meant the Met was unable to arrest them all, showing the limits of the criminal justice system

Police officers with demonstrators as people take part in a Lift the Ban on Palestine Action protest organised by Defend our Juries in Parliament Square in London on September 6.

When the British government banned the relatively obscure protest group Palestine Action, it is likely  they did not foresee it igniting months civil disobedience. But since August, the protest group Defend our Juries have gathered in Parliament Square in London on the anniversary of the ban, and raised signs in support of Palestine Action, leading to their arrest on terrorism charges. 

For the next two weekends, this civil disobedience will return again to put pressure on the UK government to remove the proscription of Palestine Action and change its policy on supplying weapon systems to Israel.

The first mass civil disobedience event by Defend our Juries occurred in August, a month after the ban came into force. More than 500 protestors gathered in Parliament Square, and specifically at 1pm, they all wrote the same message on placards. 

With the words: ‘I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action’, each protestor immediately became a supporter of a proscribed terrorist organisation and liable to up to 15 years in prison. 

Unlike normal acts of criminality, these protestors do not try to evade arrest. Instead, they stayed in Parliament Square until the police would arrest them all. A month later, on September 6, Defend our Juries returned, but now the number willing to go to jail had grown to more than 1,500.

So who were the group they sought to defend? Palestine Action was a ‘direct action’ protest group, which targeted the infrastructure of Israeli war-machine in Britain. They broke into weapons manufacturers and an RAF base, damaging or destroying the machinery that facilitated genocide. 

Elbit Systems was a particular target, given it is intimately involved in Israel’s war crimes, but they also targeted Lockheed Martin and Leonardo, the defence and security group. 

Palestine Action became one of only 81 proscribed terrorist organisations in the UK. Others on this list include ISIL, Al-Qaeda, the Provisional IRA and the fascist groups National Action and the Maniac Murder Cult. 

Campaigners outside The Royal Courts Of Justice in central London last July, where a judge was ruling on whether the co-founder of Palestine Action, Huda Ammori, can proceed with a legal challenge against the home secretary's decision to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation. 

It was the first time a non-violent protest group had been proscribed as a terrorist organisation. To defend this policy, home secretary Yvette Cooper has claimed there was intelligence Palestine Action was going to target national infrastructure, but as yet, no evidence has been forthcoming to support this claim.

Civil disobedience is a type of protest where people intentionally and explicitly break the law. The idea is to use the criminal justice system to draw the public’s attention and outrage to a particular injustice. The arrest and prosecution of the disobedience plays an important part in the protest. They hope that by sacrificing themselves, the protestors will spur the rest of the population into action and harden public opinion in their favour.

One major issue for this campaign is that the government is using anti-terror laws. There are few more serious and consequential charges than terrorism. Even if protestors avoid jail, a successful prosecution for terrorist offences is likely to hover over them for years to come. 

It might mean there are types of jobs and volunteer-roles that are permanently unavailable to them; or they are placed on a no-fly list and international travel is precluded. The police have explicitly pointed to these long-term consequences to try to deter protestors from challenging the decision.

In an extraordinary response, it is often older people and retirees who have responded to this threat of terrorism charges. The idea is threats to jobs present less of a risk to retirees, or those in stable long-term employment.

The protests have presented a significant challenge to London’s Metropolitan Police. Despite calling up officers from all around the country, the police were overwhelmed by the numbers of protestors on the September 6. 

After the first event in August, it emerged there were not enough holding cells in London to detain the protestors while they were being processed. The police set up gazebos outside stations to work through the backlog. 

But at the September protest, the Met was unable to arrest all Palestine Action supporters. While more than 1,500 were present throughout the day, the police were only able to arrest 890 of them.

These acts of civil disobedience have shown the limits of the criminal justice system. Once a population begins to refuse to comply with what they see as an unjust law, then it may not be possible to prosecute them all. Normal policing requires consent of the populace. Mass disobedience is an effective way of challenging unjust laws.

• Illan Wall is a lecturer at the Law School at the University of Galway and an honorary professorial fellow at the University of Warwick. He researches questions of protest and policing, and is one of the convenors of the Irish Network of Legal Observers