I am responding to George Monbiot’s excellent article describing government bias in the attribution of terrorism to disruptive action (The Belfast riots, Palestine Action protests. What is terrorism now – and why the hypocrisy?, 17 June). I take issue with one sentence: “The former home secretary Yvette Cooper decided to ban the group after some of its members spray-painted two warplanes.” This simplifies the decision process, and the ban may have involved other factors.
In early March 2025, Palestine Action spray painted “Gaza Is Not 4 Sale” on a green at Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course, as well as daubing a building with red paint. At the end of March, Trump said, in a post on his Truth Social platform: “I was just informed by Prime Minister Starmer of the United Kingdom that they caught the terrorists who attacked the beautiful Turnberry, in Scotland.” Trump called for them to be “treated harshly”. We know Starmer was eager to please Trump, which may have included the promise to spend more on defence, the initial defunding of Unrwa and reductions in international aid.
The decision on proscription went beyond Cooper. It involved putting a proscription order to parliament linking Palestine Action to two violent, racist groups, Maniacs Murder Cult and Russian Imperial Movement, with no known activity in the UK. I have asked 15 members of the police if they have arrested anyone involved in Maniacs Murder Cult. None had heard of it. It is possible that parliament would not have voted to ban Palestine Action without this connection.
None of this was mentioned in the judgment at the Royal Courts of Justice, relayed to us as we stood to bear witness outside the court on 15 June. Instead, the story was smoothed and given a dubious rationality, taking the UK further as a European outlier in its suppression of protest.
Tony Booth
Cambridge
• The court of appeal judgment that overruled the previous divisional court ruling and declared lawful the proscription of Palestine Action appears to be seriously flawed (Report, 15 June). It does not consider whether the manufacture of arms by Elbit Systems to be used in genocide in Palestine could be unlawful, but blandly describes all its activities as lawful.
There is no reference at all to the finding of the UN commission of inquiry and the provisional finding of the international court of justice that Israel committed genocide in Palestine.
This wilful blindness to legal context is matched by a shocking ignorance of history. The suffragettes were arguably far more engaged in violence than Palestine Action. However, both the suffragettes and anti-apartheid protesters principally directed their protest at property, as does Palestine Action.
It is sad and bewildering to see senior judges getting things so wrong. Hopefully the supreme court will understand better the threat to all protest not directed at harm to people, which many consider to be essential to democracy.
Louise Christian
London
• As one of the people who has been charged under section 13 of the Terrorism Act for holding a piece of paper that states support for Palestine Action, I think there are two things we need to focus on.
The Palestinian people continue to suffer, in Gaza and increasingly in the West Bank. Our support for them, and our opposition to the actions of the Israeli government, must be our primary focus.
Second, the restrictions on our rights to protest in the UK are all the result of the Terrorism Act of 2000, which extends far beyond recognised international definitions of the term, putting fundamental freedoms of expression and association at risk. The treatment of Palestine Action activists and their supporters all stem from this act – it must be amended if our slide into authoritarianism is to be halted.
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