Here are Tim Norman, Patrick Henningsen and myself discussing the Skripal charade, at the Beautiful Days Festival near Exeter. At the start 90% of the audience said they believed the official narrative. At the end 80% had changed their mind.

I am particularly proud of this because we were comparatively close to Salisbury and it was mostly an apolitical audience of interested locals.

I look like I had been sleeping under a hedge for four days. Well, I more or less had. It was a music festival. In a sense convincing so many people, when I could not have looked less like an authority figure, is still more satisfying.

Tim Norman has a much longer version of his presentation and we shall try to do this together again soon, hopefully actually in Salisbury.  Patrick Henningsen is a journalist of great integrity: he has been consistently interested and engaged in this story.

I had plans to make a documentary which were put aside during covid. I might try to run a conditional crowdfunder in a little while, where the money is withheld unless enough is collected to deliver the project.

Attention of course moves on, but the Salisbury lie still features in Starmer’s Russophobic and militaristic rhetoric, and in a sense this story is more important than ever.

———————————

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In late November, a judge in the High Court of England and Wales will hear a judicial review into the legality of the proscription of Palestine Action.

That court has no jurisdiction in either Scotland or Northern Ireland and does not take into account the law of either place, which is different to English Law.

Yet the proscription of Palestine Action applies to the whole UK and the result of the English judicial review will apply to the whole UK – which is a direct violation of Scottish legal rights.

My attempts to raise this point in London have been met with a haughty colonial arrogance, which amounts to “so what?”

Two grounds have been granted for the judicial review in English and Welsh law. Firstly the judge will consider whether the effect of proscription is contrary to the rights of free assembly and free speech protected by the European Convention on Human Rights Articles 10 and 11.

The ECHR applies UK-wide and the arguments will be the same were the case heard in London, Edinburgh or Belfast. An English or a Scottish judge may come to a different conclusion, not only for reasons of individual judgment, but because of the way the basis of law is considered differently in the two jurisdictions.

But the English judge will also consider whether due process was followed in the proscription according to English and Welsh public law. The argument is whether or not Palestine Action ought to have been consulted, or others likely to be affected by the proscription ought to have been consulted – in a situation where the views of Israel and of weapons manufacturers were in fact consulted.

Now, that common law is entirely different in Scotland to England and Wales. In fact the Scottish legal system has a very different tradition to the English system, and the Scots system is not really based on common law, though precedent is cited.

While the English and Welsh legal system is grounded in common law, relying heavily on judicial precedent and case law, the Scottish legal system is rooted in Roman law principles, emphasizing codified statutes and a civilian tradition that distinguishes it from common-law jurisdictions.

I should pause to exonerate the Welsh. When the English conquered, raped and colonised Wales, they simply destroyed its existing administrative and legal systems and imposed their own. Therefore when I speak of “English and Welsh law” I am merely reflecting the current jurisdictional reach.

An important point has to be grasped, which requires a dropping of the colonial mindset.

It is perfectly possible that the banning of Palestine Action might be found lawful in English and even EU law, but is still unlawful in Scotland under Scots law.

I should emphasise that this argument applies not only to Palestine Action but to every English High Court judicial review of a Westminster government action.

You may be surprised to hear the point is probably non-controversial amongst lawyers.

Given five minutes to think about it, I am not sure any Scots lawyer would say it is untrue that UK-wide government action might be lawful in England but not in Scotland. But such is the Establishment cringe of pretty well the entire Scottish legal profession, I cannot think of an example of it ever being tested.

One fundamental difference between English and Scots law has a firm statutory basis – which is that between the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right.

Here the key distinction – and this is a hoary old truism – is between the English tradition of parliamentary sovereignty and the Scottish tradition of popular sovereignty. Scots law contains protections against oppressive executive acts, whether or not imposed by parliament, in a way which English law does not.

For those that may doubt that what I am saying is established law, here is an extract from an article by retired European Court of Justice judge Professor Sir David Edward in the Supreme Court Yearbook Volume 6, entitled “Scotland’s Magna Carta. The Claim of Right and the Common Law” (not available online):

It follows that that which is lawful cannot be arbitrary or irrational – a principle already present in the Wednesbury criteria and developed in more detail from EU administrative law (derived from German law) insisting on the objective justification and proportionality of executive action.¹⁰ For recent examples of how this idea is being given effect, see in particular the Judgments of the Supreme Court in R v Gul¹¹ and Beghal v DPP¹² which illustrate the evils of over-broad discretionary powers, as well as the importance of not relying on answers given under compulsion.

The reference in the Claim of Right to the Estates as `a full and free representative of the Nation’, whether or not it reflects the constitutional philosophy of George Buchanan, cannot surely be interpreted as a demand for `sovereign’ Parliamentary power, still less the power of the Parliamentary majority for the time being. It is, rather, an assertion that ultimate power rests with the `Nation’…

That the Westminster parliament cannot just impose on Scotland any law it wishes was spelt out explicitly by Lord Cooper in his 1953 judgment in MacCormick v Lord Advocate:

The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctly English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law…

Now, I am fully aware that the bulk of the Claim of Right represents the establishment of anti-Catholicism in the state. But that does not obviate its useful provisions. Of which the most (but not only) relevant one is this:

That the causing pursue and forfeit persons upon stretches of old and obsolete laws, upon frivolous and weak pretences, upon lame and defective probation, as particularly the late Earl of Argyll, is contrary to law.

The Claim of Right is still the law of Scotland (and is not the law of England). It was not revoked by the “Union” of 1707 and indeed here it is on the UK government’s definitive website of currently active legislation.

Now, there could not be a starker example of “causing pursue and forfeit persons… upon frivolous and weak pretences” than claiming Palestine Action, a non-violent protest and civil-disobedience organisation, is a terrorist outfit.

Even more absurd is to claim that those decent people who have been pursued by the executive all over Scotland for opposing genocide, are supporters of terrorism.

There is the clearest case that the proscription of Palestine Action and subsequent repression are precisely the kind of executive persecution and injustice which are outlawed in Scotland by the Claim of Right – and are outlawed irrespective of parliamentary authority.

It is precisely an arbitrary and irrational executive act, which cannot be lawful in Scotland, whatever the views of the Westminster parliament. Nor can the Westminster parliament invoke the alien doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty in Scotland, to impose arbitrary and irrational executive action under the rubric of “reserved powers”.

Palestine Action may yet succeed in their judicial review in England. But a separate judicial review must be launched in Scotland that both challenges this extreme Zionist act in support of genocide – directly contrary to overwhelming public opinion in Scotland – and asserts the continued existence of Scotland’s popular and communitarian legal tradition.

———————————

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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This post initially included a corridor photo which was fake. My fault, but that made no difference at all to the argument.

It will definitely be good if the war in Ukraine draws to a close. Too many have died or been maimed, too many civilian assets have been destroyed. However the cynicism with which the conclusion of the war is being driven is quite extraordinary.

I am not sure there has been a sight in modern history equivalent to the way Europe’s “leaders” were pictured in the White House.

This is not an accident. There really is a craft to diplomacy; many countries in the world have foreign services consisting largely of people who have a degree in it. I have personally organised two state visits for the former Queen as well as head of government visits.

These things follow a careful choreography and an absolutely key part of that is to present a picture of equal status between state parties. Who will enter first, whether there will be a handshake, the precise spot where the handshake will happen, the setting of the table they meet around, flags of equal size, all that is plotted in great detail. It is fundamental to the job.

If I had put Robin Cook, for example, in a position where he was seated on a chair in front of an interlocutor enthroned behind a desk, I would have received a very fierce bollocking indeed. Yet here we have European Heads of State and EU leaders seated before a desk in the Oval Office.

This is just unthinkable to anybody familiar with the craft of diplomacy. I realise you don’t have to be a diplomat to feel there is something wrong in this picture: but you are probably not quite as stunned as I am.

The unequal interpersonal relationships are just the immediate physical manifestation of Trump’s instinctive ability to maximise the brutality of realpolitik. The deal which is being put together to end the war in Ukraine is a remarkable testimony to Trump’s ability to seize economic advantage for the USA, or at least for the class of people in the USA he cares about.

Trump’s Presidency is marked by an undisguised willingness to leverage the massive economic advantages which come from possessing the world’s reserve currency, which means you can just invent money to purchase any good you want from another country, the economy of which becomes addicted to this “cash” flow.

Trump’s trade war has displayed an ability to force other states to make enormous concessions, including reinvesting hundreds of billions of dollars back into US industry, rather than face tariffs which would make it harder to give up their goods as tribute to the USA in return for token dollars.

The reserve currency is essentially a confidence trick. It always works, if and only if the world believes in it. The world was starting to lose its faith in the power of the dollar, and Trump was smart enough to know that the way to maintain a confidence trick is to double down and be still more assertive.

Trump has undoubtedly prolonged, at least a little, American economic supremacy.

The Ukraine deal is a related trick. Part of the “guarantee” of Ukraine’s security is that the Europeans will purchase US $100 billion worth of weapons from US arms manufacturers in order to give said weapons to Ukraine.

It is not planned that any European weapons will be in the deal or that the USA will finance any weapons. A senior FCDO source tells me that Keir Starmer is saying the UK will put “well over” £10 billion into the pot to buy US weapons for Ukraine.

The hope on the European side is that they will be able to pay for this merchant-of-death bonanza with stolen Russian money – assets seized under sanctions. There are two obstacles to this. The first is the international courts, which are most unlikely to agree. The second is Vladimir Putin.

