Judges have humiliated ministers by insisting Palestine Action should not be banned under anti-terrorism laws in a ruling that has left thousands of its alleged supporters in legal limbo.
The high court said on Friday the government’s proscription of the direct action group was “disproportionate and unlawful” and that most of their activities had not reached the level, scale and persistence to be defined as terrorism.
The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was urged to respect the court’s decision after the three judges said the ban, introduced by her predecessor Yvette Cooper, impinged on the right to protest and should be quashed …
This follows both a legal challenge by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Amorri …
Huda Amorri
… and a succession of mass defiances …
The ban imposed by UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (a recipient of Labour Friends of Israel largesse) outlawed – and, pending government appeal against yesterday’s ruling, continues to outlaw – expressions of support
… leading to over 2000 arrests, disproportionately from middle class silver-heads – disgusted of Tunbridge Wells – and including clergy, headteachers and, infamously, a disabled blind man in his wheelchair.
In November the judge originally set to hear the appeal – Sir Martin Chamberlain, who had earlier granted Huda Amorri leave to make it – was replaced without explanation by a panel that includes a judge with a long history of working for the government, and another who ruled in favour of the UK selling parts for fighter jets to Israel. Many genocide objectors feared the worst.
But the panel, headed by Dame Victoria Sharp …
While there’s no suggestion of influence on Dame Sharp, her twin brother is Richard Sharp, a former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs banker (both have major investments in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems 1 ) and a multimillionaire Tory donor who is “considered by those who know him broadly pro-Israel”, according to a 2021 BBC report.
Novara Media, 25/11/25: A ‘stitch-up’: Palestine Action case gets new judges
… has found the ban unlawful on two grounds: disproportionality and inconsistency. Guardian again:
The judges [found] “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and that Cooper’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was not consistent with her own policy, which required her to take into account factors including the nature and scale of the organisation’s activities, and the specific threat that it posed to the UK.
See in this regard my post last August, Yvette Cooper takes to the Observer.
Call me a Gloomy Gus but I note that Shabana Mahmood, Yvette Cooper’s successor at the Home Office, has already said the government will appeal yesterday’s ruling, which leaves the ban in force pending the outcome. Looking on the slightly brighter side, a senior officer at the London Metropolitan Police has said it will make no further arrests in the meantime.
So let’s hear it one more time:
* * *
- Elbit Systems’ UK operation has been hit hard by Palestine Action in offences which saw the activists charged with burglary and criminal trespass but acquitted on ground of public interest and prevention of greater crimes. The point of declaring PA a terrorist organisation was to allow charges which not only carry penalties of up to 14 years jail time but explicitly rule out a ‘public interest’ defence.
Craig Murray shares your concerns, as do I:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2026/02/postpone-the-celebrations/
Thanks. I’ll check him out. It’s been a while since I followed Craig.
This stands out from Murrey’s observation:
“…..they cannot really think both that it is unlawful, and that it should continue pending appeal. That is utterly illogical.
They cannot really think it is an unlawfully disproportionate interference with freedom of speech, and that those arrested for holding placards opposing it were criminals and rightfully charged.
That is a logical impossibility also. Yet both sit side by side in this judgment.
The judges are not stupid. It can only be that they do not really mean it when they state one of those opinions. All the signs are that it is para 140, swinging entirely unsupported and exposed and waiting to be struck down, that they do not really mean.
If they believed in their own judgment, the judges would have quashed the proscription pending appeal.
Palestine Action was a proscribed organisation before this judgment, and it is a proscribed organisation after this judgment. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.”
His conclusion is equally stark:
“The English legal tradition is that the “Crown in parliament” is sovereign and may do absolutely anything it wishes, irrespective of international law, individual rights or any other consideration. The Scottish legal tradition is that the people are sovereign and protected from arbitrary or oppressive executive action……
……This system is simply fascist. We have no idea to what extent the “secret evidence” used in the English case contributed to the court’s agreement that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation.”
This is one example among many which demonstrates the thesis presented here……..
https://themindness.substack.com/p/elite-capture-and-european-self-destruction
….that Westerns societies are stuck in a straightjacket in which elites all the way to the bottom of the decision tree are manufactured to internalise a single narrow mindset, based on Western cultural hegemony as the only valid template for humanity, which is designed to indefinitely replicate itself.
For wider context on the capture of Labour by billionaire corporations and the Israel lobby, see Jonathan Cook today – Starmer is toast but the dark forces that brought him to power are as strong as ever
Yes, a good post that looks at the bigger picture, ie proper journalism!
Apparently, Starmer wanted Osborne to be the US Ambassador, but he went with McSweeney’s choice of Mandleson.
It could be argued that it started in the 80’s, as this Crispin Flintoff interview with John Booth reveals Mandleson’s earlier involvement in the Labour party, including his recruitment by Neil Kinnock!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JMMPygwg8t8&list=PL4hhJHnpsNhEjCvS2y8DxtyVd2QyJUu2j&index=1&pp=iAQB
Two very good videos re the Epstein files and the bigger picture from ‘Barry’s Economics’ (not me, but a fan of Gary Stevensons ‘Gary’s Economics’), who uses behavioural science to focus not on the individual monsters, but the system that manufactures them:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b1vFgUi4frU
and
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sS33crOQvrM