The news that Palestine Action (PA) has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the British government has been met with fierce opposition from Palestine-supporting workers across the country. Even many left-liberal types seem to be shocked that a non-violent direct-action organisation whose only aim is to stop a genocide could be so arbitrarily slapped with the ‘terrorist’ label.
To understand more about the sheer arbitrariness of the proscription process (no criteria required!), we recommend Craig Murray’s article Richard Medhurst and the right to armed resistance. (20 August 2024)
For those unaware of the details of this latest case, PA was a group of activists whose entire purpose was to target any aspect of the war machine connected with Israel. They aimed both to highlight the presence of these production facilities on British soil and to physically prevent planes and weapons destined for Israel from being produced. The latter aim was pursued either through ‘lock-ons’ that blocked arms factory gates or by breaking into facilities and physically smashing equipment.
These direct actions were carried out with the expressed intention of forcing a political change in the ruling class’s policy towards the genocide in Gaza. While many naive liberals claim that opposition to genocide is a purely moral issue that is “above politics”, in reality the demand for an end to British support for the zionist state is very much a political one, since it directly cuts against the interests of Anglo-American imperialism and its ability to control the resources and dominate the people of the middle east.
For the imperialists, an attack on its profits and domination is the very definition of ‘terrorism’ – and far more of a threat than such genuinely terrorist (against the masses) outfits like al-Qaeda, Isis or National Action. To think that the imperialists would allow such an organisation freely to continue its activism merely because it sticks to non-violent methods (ie, avoids causing physical harm to people), or because its activities can be justified under ‘international law’ (which officially enshrines the right to oppose genocide and is supposed to be above all national laws), is to indulge credulity too far.
Rulers use test cases to stop workers noticing dangerous precedents
It is worth noting that although it has been claimed that Palestine Action is the first non-violent organisation to be banned for anti-genocide/pro-Palestinian activism, this is not actually true. This dubious honour actually belongs to the sunni islamist-separatist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international group that campaigns for muslims to reject the societies they live in and instead come together to restore the old Ottoman-era days of a single muslim superstate.
Hizb ut-Tahrir’s British chapter was proscribed in January 2024 following a peaceful pro-Palestine protest in which participants reportedly chanted “jihad, jihad” – ostensibly in support of the Palestinian armed resistance.
The difference, of course, is that, unlike Palestine Action, Hizb ut-Tahrir had very little public support and was generally reviled – by muslims because of its reputation for ‘troublemaking’ at mosques and the promotion of separatist ideas that most muslims oppose; by liberals because of its various anti-LGBT, anti-feminist and anti-western stances; and by anti-imperialists because of the group’s active support for imperialism’s dirty wars against Libya and Syria (and its probable role as a deliberately provocative asset of British intelligence).
As a result, its proscription faced virtually no public opposition and was waved through by officialdom with barely anyone noticing the dangerous precedent that was being set.
And this was almost certainly the whole point. It is a tried-and-tested tactic of the ruling class, whenever it wishes to introduce draconian legislation, to choose (or create) a deeply unpopular initial target, knowing that opposition will thus be muted or non-existent.
One of the earliest victims of a coordinated social media ‘deplatforming’, for example, which was combined with eviction from various payment platforms, was right-wing US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Most progressives either remained silent or actively cheered the attack on Jones, seeing it as some kind of ‘antifascist action’ by the corporate executives at Silicon Valley.
It was only later, when progressive groups and individuals were being targeted with the same measures, that it became apparent what a dangerous power they had allowed the ruling class to adopt.
Moving against the real target: working-class anti-imperialist resistance
Given the trade union and antiwar leaders’ criminal failure to organise a mass campaign of non-cooperation with the Gaza genocide, and given the crisis into which the imperialists’ zionist proxy state has been pitchforked following its failure to defeat the Palestinian resistance and the failure of the imperialists’ regime-change operation in Iran, the British ruling class clearly feels it is now necessary and possible to come down like a ton of bricks on Palestine Action.
Whether the British public will allow this, too, to pass, remains to be seen. Waves of protest against PA’s proscription, and mass arrests as a result, have been taking place across British cities and show no sign of dying down, so it is just possible that the outrage of British workers will do what the trade union movement has so signally failed to do and make this very unjust law unworkable.
Meanwhile, as PA itself stated in one of its last public messages before it was forced underground, the imperialists may be able to ban action carried out under the name of Palestine Action, but this in no way means that direct action against the Gaza genocide will stop.
For as long as the British ruling class and its government and institutions remain involved in the mass slaughter of Palestinian people, there are bound to be groups and individuals who take it on themselves to continue where Palestine Action has been forced to leave off.
For our part, while we understand the frustration that leads to such individual action, which stems from frustration and despair at the lack of any coordinated working-class programme, we will continue to insist that the real responsibility for preventing British imperialist complicity in genocide and other crimes in Palestine (as elsewhere) lies with the British masses.
It is easy to believe that we, as individual workers, are powerless to intervene, but this is simply not the case. We have the power, but only as a collective, which means we need organisation to harness and use our power.
In order to do this, we urgently need to break all the links that tie our unions, our antiwar movement and other mass organisations to the Labour party, which is a servant of imperialism and a handmaid to this genocide as it has been to so many other colonial crimes throughout its existence. We need to depose all Labour-aligned leaders and dismantle the Labour-aligned, capitalist-serving bureaucracy that prevents our organisations fulfilling their role as directors of working-class energy and action and turns them instead into organs of control over the working class.
And we need to build pressure at the grass roots to demand, alongside the changes above, the urgent building of a mass campaign of non-cooperation with the imperialist war machine. British workers collectively need to stop making and moving arms destined for imperialist and zionist wars, they need to refuse to put zionist products on supermarket shelves and refuse to write, print or broadcast genocide-sanitising propaganda.
Not only should we be demanding the de-proscription of Palestine Action, we should be building a movement that takes over responsibility for stopping the genocide and rendering such isolated actions unnecessary.