I have never bought into the notion that Russia is militarily infallible and about to triumph quickly and simply. I have certainly never accepted the nonsensical propaganda that the initial disastrous Russian strike at Kiev was just a ruse or feint.

But Russia is indeed now winning and was always going ultimately to prevail on the battlefield. The delusional rhetoric of European leaders over the last few weeks, including from Keir Starmer, attempted to ignore this obvious reality.

Ukraine’s lines in Donetsk are now so untenable that Putin is able to attempt to insist on being given territory he has not conquered yet, because everybody knows that conquest is both unstoppable and imminent.

This is a realpolitik as hard as Trump’s.

The team Trump took to Alaska had substantially more officials connected with commercial policy than with military or foreign policy, and we should not underestimate the extent to which this attempt at agreement is cash driven.

Putin, who is winning the war, will insist on the lifting of economic sanctions and is simply not going to agree to US weapons being purchased for Ukraine by the Europeans with Russian money.

As support for the Ukrainian military is an essential part of the mooted “security guarantee” structure – as opposed to mutual defence commitment – funding will have to be found. This despite Rachel Reeves’s entire philosophy being to please the money markets by austerity.

My FCDO source tells me that plan B, for when the idea of paying with Russian money fails, is for the private financing of the UK’s purchase of US weapons for Ukraine. This has been an important point of preparation.

Just as with the aircraft flying out of Brize Norton, the idea is that a private equity consortium would finance the purchase of the weapons for Ukraine, with repayment by the UK over a twenty-year period.

This means that £10 billion of weaponry would eventually cost the UK about £38 billion. Yes, you read that right. BlackRock and Trump himself are among a variety of investors who would be brought into the scheme as financiers.

There is of course no industry like the weapons industry for corruption: backhanders, directorships, service contracts to front companies, post-retirement jobs. Politicians love the defence industry.

That US $100 billion for weapons will provide lots of lovely pork for absolutely everybody in the picture. Look at the wealth of Tony Blair. Come back to me in ten years’ time and discuss what personal wealth was eventually amassed by each of the people in this photo.

Zelensky is probably the biggest profiteer of all (though he also has bosses to pay off).

I explain in specific detail in both my memoirs – Murder in Samarkand and The Catholic Orangemen of Togo – that international affairs is always driven not only by control of natural resources, but by the corrupt interest of politicians in the companies that acquire them.

That I found first-hand to be true for oil and gas in Uzbekistan and for rutile and diamonds in Sierra Leone.

With Trump, these background motivations step out of the shadows and into the spotlight. So here we have a war which appears, thank goodness, to be drawing to a close, but on the basis of overtly commercial deals.

I expect those European leaders will cheer up. Cash can buy a lot of indignity.

As I have stated frequently, it was and is simply impossible for Ukraine to recover all of its territory of 1991, without a NATO-fuelled war being waged on a scale that would have been certain to escalate to nuclear conflagration.

There will now be border adjustments, be they de facto or also de jure, with the integration of some Russian-speaking areas of Eastern Ukraine into Russia, including Crimea and at least the large majority of the Donbass.

It is simply a statement of fact that there had never existed a Ukrainian state prior to 1991, and that there had never been any state with anything like the borders of 1991 Ukraine. I don’t know why people find incontrovertible historical truth so offensive.

We are going to have a modestly smaller, Western-aligned Ukraine. That seems to me something those Ukrainians who want to be Western-aligned ought to be celebrating. The percentage of the land area of Ukraine likely to be retained by Russia – something under 20% – is a fair approximation to the percentage of the Ukrainian population who would prefer to actually be Russian.

If the putative peace deal can be delivered, it will undoubtedly be better than continuing war. It will be slightly less advantageous to Ukrainian nationalists than the deal that was available in Turkey over two years ago, but which NATO vetoed.

Hopefully Ukrainians have noted that sacrificing an entire generation as cannon fodder for NATO is not a good policy.

European leaders are still attempting to strut their stuff by threatening Putin with further sanctions if a deal is not reached. This simply does not work; Moscow is fine. It in no way counters the military advantage now enjoyed by Putin.

I should like to believe that peace in Ukraine might lead to a reduction in Russophobic hysteria across Europe. But the truth is, that Cold War-style scaremongering is really all these failing European leaders have with which to terrify and control their disgruntled and impoverished populace at present.

They will, however, be ever less convincing.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Yvette Cooper has continually lied about Palestine Action in a panicked attempt to defend the proscription of a direct action protest group which is opposing a Genocide in which Cooper’s government is deeply complicit.

Cooper and other government ministers have repeatedly claimed:

• Palestine Action attacks people, not just weapons-making equipment
• Palestine Action is funded by Iran or another hostile power
• Palestine Action attacks Jewish-owned businesses based on racism
• Palestine Action has plans for future unspecified appalling terrorist acts

In fact none of this is backed up by the assessment of the government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre which forms the basis of the proscription of Palestine Action.

The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) is not a committee which meets occasionally, but a permanently staffed organisation with premises inside MI5 HQ in Millbank. The JTAC consists of representatives of:

MI5 – the Security Service
MI6 – the Special Intelligence Service
GCHQ – electronic and communications surveillance
DIS – the Defence Intelligence Service
Customs & Excise Special Operations
The Border Force
Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command
The Home Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Ministry of Defence
The Department of Transport

Ten other ministries are included on an ad hoc basis.

All reports of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre must be approved by consensus of all involved.

It is of course vitally important that all of these bodies are under ministerial control. The object of the exercise is to produce the result desired by ministers, i.e. proscription, justified only on available true facts and a legally tenable argument under the current legislation.

I attach the declassified version of the JTAC report, which has been “gisted” for use in court proceedings.

“Gisted” means it has gone through a process known as “sanitisation”. This means that all the key information has been retained, but in a form which protects the source.

Before I explain this to you I should explain that I once headed the FCO section of an extremely similar operation, not JTAC but ESC. The Embargo Surveillance Centre had very similar membership, was composed of almost exactly the same parties and was also primarily involved in assessing and producing reports and “action-on” from top secret intelligence.

I wrote daily gisted reports and cleared the “sanitisation” with the intelligence service representatives on a daily basis.

The purpose is to protect your source. You cannot give out information so specific that it can cause those under surveillance to say “Oh no my phone is tapped!” or worse “Wow the only person who knew that is Jimmy. He must have told them. Jimmy is an MI5 spy”.

So you have to reduce the level of information down to something that might have a more generic origin. Rather than saying “This group is planning to carry out an attack on Ladies’ Day at Ascot”, for example, you might say “This group is planning an attack in England”.

The object is to give the highest level of information the intelligence services are comfortable in giving.

That might end up being as vague as “This group plans attacks on civilians”. But that information would obviously be vital to the court and it would be given.

In fact there is nothing whatsoever in the JTAC assessment which backs up any of the claims being put out in a panic by government ministers.

The JTAC report makes absolutely clear that its assessment of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is based only on the definition in the Terrorism Act, of a group that commits serious damage to property in order to influence government policy.

I pause here to note that the United Nations has intervened in the case to state that this does not meet international standards for defining terrorism. Damage to property should only be terrorism when the intent is to endanger life, such as damaging an air traffic control centre.

The JTAC report in fact notes that Palestine Action stresses its philosophy of non-violent action against people. Much is however made of one single attack (out of 385) where substantial violence against persons is alleged (though hotly denied).

But even here the JTAC report notes that the sledgehammer and axe were intended for use against machinery, an obvious fact.

I have blanked out a very small amount of the JTAC report which explicitly relates to this action in Bristol, because it is the subject of an upcoming trial and publication would be in contempt of court. The blanked-out sections take police allegations entirely as fact, even though they are hotly denied and subject to trial.

I have done this despite the fact that both government ministers and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police have repeatedly made assertions about these events which are absolutely prejudicial to a fair trial, and were undeniably in contempt of court.

Equality before the law has disappeared in the UK.

So here is the official, otherwise unvarnished JTAC report on Palestine Action. It makes plain that government ministers are simply lying about their information. I publish it as a journalist who has been given this document and sees an overwhelming public interest in the truth being known about a matter which has caused the arrest of some thousand people in recent weeks.

• If Palestine Action deliberately attacked people
• If Palestine Action had foreign funding
• If Palestine Action attacked random Jewish businesses
• If Palestine Action planned a big terrorist act

the JTAC report would say so. It says nothing of the sort.

Palestine Action is what it says it is: a non-violent direct action group which targets the Israeli weapons industry and its support and supply line.

It states that its actions are not terrorism but direct action to prevent Genocide – and when given the chance, juries have usually sided with Palestine Action against the government.

The reason Yvette Cooper has proscribed Palestine Action is that she is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and has received £215,000 from the Zionist lobby – which is £215,000 more than Palestine Action ever received on behalf of a foreign power.

Ministers are lying to you. I have provided a little antiseptic daylight.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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If I were living in England, I would join Corbyn’s new party, and I urge people in England to do so. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland there are other factors, which I shall come on to.

I also say this with great respect for my friend George Galloway, whose Workers Party kindly hosted my candidacy for Blackburn in the General Election. I think Jeremy has been wrong in pointedly excluding George from the consultation meetings on setting up the new party.

But the truth is this. At nearly 700,000 signups, “Your Party” has already three times as many putative members as the Workers Party got voters at the General Election. Jeremy has the ability to create a juggernaut which the media and Establishment simply cannot ignore the way they shun George.

My advice to Workers Party members is to join Jeremy’s new party. There are many smaller left-wing parties which appear to be signing up en masse to the new venture – like the CPGB and the SWP – while having no intention of dissolving their own membership and structures.

It is very possible that the rules of Your Party will permit such dual membership.

