Why the Palestine Action bigots need free speech too

Nearly 500 people were arrested in central London on Saturday for expressing their support for Palestine Action – which has been proscribed as a terrorist group since July this year.

The UK government had called for the protest not to go ahead in the wake of the anti-Semitic atrocity at a Manchester synagogue on Thursday. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood even said it would be ‘un-British’ to do so. But ministers’ pleas were ignored by protesters.

So now, seemingly in response to the intransigence of the pro-Palestine Action protesters, Mahmood has said she plans to give police more power under the Public Order Act 1986 to control the location and duration of future protests.

Her justification for this draconian move is not exactly clear. Mahmood said that this Saturday’s protests, so soon after the synagogue attack, exposed a ‘gap in the law’ which failed to take into account ‘cumulative disruption for communities’ – in this case, it seems, the UK’s Jewish community. ‘The police [must] have absolute clarity that they can use cumulative disruption as a reason for restricting those protests’, she told the BBC. Mahmood insisted it ‘wasn’t about a ban’, but ‘restrictions’.

Like then home secretary Yvette Cooper’s original decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, Mahmood’s move against the group is equally (and tellingly) legalistic. Instead of openly standing up to the surging anti-Semitism in Britain, taking on Palestine Action and their supporters politically and morally, Labour would rather just brush it all under the carpet. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Labour’s preference for authoritarian clampdowns over standing up to anti-Semitism is not a surprise. Since it came to power last year, Labour has increasingly tended to adopt the positions and prejudices of the likes of Palestine Action. From its decision to recognise a Palestinian state to its repeated condemnations of the Israeli government, it has succumbed to the Israelophobia now rampant among our political and cultural elites. Now, confronted with the consequences that its own hostility to the Jewish State has helped to unleash, Labour would prefer just to stifle the protests and make them all go away.

The authoritarianism of Labour’s cowardly approach will have serious consequences for us all. It will grant the police the power to effectively control the time and place of all protests. This would limit the freedom of speech of every British citizen.

None of this is to defend Palestine Action or those who took part in pro-Palestine demonstrations last week. Palestine Action is indeed a truly repugnant organisation. Its supporters have been captured defacing memorials to Israeli hostages of Hamas. In May, it attacked a Jewish business in London’s Stamford Hill, on the conspiratorial grounds that it was connected to an Israeli arms manufacturer. In June, its members caused £7million worth of damage to RAF aircraft after breaking into a military base in Oxfordshire (this, it seems, was the act that prompted Cooper to proscribe it as a terror group).

Saturday’s Trafalgar Square protest did nothing to improve Palestine Action’s image. Participants were filmed chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’ – or death to all members of Israel’s armed forces. Another group of protesters was photographed with a banner calling on the UK to abolish all of its anti-terror laws – not simply remove Palestine Action from the banned list. Times journalist Matthew Syed said he was abused for asking demonstrators whether Hamas was partially responsible for the misery in Gaza. ‘The motivation for being there was obvious, potent and implacable’, Syed wrote. ‘Hatred of Jews.’

But trying to prevent these people from expressing their views is only giving oxygen to Palestine Action via some much-craved publicity. Worst of all, it gives those expressing that most common of middle-class prejudices – Israelophobia – the appearance of righteous rebels.

People who support Palestine Action might be insufferable bigots, but that shouldn’t mean they should be jailed. It would be far better if our leaders confronted them in the open and stood up to their poison. With anti-Semitism at crisis levels, we cannot simply arrest our way out of this problem.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.