I am thrilled by the potentially transformative effect of the public actually getting to hear left-wing arguments. This is how Corbyn, even handicapped by the conservative baggage of the Labour Party establishment, managed to get a far higher vote in two general elections than Keir Starmer achieved in his.

The Scottish Independence referendum showed the same effect. Despite massive media bias, the public did actually still get a chance to hear the arguments for Independence that had been kept from them. The result was a step change in support for Independence of 15% or more, which has never been lost since.

Your Party could shift the Overton window, permanently. For the first time in 40 years the public might get some exposure to the arguments of the Left.

We know that renationalisation of utilities, better public services and taxation of the wealthy are popular. When Corbyn led Labour, there was a brief opportunity to vote for those policies with a realistic chance of success, and millions of people took it.

Your Party will not be saddled with the need to compromise with the Blairites, and thus will be able to develop policy platforms of much greater internal coherence.

I think it is safe to assume it will be anti-NATO and favour a pacific foreign policy based on respect for international law. I think it is safe to assume that its policies will not only favour redistribution of wealth, but will challenge fundamental capitalist tenets of the ownership of the means of production.

I have no doubt it will be firmly anti-Genocide and will back BDS measures against Israel including arms sales.

I very much hope it will support a single state of Palestine. It is plain there is no viable two state solution. Palestine has been dismembered, chopped up, separated. The idea that a viable, non-contiguous state can be assembled from the ruins of Gaza, with the West Bank (or parts of it) and East Jerusalem is plainly nonsensical.

It is a Bantustan solution designed to provide cheap labour to service Israel daily. The fact that all the Western government proponents of a two state solution speak of a demilitarised Palestinian state, permanently at the mercy of the genocidal Israeli state, shows how dishonest the plan is.

It has been suggested to me that Your Party will adopt the policy that the Palestinians should decide. I agree with that, but with one caveat. That cannot mean the hated Mahmoud Abbas should decide, and the Palestinians cannot decide with a literal gun to their head.

Let Palestine be free from the river to the sea. Then let the Palestinians decide whether they want to agree to the creation of a separate Jewish state.

The membership must decide the policy. I am reasonably confident of the result.

What cannot happen is an abuse of the central mechanisms of the party to demonise and/or expel people for false anti-semitism accusations, as the Labour Party did under Jeremy’s leadership.

It goes without saying that the ludicrous IHRA definition – equating anti-semitism with criticism of a state that is committing Genocide – must be rejected.

If it is really to be a different, bottom-up type of party, then the party leader ought not to have that type of power. The key salaried positions should also be subject to election rather than just appointed at discretion. Decentralisation must be very real and effective every day.

Which leads me to the nations of the UK.

The Left in Scotland is overwhelmingly pro-Independence. Unionism is very heavily a right-wing thing. There is a rump of left-wing thinkers who oppose Scottish Independence on internationalist grounds with a vision of working class solidarity. But that is a dwindling and far from vigorous strain of thought.

Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Zarah Sultana has, so far as I can see, said a word about Scotland in talking about the new party. Their vision appears very Anglocentric. I hope that this silence is an acknowledgement that the position of the party in Scotland is, as English people, not their concern.

The existence of the SNP and of Plaid Cymru means that Your Party is entering a significantly more crowded market in Scotland and Wales, where not only is nationalism an extra factor, but the nationalist parties already sit well to the left of Keir Starmer (admittedly not a difficult ask).

In Scotland, I think mistakenly, there seems a widespread presumption that the Corbyn project will fall flat. But disillusionment with Labour in Scotland is enormous, both nationally and locally. As is disillusionment with the SNP.

Those connected to the Corbyn project in Scotland at the moment appear largely to come from the Old Labour establishment, many of whom have been vehemently anti-Independence.

But I doubt the party will reflect that.

Young people in Scotland are overwhelmingly pro-Independence. Another factor which receives insufficient attention is that opinion polls regularly show between 30 and 40% of Labour voters in Scotland are pro-Independence. Those are important recruiting demographics for Your Party.

I have not seen any figures for signups in Scotland. Pro rata with the UK there would be 70,000, which would make Your Party immediately the biggest party in Scotland. I think it is fair to assume there are at least 30,000. Nobody can know where they stand on Independence.

If Your Party is to be a genuinely decentralised organisation, then its Scottish and Welsh parties should be separate legal entities. They alone should decide their policy on Independence.

I suspect that a fudge will be attempted, whereby Your Party supports “the right of the Scottish people to decide”. That is frankly no use to anyone, and proceeds from an assumption that permission has to be granted.

The right of the Scottish nation to self-determination is established in international law. It is not a policy just to state it.

The support for Genocide in Palestine is not a bug, it is a feature of the rogue British state. That imperialist entity needs to be broken up.

So, where do I stand personally on the new Corbyn party?

I have signed up for information. I will make honest and well-motivated efforts to shape it and influence its members, and I encourage other people to join at this stage. I shall work for it to be decentralised in its structures, anti-Zionist and anti-NATO in its views, and for Scottish and Welsh Independence.

Depending on results, I shall decide whether to stick with it. I do hope it will be a broad church and that people will not split over small matters; but on large matters I cannot myself be part of a Zionist or Unionist party.

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On Wednesday we were crammed into the unsalubrious court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice to hear the judgment from Judge Chamberlain on whether Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action would be granted a judicial review of the proscription of the organisation.

Judge Chamberlain breezed in and went immediately into a summary of his judgment, beginning with an account of the process so far. This was covered in my last report; the only new information was that the Special Advocate who had been present during the closed session was Tim Buley KC.

In this extraordinary abuse of process, the security services are allowed to bring alleged “intelligence” material into proceedings, which Huda Ammori and Palestine Action are not permitted to see. Nor are their lawyers allowed to have any idea what allegations have been made.

Instead a court-appointed “Special Advocate” is supposed to represent their interests, without being allowed to tell them what the accusations are. Nor can they tell the special advocate what points to make, as in “we absolutely have no foreign funding and have never had any contact with any foreign intelligence agencies”.

Nobody is ever allowed to know what a “Special Advocate” actually does or says in the closed session, nor what the government lawyers or those giving evidence on behalf of the security services do or say.

If I were a Special Advocate, I would do nothing except hand the judge a copy of the Dossier on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and say: “This shows the quality of security service intelligence. Now go and wipe your arse with it.”

Having told us there had been a closed evidence process, Judge Chamberlain then gave us what he said would be a brief summary of his judgment. The link is to the full judgment.

Chamberlain said that the claimant (Huda Ammori) had introduced evidence of police action against people expressing in various ways support for the Palestinian cause. There was also evidence of people deliberately breaking the law on support for proscribed organisations.

The Home Secretary had submitted that the correct route for an appeal against proscription was to POAC (the Proscribed Organisations Appeals Commission). The Claimant had responded that this would take too long, until June 2026 at the earliest.

There were five reasons that POAC might not be a viable alternative remedy to a judicial review:

1) Timing – the POAC process could not conclude before mid-2026.
2) The impact on freedom of expression and assembly while the proscription remained in force.
3) There would be numerous criminal proceedings over support for Palestine Action in magistrates’ courts and crown courts up and down the country, in each of which it might be argued that the proscription was itself unlawful. There was a danger of conflicting judgments in different localities.
4) The legislation did not specify that an appeal against proscription could only be through POAC.
5) A judicial review did not close off an eventual process through POAC.

In assessing that a judicial review was a permissible route, he had declined to follow the judgment over the Kurdish Workers’ Party, because new court procedures (the Special Advocate nonsense) now permitted the courts to handle intelligence material, which they did not at the time of that case. Plus, that judgment was plainly wrong.

This was stated with such offhand disdain as to be striking. Of course judges can differ, but the bland contempt of the phrasing and delivery were unusual: “plainly wrong” to a judge of equal standing.

Which brings me to the unavoidable question of Chamberlain’s demeanour.

Sometimes my powers as a writer are not equal to the occasion. I have never seen anybody quite as self-satisfied as Chamberlain; he radiates assurance. He is the walking antithesis of impostor syndrome. It is worse than smug: there is a palpable gloat about him.

Judges in the Royal Courts are seated on an imposing tiered dais, many feet above the courtroom. Some judges attempt to diminish the distance; this can come over in different ways, from condescension to chumminess to intellectual equality.

Chamberlain does not bother. He is quite happy that our only view of him is up his nostrils.

He rattled through the grounds of appeal which the claimant had put forward.

Ground 1: Chamberlain was satisfied that Yvette Cooper had not acted for an improper political purpose but in the interests of national security.

Ground 2: That the proscription was a disproportionate limitation on freedom of expression was reasonably arguable.

Ground 3: It was not arguable that Palestine Action did not commit acts intended to influence the government, or that those who did were insufficiently connected to the organisation.

Ground 4: It was not arguable that Cooper had failed to consider significant information about Palestine Action or its classes of supporters.

Ground 5: Cooper did not err in giving weight to the views of Israel, to questions of financial loss and to other stated factors in concluding terrorism.

Ground 6: That Cooper failed to give weight to the need to oppose Genocide – this could be wrapped up in the balance question of disproportionate action under Ground 2.

Ground 7: The fact that only 3 of 387 actions were deemed by JTAC (the government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre) to be terrorist – this could also be wrapped up in the proportionality exercise under Ground 2.

Ground 8: That Cooper had failed to consult those affected by the proscription under her common law duty; including not consulting with Palestine Action nor with any pro-Palestinian group or individual, when she did consult with the Israeli Embassy, weapons manufacturers and others. This was a reasonably arguable point of law.

Ground 9: That Cooper had ignored her obligations to prevent discrimination under the Equalities Act by targeting a pro-Palestinian protest movement – this was not arguable.

So Chamberlain concluded that a judicial appeal was granted under Grounds 2 and 8 but dismissed on all other grounds. However, as you will have gathered, he had in effect accepted that Grounds 6 and 7 were also arguable points, but they could be taken as part of Ground 2.

Chamberlain then suggested to Raza Husain, lead KC for Huda Ammori, that he suspected he would wish to seek interim relief and expedition of the case. Raza Husain stood and said the claimant wished to request interim relief, which would suspend the proscription pending the judicial review.

Chamberlain did not answer, but he paused the court while printed copies of his judgment were handed round to the media.

Raza Husain then tried again, but Chamberlain first turned to discussion about when the judicial appeal might be heard. Ben Watson, KC for the Home Secretary, wanted a longer period for disclosure and was adamant that the process could not start until some security services-related event on 12 September, which could not be discussed in open court.

This key event and date were referred to frequently in hushed tones. Hackers and foreign spy agencies please take note: 12 September. Raza Husain pressed for the hearing to be as soon as possible. Chamberlain pointed out that the dangers of haste “cut both ways” – full disclosure was also in the interests of the client.

This was pretty ironic, as the key “intelligence” on which the case turns is never disclosed at all.

Ben Watson KC then said the Secretary of State wished to appeal the decision to grant judicial review. Chamberlain replied that could wait, as he did not wish to go into closed court at the moment.

Raza Husain then stood and said again that the claimant wished to renew the application for interim relief – with great patience and as though he had not said it four times already.

Chamberlain said he had expected this, as though it were the most tiresome thing in the world.

He then ignored Raza and said that he had decided to grant permission to intervene in the case to Professor Ben Saul, the UN Special Rapporteur “on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism”.

Raza Husain noted this and then said the claimant wished to apply for interim relief.

Chamberlain was somewhere else. He said that Professor Saul’s expertise would obviously be welcome, but the permission to intervene did not mean he could guarantee any particular time slot or consideration, which would be up to the court hearing the judicial review “which may or may not be me”.

My handwritten notes have a marginal entry that this was the 6th time Chamberlain had interrupted the application for interim relief. Finally Raza Husain got to embark on it.

Since the first request for interim relief a fortnight ago, over 1,000 more Palestinians had been killed in Gaza. 80 children had been starved to death. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, had made a detailed statement criticising the proscription of Palestine Action and specifically asking for it to be revoked.

Chamberlain asked what precisely he was seeking in law. Raza Husain replied it was a stay of Article 2 of the Order, the proscription of Palestine Action.

Chamberlain said that his previous judgment against an interim stay had already accepted there was a serious issue to be heard, on the effect upon freedom of speech. But that was insufficient reason for a stay.

Raza Husain said that Ground 8, which was now accepted, was extremely important. It was a very strong argument, so strongly based as to justify the suspension of a proscription not done by due process.

Chamberlain replied that he had already noted there may be an arguable case on grounds 4 to 8, in his judgment against an interim stay. The Court of Appeal had agreed with him against the interim stay.

Raza Husain then handed over to Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC who said people were being deprived of freedom of expression protections under Article X of the European Convention on Human Rights. The chilling effect was on thousands of people.

Chamberlain said that may be true, but there could be irreparable harm on both sides. He had to consider the harm that might be done to national security by the suspension of the proscription order for several months.

Blinne responded that it was ridiculous, on grounds of alleged national security, to arrest elderly people for holding a placard, keeping them incommunicado as terrorists and going through their property with swabs.

Chamberlain replied that the argument is that such action is necessary to suppress the organisation as a whole.

Blinne asked whether proscription is actually necessary to protect the national interest, as opposed to the large number of other legal remedies available to the Secretary of State?

There were three kinds of freedom of speech affected. These were… Chamberlain then cut her off, saying he had identified these as speech which was legal in support of Palestine, speech which was deliberately defying the law, and speech which fell in a grey area of interpretation.

This was one of many interruptions by Chamberlain who made very plain that he was not interested in hearing this argument again. Blinne appeared to be continually apologising for her own existence: “I don’t want to push this too far”, “I will only lightly touch upon it”, “I won’t take up much time”.

What she was really saying was: “I can see you are not in the slightest bit interested in listening to me”. And she was right.

But she gamely ploughed on. Blinne said that people making perfectly legal expressions of support for Palestine were being harassed by police owing to the proscription, and the grey area appeared to include people who were opposing the proscription of Palestine Action.

There was also a fourth category: the press. There was much evidence of a chilling effect of the proscription on what journalists felt able to write about Palestine, as shown in evidence submitted by John McEvoy and others.

Furthermore the situation was made worse by section 12.1.a of the Terrorism Act which specifically removed the need for intent in criminalised speech. Accidentally saying something taken to be supportive of Palestine Action could be an offence.

Chamberlain said that was for the police and the courts to deal with.

Blinne said it should not fall on the police and courts to make such judgments and it should not fall on ordinary members of the public to try and predict an invisible line they should not cross following the first ever proscription of a non-violent protest group.

People had been arrested for holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” That is not speech that threatens the security of the UK nor the safety of the public.

Raza Husain now took over again. He noted that the disclosure documents from the Home Office specifically stated that national security was not the “driving factor” for the proscription. They also specifically stated there was no damage to national infrastructure, nor any impact on national defence. The “attack” on Brize Norton was an act of vandalism which the Home Office documents disclosed would not affect the operation of aircraft painted.

This was fascinating. Plainly the Home Office internal documents show that what Yvette Cooper has been saying to Parliament and putting into the media is a lie.

Husain went on that the disclosure documents indicated that the timing of the proscription depended on factors including the local elections, a criminal trial, Israeli breaches of a ceasefire agreement, and a religious holiday.

That the proscription remaining in force is critical to national security is plainly therefore a nonsense, said Husain. At this point, Chamberlain interrupted him again.

My handwritten note only says “Chamberlain supercilious”. It had been obvious that Chamberlain had no interest in the arguments for interim relief. He had ruled on that two weeks ago, and as he is infallible, this was all a waste of time.

He did not actually say “talk to the hand” but his body language could not be more obvious. Occasionally he would relieve the ennui by interrupting Raza or Blinne mid-sentence.

Judge Chamberlain has never heard a sentence spoken that could not be improved by an interjection from Judge Chamberlain. Being a generous man, he declines ever to deprive the world of his great wisdom or make people suffer by listening to the uninterrupted thoughts of mere lawyers.

The effect of this is that we frequently can only surmise what the argument was going to be before it was intercepted and corrected. Chamberlain’s ability to predict what somebody was going to say and replace it with something more clever instead is uncanny – at least in his own estimation.

I do recall what Chamberlain said that caused me to write “Chamberlain supercilious”. He said that he supposed that Mr Husain would tell him that an interim stay was necessary and that Mr Watson would argue that it was dangerous.

Raza Husain was plainly annoyed. It is not just that I will say there should be a stay and Mr Watson will say the opposite, he said. It is the reasons which are important. He then continued to try to make progress, and was plainly angered by another interjection by Chamberlain.

“That’s not what I said”, Husain stated, plainly furious at being misrepresented. “That’s not what I said”, he repeated. Shortly after, he drew to a close.

Ben Watson KC for the Home Secretary had nothing to say in public that would defend the need for the proscription to continue in force. His argument both against the interim stay, and for the right to appeal against the granting of judicial review, was entirely based on secret intelligence. We therefore had to clear the court.

I don’t know what Chamberlain heard in private from the intelligence services. I should be very surprised if it was not about invented support for Palestine Action from Iran or fabricated plans to attack the Israeli Embassy, because that is precisely the kind of mendacity that Ken McCallum, Director General of MI5, considers it his patriotic duty to churn out on a daily basis.

As I waited in the corridor for court to resume, there was a rather touching moment. A Muslim patriarch with a most impressive white beard came out from the adjacent courtroom at the conclusion of another, unrelated case. He was followed by his large family.

He recognised me, shook my hand and stated “We are 100% with you, all of us. Let me know if there is anything we can do.” Turning round and gesturing to his family, he asked “Would you like us to stay here and support you now?”

I thanked him genuinely but declined, as there was absolutely no space in the courtroom. But I record it because little moments like that can keep us going in these difficult times. I was genuinely touched.

After 45 minutes of secret spook-fest inside the courtroom, honest people were allowed back in. Chamberlain then produced his decisions.

To overturn his judgment of 4 July not to grant interim relief from proscription, there would have to be a material change of circumstances in the interim. Three grounds had been advanced:

1) That he had granted permission on ground 8, which the claimant stated was especially strong. But this was not a material change as he had stated before that grounds 4 to 8 might be arguable.

2) The extent of interference with freedom of speech. But this was not a material change as he had noted the interference with freedom of speech at para 100 of his original judgment. All that had happened was that possibilities he had foreseen had turned into concrete fact.

3) That the Secretary of State had given no evidence of threat to the public. But this was not a change since 4 July.

So, said Chamberlain, there was no material change of circumstance and the request for interim relief was denied.

The Secretary of State’s application for Permission to Appeal was also dismissed. Watson would have to apply direct to the Court of Appeal.

Finally, the judicial review could not be further expedited and would have to be held in a convenient week after 10 November.

With that, the hearing concluded.

My immediate feeling was outrage at the chutzpah of Chamberlain in claiming that he had predicted the effects of the proscription on freedom of speech, when the exact opposite is true – he pooh-poohed them. He did indeed state at para 100 of his 4 July judgment:

The evidence I have seen established that the broad criminal prohibitions imposed by the 2000 Act, and the very long sentences potentially available for breach of them, can cast a long shadow over freedom of speech. This, however, is the inherent consequence of a regime which aims to disrupt and disable organisations which meet the threshold for proscription.

But that paragraph only refers specifically to people protesting

under the banner of PA

Chamberlain in fact entirely rubbished the notion that people protesting more generally on Palestine would be affected. He stated explicitly in para 96 that:

In my judgment some of the consequences feared by the claimant and others who have given evidence are overstated.

And in para 97 Chamberlain got wrong everything that was going to happen next. He states that it will remain lawful:

… to continue to express their opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere, including by drawing attention to what they regard as Israel’s genocide… They will remain free to do so in private conversations, in print, on social media and at protests.

Yet Chamberlain had now been given evidence that the police were in fact, since the proscription, persecuting people for precisely the activities he had said would still be allowed.

What is more, in the 19 July hearing for a judicial appeal, Chamberlain had actually accepted that he got this wrong in his 4 July decision on interim relief. Here are extracts from the report of that hearing by Mohamed Elmaazi for this blog:

“I think what you’re doing is, you’re saying, you predicted this,” Mr Justice Chamberlain told Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC – representing Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori the morning of 21 July at the High Court of Justice – “and what you’re doing now is sharing evidence that they have happened.”

The judge’s remarks were in response to Ghrálaigh describing example after disturbing example of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protesters being threatened with arrest — or actually arrested – across the country, ever since Palestine Action was banned as a terrorist organisation.

…Two weeks later, Chamberlain’s tone was somewhat modified. He appeared to accept that he may have been wrong. In fact, he actually reminded the parties of what he wrote by reading out part of his decision refusing permission.

Ghrálaigh told the court that the situation is “even worse” than even they had predicted.

So how did Chamberlain go from openly accepting that on 4 July he got this wrong, to claiming that there had been no material change as he foresaw everything correctly on 4 July?

The answer of course lies in those secret sessions with the security services.

To connect all this back into what is really happening on the streets, the police this evening detained hundreds of people in London, as they aggressively broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration.

In case anyone is wondering what London’s Met Police are up to, this evening they arrested multiple people on Oxford Street simply for protesting against the ongoing slaughter and starvation campaigns in Gaza.

Met Police are accomplices to the genocide. pic.twitter.com/22uXbPEk5v

— Naila (@BrownNaila) August 1, 2025

So while the granting of a judicial review represents some kind of victory, it is meaningless for now, as both the proscription and the repression continue – as does the Genocide.

I do not have any hope for success from the judicial review – all this is part of the smoke and mirrors of process and legality behind which the British Establishment seek to mask their complicity in the crimes of Zionism.

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The Starmer regime’s attitude to the law, both domestic and international, has been diseased by the doctrine of unquestioning support of Israel.

This morning the Handala became the second vessel flying the Red Ensign to be illegally seized by Israel, without a single word from the UK, which has a duty to protect its vessel in international waters. Indeed British law applies upon the vessel and the Metropolitan Police should be investigating domestic law kidnap of the passengers.

That is in addition to the international crime of seizing the vessel.

Uniquely the UK has declared itself unable to judge whether war crimes have been committed by Israel, absent a decision by an international court. That position has never been taken before, is notably not taken over Ukraine, and is at odds with Starmer’s self-declared ability to judge that there is no Genocide in Gaza.

It also ignores the fact that the International Criminal Court cannot judge, while Netanyahu ignores their arrest warrants. The International Court of Justice case on Genocide is in very slow process, but Starmer has no difficulty in pre-empting the court by denying Genocide.

Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has very roundly condemned the UK’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, and called on the UK government to lift the proscription.

He also has called the UK to amend its Terrorism laws to bring its over-broad definition of terrorism in line with international law standards. Turk stated:

I urge the UK Government to rescind its decision to proscribe Palestine Action and to halt investigations and further proceedings against protesters who have been arrested on the basis of this proscription. I also call on the UK Government to review and revise its counter-terrorism legislation, including its definition of terrorist acts, to bring it fully in line with international human rights norms and standards

This is a remarkable development because nobody could ever accuse Volker Turk of being anti-Western. In fact his passivity, as freedoms are extinguished across the western world in order to stifle protest against the Genocide, has been a source of frustration to the human rights community.

It is a sign of just how absurd is the proscription of Palestine Action, that even Volker Turk has now decisively spoken out against it.

Let me give you a plain example of just how absurd the law now is.

The three young women from the Shut Down Leonardo group, who drove a van into the security fence of the Edinburgh weapons factory which makes parts for the Israeli military machine, were brought to court on Monday.

They were charged with Malicious Mischief – a Scottish common law offence of serious vandalism – aggravated by terrorism.

This reduces terrorism from the gravest of crimes, to merely an aggravating factor. The driver of the van has even been charged with dangerous driving aggravated by terrorism, which when you think about it is a hilarious concept.

To further underline that nobody really believes this is terrorism, all three have been released on bail. Can you imagine accused who had carried out a genuine terrorist attack being released on bail?

I don’t want to downplay too far the dangers. Malicious mischief is a dangerous charge – being common law, there is no limit to the possible jail sentence it might carry, and furthermore lengthy jail sentences for it can be imposed by a judge without a jury.

I am unsure that this offence should meet the bar of malicious mischief anyway. The Crown Office charging guidelines state that damage must be in the thousands of pounds and damage must affect others. They read:

Malicious Mischief should only be recorded where widespread damage is caused, where the value of the damage is considerable, or where there is disruption of power supply, flooding or similar. There is no specific monetary amount where Vandalism stops and Malicious Mischief takes over but any value of damage would require to be significant (several £000s) before a crime of Malicious Mischief is recorded.

The example given is deliberately damaging power lines and cutting the power to people’s homes. I am not sure a slight dent in a fence meets the bar.

But I also want to look at the women’s treatment as an example of the pernicious treatment of protestors since the proscription of Palestine Action.

The three are not accused of membership or support of Palestine Action. Yet they were arrested under the Terrorism Act and treated as terrorists. They were taken to the specialist terrorist detention and immigration centre in Govan and held there without charge for six days.

Today, @CraigMurrayOrg informed a protest outside Govan police station that three women had been assured this morning that they would be charged only with non-terrorism offences. Yet, by 3pm, terrorism charges had been made. What, he asks, is going on?https://t.co/ClyoJdtUE9 pic.twitter.com/1DpGtCdskH

— GGEC (@ggectee) July 20, 2025

That means that some authoritarian judge must have twice secretly signed off on the continuation of their detention. Why?

They were held strictly incommunicado. I helped organise the best legal support for them, and for six days their parents, supporters and I tried to get a message to them to ask for this legal team, but we were not permitted to reach them.

The women’s parents phoned and asked the police to pass on to them a message about the lawyers organised for them. The police refused. The brother of one of the women went to Govan police station, and was also refused permission.

The lawyers we had organised phoned the police, and said they had been instructed by the families, but again the police refused to pass on any message.

The women had to make do with the bog-standard duty solicitor service. Now the police do not normally have the power to hold people without charge for six days and to keep people completely incommunicado during that time.

The Terrorism Act gives the police those powers. But it does not mean they are obliged to use them. It is extraordinary that they refused all requests to tell the women about legal support, and was plainly gratuitous victimisation, designed to prevent the women from mounting the best possible legal defence.

Yet it appears that – from a conversation with one of them – within detention the women were kindly treated, and they had the impression the police also did not think they should be there. Questioning was neither harsh nor particularly probing, and apparently by identifiable Scottish police officers.

That is consistent with the decision to grant bail – they are caught up in a system of terrorist legislation, but none of those operating the system really believes in the narrative.

On 19 July I was present at St Giles Cathedral as eleven people from Defend Our Juries held placards identical to those which have led to mass arrests across the UK, stating “I Oppose Genocide – I Support Palestine Action.” They were there for half an hour in plain view of police, but nobody was arrested.

After the demonstration, a group of demonstrators in front of the Scottish First Minister’s office held various signs and wore various T shirts identical to those which have caused arrest elsewhere, but again nobody was arrested.

In the week since, three people have been arrested and charged with terrorism offences, in relation to the above. One, Mick Napier (in the centre with the microphone in the second photo) was arrested as he left the protest on Monday 21 July outside Edinburgh Sheriff Court, for the bail hearing of the Leonardo 3.

Mick actually came up to me and said he thought he was about to be lifted, as policemen were following him around. Five minutes later he was. Since then, plain clothes policemen have been to his home three times in a campaign of intimidation.

While the Leonardo 3 are out on bail, they too are suffering from various methods of state intimidation, including the freezing of bank accounts and loss of access to money.

One distinct possibility is that the state is suspending the full implementation of legal action over the proscription, until the hearing for a judicial review of proscription is concluded, as the key argument in the judicial review is the disproportionate consequences for free speech of the ban.

Judge Chamberlain had said in his refusal to stay the proscription that the fears for suppression of free speech were being exaggerated.

I reported on these attempts to suspend the proscription of Palestine Action pending the application for a judicial review. I could now not be simultaneously at the Edinburgh Sheriff court for the Leonardo 3 case and at the High Court in London for the proscription case, but fortunately Mohamed Elmaazi was on hand to cover the High Court.

Here is Mohamed’s report, slightly modified for context:
BEGINS

“I think what you’re doing is, you’re saying, you predicted this,” Mr Justice Chamberlain told Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC – representing Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori the morning of 21 July at the High Court of Justice – “and what you’re doing now is sharing evidence that they have happened.”

The judge’s remarks were in response to Ghrálaigh describing example after disturbing example of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide protesters being threatened with arrest — or actually arrested – across the country, ever since Palestine Action was banned as a terrorist organisation.

Ammori’s lawyers, Raza Husain KC and Ghrálaigh, made the oral arguments advancing the Claimant’s request to appeal the ban.

Before one can appeal a governmental decision – such as the Home Secretary’s order banning Palestine Action – they require permission to appeal.

Only two and a half weeks prior, on 4 July, Ammori’s lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the same judge to temporarily delay the ban from coming into effect until they had a chance to fully make their appeal – should he grant them one.

They argued that, given the both predictable and boundless implications for freedom of speech and association, the court should stay the Home Secretary’s ban to avoid irreparable harm from occurring.

They warned of dire consequences; not only for Palestine Action and its members but wider members of the public as well.

Husain and Ghrálaigh had explained at the 4 July hearing that labelling Palestine Action a terrorist organisation would result in a “grossly disproportionate interference with the rights to freedom of expression and assembly” not only of its members but also for potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across the UK.

But Chamberlain largely dismissed the more serious of the concerns as “hyperbole”.

“In my judgment, some of the consequences feared by the claimant and others who have given evidence are overstated,” Justice Chamberlain wrote in his 4 July judgment rejecting Ammori’s request to temporarily prevent the ban from taking effect.

“It will remain lawful for the claimant and other persons who were members of [Palestine Action] prior to proscription to continue to express their opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and elsewhere, including by drawing attention to what they regard as Israel’s genocide and other serious violations of international law,” the High Court judge wrote.

“They will remain legally entitled to do so in private conversations, in print, on social media and at protests” he insisted before adding that therefore it “follows that it is hyperbole to talk of the claimant or others being “gagged” in this respect (as the claimant has alleged). They could not incur criminal liability based on their past association with a group which was not proscribed at the time.”

Two weeks later, Chamberlain’s tone was somewhat modified. He appeared to accept that he may have been wrong. In fact, he actually reminded the parties of what he wrote by reading out part of his decision refusing permission.

Ghrálaigh told the court that the situation is “even worse” than even they had predicted.

One of the key arguments made by the Claimant is that it could not have been Parliament’s intention to grant the Home Secretary the power to ban a direct action protest network such as Palestine Action. This is partially why they emphasised, as strongly as they did, the actions of the police across the country since the ban took effect.

Members of the public “with flags, badges, t-shirts, and posters that support Palestine, oppose genocide and/or satirise the Government’s position on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza” have been subjected to “heavy” policing and “other enforcement”, the Irish-born barrister explained.

“None of those had any relationship with Palestine Action” she emphasised. The examples Ghrálaigh outlined included:

1. Police stopping and asking protesters outside BAE systems factory to remove shirts reading “Free Palestine” because they may “breach the proscription order,” on 5 July.

2. An individual stopped whilst travelling through Dover by counter-terrorism police at the border for wearing a hat with “Palestine Solidarity badges” to ensure that they “weren’t a part of Palestine Action,” on 7 July.

3. A 55-year-old man arrested in Glasgow for wearing a t-shirt with the words “Genocide in Palestine, Time to Take Action” printed on it, on 12 July.

4. A 68-year-old man, also arrested in Glasgow, for holding a sign with the same text, reportedly charged and bailed under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, on 18 July.

One of the examples that Ghrálaigh spent some time on was the case of Laura Murton – engaged in a solo protest on 14 July in Canterbury – who was stopped and threatened with arrest by two armed police. Murton was holding a Palestinian flag and had cardboard signs that said “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide”.

The incident was recorded and a transcript was provided to the court. But Ghrálaigh thought it worthwhile to read out part of the exchange.

Officer: “What’s your intention here today?”
Murton: “My intention is to wave this flag and keep Palestine in the public consciousness right now.”
Officer: “So, do you support any prescribed group?”
Murton: “I do not I do not support any prescribed group. I support a free Palestine and the end of genocide.”
Officer: “Can I get your details?”
Murton: “Am I required to give them to you?”
Officer: “Well, you may be committing offence at the moment. So, I just need to make sure that you’re legit.”
Murton: “What offence?”
Officer: “Well, as you’re aware, it’s now become an offence to obviously support a proscribed group like Palestine Action”
Murton: “Yeah, but I don’t I am not I don’t have anything on which says that.”
Officer 2: “I appreciate that. But the way you behaving at the moment would lead me to believe that you maybe. Giving me suspicion or grounds to believe you could be.
Murton: “What suspicion? That I’ve got a sign that says free Gaza. Holding a Palestinian flag and I have a sign that says Israel is committing genocide?”

“She has never been part of Palestine Action,” Ghrálaigh told the court.

Chamberlain noted that the police were overstepping because they simply don’t understand the law.

“My Lord may say that the officer doesn’t understand the law” Ghrálaigh said. “Canterbury Constabulary has not issued an apology. The Secretary of State [for the Home Department] hasn’t said that this is a misapplication of the law.”

Chamberlain responded saying that “there will be cases where the police get things wrong”.

“There is no indication that they are getting this wrong because no one has said they are getting this wrong,” Ghrálaigh insisted, noting that the armed officers later told Murton “we could have jumped out, erased you, dragged you off in a van”.

The ban creates a “Conundrum of doubt” as to application of terrorism laws.

“I think what you say is that if you proscribe a group like this, then it creates a sort of conundrum of doubt, and that affects all law enforcement agencies who themselves have got to take decisions, some of which may be right some of which may be wrong, but it casts a shadow over a number of things which may be…fall under the scope of the offence?” Chamberlain asked Husain. “You would say that that effect is one of the things that would need to be taken into account when deciding whether the proscription is proportionate?” he added.

“Indeed” Husain responded.

Although the Claimant’s grounds of appeal are too extensive to outline in a single article, it is worth briefly visiting some of them. This is especially the case as they help explain the relevance of how anti-genocide protesters are being targeted and arrested since the ban came into effect.

The Claimant’s request for judicial review of the Home Secretary’s decision to ban Palestine Action was based on eight grounds.

They include that:

1) The decision was made for an “improper purpose, insofar as she exercised the discretion conferred by Parliament for the purpose of banning a civil society dissent group”.

2) Banning Palestine Action represents “an unlawful interference” with the Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion), 10 (freedom of expression), 11 (freedom of assembly and association) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination) rights in the European Convention of Human Rights “of the Claimant, of Supporters of Palestine Action, and of members of the general public who advocate for Palestinian rights”.

3) The Home Secretary “erred in law in concluding that: (i) Palestine Action committed acts designed to influence the UK Government; and further or alternatively (ii) Palestine Action was concerned in terrorism, in circumstances where those acts that may (quod non) satisfy the section 1(1) TA 2000 definition are isolated and peripheral to the organisation’s methods and aims”.

4) The Home Secretary acted “irrationally in taking into account considerations irrelevant to the decision before her (whether to proscribe Palestine Action); and in failing to take into account matters that were plainly relevant to that decision”.
Irrelevant considerations include her assessment as to whether Palestine Action’s protest is “legitimate” in her subjective view and whether their protests “caused loss of revenue”. “Lost revenue is irrelevant” to assessing whether a group should be banned, they argue.
Relevant considerations the Home Secretary failed to take into account include the fact that Palestine Action “seeks to prevent conduct which it and large sections of the public reasonably consider to be genocide and breaches of international law”.
The Home Secretary also failed to consider the impact the ban would have on free speech “in favour of direct action against arms companies supplying Israel” and on “low-level direct action and civil disobedience against arms companies by persons not associated with (or no longer associated with) Palestine Action.”.
She also failed to consider the availability of other civil and criminal options apart from a banning order.

5) The Home Secretary breached her own policy “which requires that a decision to proscribe be ‘proportionate’”. No adequate proportionality assessment was undertaken.

6) The Home Secretary “violated the principle of natural justice by failing to give Palestine Action the opportunity to respond to adverse findings prior to her making the decision” to ban them.

One key document government document referred to repeatedly by the Claimant is the “open” version of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) assessment. The JTAC document, which was obtained by the authors of this article, was repeatedly referenced by Ammori’s lawyers.

Ghrálaigh noted that the JTAC assessment, as part of its determination that Palestine Action has been involved in terrorism, focused on the August 6 2024 action targeting a key drone and surveillance facility for Israel’s largest weapons firm Elbit Systems, in Filton, Bristol.

The JTAC assessment notes that none of the activists, known as the Filton 18, have been charged with terrorism offences for the August action. Yet, in a truly Orwellian development, the Crown Prosecution Services have concluded that they should nonetheless be “considered by the court as having a terrorist connection.”

JTAC then considers that Palestine Action have “promoted terrorism” simply for “sharing footage” of the Elbit action in Filton, an action for which nobody has been charged with terrorism.

“JTAC has asserted that that was a terrorist incident and therefore that supporting it has become terroristic, it’s entirely circular,” Ghrálaigh exclaimed, in a clearly exasperated voice.

“They’re just looking at the statutory definition which includes ‘serious damage to property’” Chamberlain responded.

“Indeed” Ghrálaigh noted before raising an equally disturbing point.

Underneath the subhead “promotion of the 6 August attack” JTAC refers to Amnesty International and UN reports “about the Flinton 18 and their treatment and JTAC referring to references of those statements of concern, by Palestine Action, as evidence of them fitting the definition of terrorism”.

“We’re completely through the looking glass if sharing statements from Amnesty International and the United Nations can be construed as promoting terrorism” Ghrálaigh exclaimed.

“Well once again, JTAC is just looking at the statutory definition [of terrorism]” Chamberlain insisted.

“Well, my lord, the statutory definition cannot include sharing expressions of concern from Amnesty International and the United Nations… That cannot be any basis for determining whether an individual or organisation is concerned with terrorism!”

Significantly, even the JTAC assessment repeatedly states that Palestine Action “primarily uses direct action tactics, the majority of which would not constitute an act of terrorism” as defined under the Terrorism Act.

The JTAC document notes that it is “not the original document” but rather a “gisted version of the original” with “sensitive material removed or gisted”.

Blinne stated that any JTAC finding that Palestine Action has committed or promoted terrorism is not a legal finding and cannot supersede any decision by any jury or judge.

There are clearly many issues with how the authors of the JTAC report describe the overall context of Palestine Action’s behaviour, including by placing “Israeli genocide” in scare quotes.

The idea of criminalising an entire network as terrorist because, allegedly, at most three or four out of literally hundreds of actions could arguably be defined as terrorism – against property – is manifestly disproportionate, unjust and unlawful, the lawyers argued.

By JTAC’s own case, Ghrálaigh noted, there have been at most “four incidents out of 500” which even arguably satisfy some prohibited act under the UK Terrorism Act.

Even Chamberlain noted at one point that the JTAC “go out of their way to say” Palestine Action did not publicise or glorify violence against a person, in the one occasion in which it allegedly occurred.

A big part of the government’s argument against the High Court granting Ammori permission to appeal on Monday was that the courts were not the correct venue for the ban to be legally challenged. This is known as the “alternative remedy” argument.

The Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC) is made up of a senior judge and two other people, including potentially someone from the security services.

“Judicial review is a remedy of last resort and permission will generally not be granted where a claimant has an adequate alternative remedy,” the Home Secretary’s legal submissions state. “In the present case, there plainly is an adequate alternative remedy available to the Claimant. Parliament has created a bespoke process, which includes a right of appeal to a specialist tribunal.”

The Home Secretary’s legal team argued that Ammori’s “attempt to challenge the proscription of Palestine Action by way of judicial review at this stage subverts this process.”

Sir James Eadie KC, lead counsel for the Home Secretary, argued that the correct procedure would be for Ammori or anyone else to go to POAC.

The problem is, unlike a judicial review which can be expedited, POAC could take months or even years to come to a decision. Unlike the High Court, POAC cannot “stay” the banning order and thereby prevent further harm from occurring.

Furthermore, judicial review could potentially impact hundreds if not thousands of current and future cases by providing legal certainty as to what the law is, Ammori’s lawyers noted.

POAC on the other hand can’t make a determination about any of the arrests occurring now and in fact it can only make a decision as to whether Palestine Action should be deproscribed.

Chamberlain challenged Sir James to explain what would happen to all the different people currently being arrested if the High Court refused to hear an appeal and make a determination as to whether the banning order reflected a disproportionate interference with fundamental human rights of the public.

Many defendants could be brought before Magistrates’ Courts, possibly to face a jury in a Crown Court.
“What about them? What if one of those people want to say ‘well, the proscription is disproportionate?’” Chamberlain asked Sir James “Either they can or they can’t.”

“The problem is that either of those answers is a problem for you. If they can take the point we are saying that POAC isn’t exclusive. If they can’t you then have an even bigger problem… because the proportionality of the proscription never gets considered by any [authority]”

POAC should be the exclusive place to challenge the banning order, Sir James insisted, even if that meant in the meantime people were unjustly arrested, charged or convicted.

“Whatever deleterious consequences flow from that flow because that’s the judgement of Parliament that they flow that way” James argued.

Chamberlain asked “If I am thinking in terms of discretion, surely it would be much better for the proportionality of the order to be considered in judicial review proceedings rather than for them to be considered in a Magistrates’ Court?” the judge asked.

“The difficulty with my Lords’ inclination” St James responded “is that it risks unravelling the statutory regime. If you put in a human rights challenge everything that we’re discussing flows, which is intensely problematic because it would tend to undermine the statutory regime.”

Ghrálaigh had began her oral submissions in the morning leaving the court with no doubt as to what was actually at stake.

“Israel has killed at least 28 children. A classroom of children killed every day for 653 days [since 7 October 2023]. Israel has done this while damaging or destroying every single hospital in Gaza. Israel is starving the population of Gaza…. People are literally, medically, wasting away. They are starving to death.”

“1,000 people have been killed, including by bombs, while attempting to access humanitarian food” she said. There is near consensus in the human rights field “that Israel is now committing genocide as well as other war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“Israel is doing all of that with arms that are being provided” including parts for the F35 fighter jet “ by arms firms in Britain”.

“Direct action protest is not unlawful. It is certainly not terrorist. This proscription renders it so” Ghrálaigh asserted towards the end of the hearing, “even when it does not amount to criminal damage.”

Monday’s hearing lasted from 10:30am to around 17:00.

From around 15:30 to 16:30 the hearing became “closed” so that “closed” (i.e. secret) evidence and arguments could be presented by the state.

Ammori would not have been permitted to hear the closed arguments.

A special advocate was present on her behalf – not part of her regular legal team – and would have to do their best to challenge the closed arguments without consulting the applicant on whose behalf they are allegedly acting.

Members of the general public, including the press, had to leave the court and returned at 16:30 for the judge’s decision.

Chamberlain stated that, because of the complexity of the case and the fact that he heard “closed” evidence and arguments, Chamberlain’s decision as to whether he will grant permission for Ammori to appeal the ban will be made on Monday.

However, it must first be reviewed by the security services to ensure that he doesn’t improperly reference closed arguments.

The next hearing is scheduled for midday, Wednesday, 30 July. That is when we will discover whether Mr Justice Chamberlain will allow the appeal to be heard or not.

ENDS
Plainly this is yet a further example of how far into fascism the UK has gone. Chamberlain reviewed “intelligence material” for an hour provided by the security services, which almost with 100% certainty will include material provided by Mossad. This very likely will be fabricated and claim links between Palestine Action and Iran.

Huda Ammori, the Palestine Action co-founder who is seeking the legal review, will never be allowed to know the contents of this “intelligence” in order to challenge it.

Furthermore on Monday and Tuesday the security services will get to vet and amend Chamberlain’s judgment.

In the meantime, persecution is at a lower level until after Chamberlain’s ruling, but there continue to be outrageous acts by the police. I leave you with this one as an example of Starmer’s Zionist Britain: a wheelchair-bound man is lifted away by six policemen for wearing a T-shirt supportive of Palestine Action.

6 cops arrest & drag wheelchaired disabled man for Palestine Action t-shirt

Real felons roam free? pic.twitter.com/vzeaWCaIob

— Middle East Today🇵🇸 (@shekelazzam) July 27, 2025

I am now heading down to London for Chamberlain’s ruling.

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Nestlé and Cadbury are not the same organisation. They both have exactly the same purpose and extremely similar methods of achieving that purpose. Their chocolate products, retail technique, marketing, manufacturing process and ingredients are in essence the same kind of thing.

Not the same organisation

Police Scotland and the famously corrupt Crown Office (the Scottish prosecution service) are treating the Leonardo 3 as terrorists, on the grounds Shut Down Leonardo must be Palestine Action because it has similar aims and methods. That is the Nestlé/Cadbury fallacy.

[Note for pedants. I am using familiar competing brands with different ownership. The ultimate ownership of Cadbury is irrelevant here.]

The young women are being treated appallingly. They are held in the terrorism interrogation centre at Govan police station. The police have repeatedly refused the request by their families to pass on to them the name of the solicitors briefed to represent them, and have also knocked back that solicitor.

It appears that at least one of the women has had access to the local duty solicitor. That is a lottery but this particular solicitor does appear to be well motivated and doing their best.

All this for three young women who have never harmed anybody nor expressed any intention to hurt anybody, who slightly damaged a fence and sat atop a minibus. That anybody involved – judge, prosecutor, policeman, MI5 officer – goes along with the fascist absurdity of calling this “terrorism” is truly shameful.

That the crushing powers of the Terrorism Act and full panoply of state repression are being visited on innocent, unarmed, young, female protestors is a historic shame on Scotland.

The Lord Advocate sits in the Scottish Cabinet. The SNP should step in and stop this now.

I once again refer you to the decision in the London High Court of 4 July in refusing to delay the proscription of Palestine Action. This explicitly stated that direct action is not aggravated to terrorism.

Underpinning Chamberlain’s judgment of course is the repudiation of the Nestlé/Cadbury fallacy. Not all direct action for Palestine is by Palestine Action, just as not all chocolate is Nestlé.

It is the organisation, not the activity, which is proscribed.

To be terrorism, the Crown Office would have to show it is the same organisation as the former Palestine Action. As Chamberlain states, even involving former members of Palestine Action would not show that. It would need to show it is actually the same organisation active since the proscription of Palestine Action on 5 July.

By choosing to hold the women without charge under the Terrorism Act, reporting restrictions are not in place. I can therefore tell you there are no such links. Shut Down Leonardo is a distinct, and Scottish, organisation.

The Scottish Government has to wake up and shut down fascism in Police Scotland and the Crown Office. Otherwise the whole fabric of our society is changing and fundamental freedoms are being lost.

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The three female activists arrested on Tuesday for the direct action against the Leonardo weapons factory in Edinburgh are being treated as terrorists. They have been held now for 40 hours, without either being charged or being brought before a judge, under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act.

They are from the organisation Shut Down Leonaproprdo, which targets the firm which makes parts for the F-35 jets that massacre children in Gaza.

I spent all yesterday trying to organise their legal defence. By 8am I had found the right solicitor and briefed them on the case, including the crucial judgment by Judge Chamberlain in London’s High Court on 4 July.

Chamberlain’s judgment stated explicitly that future direct action protest, even where allegedly criminal, would not be aggravated to terrorism. It was Palestine Action, not the act of protest, which was proscribed.

But the three women are being held incommunicado in Govan police station, and there is simply no way to get information to them to ask for the solicitor I had briefed. The solicitors themselves went to the police station in Edinburgh and were blanked.

The solicitors were told they would be informed once the police knew what was happening. The police never got back to them, and did not even tell them the women had been moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow.

What has almost certainly happened is that the women have been allocated the duty solicitor. This solicitor will not know of Lord Chamberlain’s judgment of 4 July nor any of the background.

Equally crucially, it is extremely improbable that the duty solicitor would sit alongside the women during 48 long hours of interrogation. Frequently those arrested never see the duty solicitor at all, and just get a brief telephone consultation.

Once the duty solicitor has been assigned, another solicitor cannot get access, except at the direct request of those arrested. Who are held incommunicado.

This is crucial, because today they have to be brought before a judge – which will almost certainly be in Court 3 in Edinburgh Sheriff Court in Chambers St. They will very likely be charged with terrorism. That means they will almost certainly not get bail, and could disappear into prison on remand for well over a year.

AMENDMENT – I have since been advised by lawyers that the detention has to be extended today by judicial warrant, but under the Terrorism Act this can be done by a judge in secret without the girls being brought to court. They can still be kept in the cells in Govan.

But terrorism is an incompetent charge, following Chamberlain’s High Court ruling. That was under a fortnight ago and this is the first case. It is very probable that the judge, solicitor and procurator do not know that aspect of the ruling, and there is at the moment no means to put it before the court.

This should be treated as a case of criminal damage – from which many activists have been acquitted by juries – as stopping genocide is seen as ethically more important than very minor damage to a fence.

This photo of the “terrorism” in question makes abundantly plain that Starmer and Cooper are acting as fascists. Nobody could argue in good faith that these women are committing “terrorism”.

If properly charged, there is no sensible reason why the women should not be granted bail.

Everything Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh and Raza Husain stated would happen following the proscription of Palestine Action – for which they were pooh-poohed by Judge Chamberlain – is happening. As given above, Chamberlain stated that:

some of the consequences feared by the claimant and others who have given evidence are overstated.

But he specifically then states that direct action will not be aggravated to terrorism; yet here we have those engaged in the very first direct action after his proscription, being treated as terrorists.

Furthermore the proscription of Palestine Action is indeed causing the police to treat simple criticism of Israel as illegal, again directly contrary to Chamberlain’s judgment.

This video shows Kent police threatening to arrest a protester under the Terrorism Act – leaving them facing up to 14 years in jail – simply for waving a Palestinian flag and calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.

The direction of travel under Starmer is now clear. pic.twitter.com/qKz23CCtPq

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 16, 2025

Now, it does not matter whether the police follow through with these threats against free speech. The very fact they are making such threats – and are widely disseminated on social media making such threats – will have a severe chilling effect on many people’s right of free expression.

There is also a great deal of “concern trolling” in progress from fake left outfits like Novara Media, telling people to suppress protest in case they are prosecuted.

Today I am going to resume my efforts to get the Leonardo Three a proper defence.

On 21 July, Judge Chamberlain hears the case for a judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action. We will then learn, given the now-unequivocal evidence of the chilling effect on free speech, whether his denial that the proscription would chill free speech and protest, was due to a Panglossian view of our police and prosecutors, or a malevolent and disingenuous device to enforce the proscription.

UPDATE 2 It appears they currently have no legal representation and the police refuse to inform the women of the lawyers arranged for them. This is an outrage. The parents of one have also been told they have now been taken from Govan police station, but will not say to where.

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On Friday 4 July I headed back to the Royal Courts of Justice for the hearing brought by Huda Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action, on an application for relief from the proscription order against Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

Huda had applied for judicial review of the legality of this order. There is to be a hearing on whether a judicial review will be granted in the week beginning 21 July. What Friday’s hearing was about, was whether the proscription should be suspended until that hearing on whether permission will be given for judicial review.

This is called interim relief.

The legal precedents on interim relief are that this question should depend on three points.

The first is the probability that a full judicial review might ultimately succeed, in other words a preliminary assessment of the merits of the case.

The second is whether irremediable damage will be done to anyone in the meantime if the order is not suspended, should the result of the process eventually be a successful judicial review.

If those two hurdles are passed, the third is whether on a “balance of convenience” the irremediable harm that might be done if the Order is not suspended but ultimately is set aside on review, is worse than the irremediable harm that the public might suffer from losing the benefit the government intend by the Order in the interim, should the judicial review be denied or eventually confirm the legality of the Order.

At this stage I presume you are deciding whether to bother to read that six times until it makes some sort of sense, or whether this is going to be an impenetrably dull article full of arcane legal nonsense and you would rather browse something else.

I do sympathise.

On Thursday I had spent the train journey down from Edinburgh trying to get my head round all this; at one stage I had a lovely tourist couple from Hungary, who had the bad luck to share the train table with me, each kindly holding sheaves of documents and using their thumbs as placeholders.

I rose at 6am on Friday to ensure I would get into the courtroom. I was anticipating that, as with the Assange hearings or the ICJ hearings on Genocide, there may be a long queue waiting to enter. In fact there was nobody at all at 7am except me and a great many policemen.

I had a coffee opposite the court building, and a constant stream of policemen came into the coffee shop to buy coffee and doughnuts. By 07.45 there was not a doughnut left within a mile of the Strand.

Anthropologists should study this. British policemen have no history with doughnuts. They never occupied any place in Metropolitan Police culture. However a continual barrage of American films and television programmes portray policemen as doughnut-eating; so presumably British police think this makes them cool. In fact it makes them fat.

I shall not be paranoid about the fact the police kept photographing me as I hung round waiting for something to happen. They had nobody else to photograph. I tried to think of things I might do that look suspicious, to make their morning more interesting, but I don’t think my imagination had managed enough sleep.

I am not going to sugar coat this. I kept going to the cafe loo to vomit. In fact I kept having to go and order coffees in various establishments to have somewhere to vomit. I had been up most of the night being sick. I hadn’t eaten anything suspect, and I assume it was a virus. This continued into the afternoon, and once court proceedings started I would race away at less charged moments to be sick.

At 8.30am I went down the Strand to Boots to buy some medicine. On my return ten minutes later, I saw an entire fleet of police vans arrive and park up around Arundel Street, about 150 metres from the court but out of sight.

I counted 16 vans and 11 cars. The vans appeared to have 12 to 15 policemen in each. That was only around one side of the court. It was a stern reminder of the issues at stake, and that proscription as a terrorist group gives colossal police-state powers. There are penalties of 14 years in prison should you merely “appear to” support a proscribed group, or be “reckless” as to whether you say something that may cause someone else to support it.

This is the Terrorism Act 2000 as originally passed, by the horrible combination of Jack Straw and Tony Blair. It has since been amended to be even worse and make plain that no intent is required – if you “appear” to support, “recklessly” a proscribed organisation, you can be liable for 14 years imprisonment.

For some reason the amended version is not available on the official government website.

At 9am I entered the Royal Courts of Justice. I have spent many more days here than I would wish, and have described the place before:

“The architecture of the Royal Courts of Justice was the great last gasp of the Gothic revival; having exhausted the exuberance that gave us the beauty of St Pancras Station and the Palace of Westminster, the movement played out its dreary last efforts at whimsy in shades of grey and brown, valuing scale over proportion and mistaking massive for medieval. As intended, the buildings are a manifestation of the power of the state; as not intended, they are also an indication of the stupidity of large scale power.”

Well, here I was again. Previously I had only been in the more prestigious courtrooms, off the main hall, courts 1 to 15. This case was to heard in court 73. It was in the East Wing. This required an extremely complex feat of navigation through endless corridors where your footsteps echoed from the vaulted stone ceilings, through uncountable pointed arches, passing open courtyards and cloisters, up stairs and then down.

With every stage the arches got lower, the architraves shallower, the corridors narrower, as you receded from the show of pomp to the mundane exercise of power. By the time you were in the cramped L-shaped corridor outside court 73, you might have mistaken it for a 1950s unemployment benefit office in Solihull.

I was first there but other people started to arrive for the hearing and the corridor became crowded and uncomfortably hot – it was one of the hottest days of the summer. At one point I felt about to faint, and Deepa Driver came to my rescue with a bottle of water.

We were told the court would open at 10.15am. In the ensuing hour I twice lost my place in the queue as I had to leave to go vomit. This did enable me to have a quick chat on the stairway with Gareth Peirce about the prospects for the case.

I managed to get back towards the front of the queue each time, either because of immense personal charm or because people got out of the way as I smelt faintly of sick, you decide. But in the end it availed nothing as only accredited media were allowed into the courtroom.

I am famously not a journalist in the UK, as ruled by Lady Dorrian in the High Court of Scotland – it’s a long story – so I was not admitted. I was sent instead to an overflow room in court 76 on the floor above, where proceedings could be watched on live screens.

So for this section of proceedings I was not in court. While sound and picture quality were excellent, this was not the same as being in the court itself in terms of picking up the atmosphere and all the little things which the camera does not show. It has never happened to me before in all my reporting.

The hearing was before Justice Chamberlain. He has a liberal reputation. In a case earlier this year, he stated that he had no confidence in statements by MI5.

In cases involving secret intelligence, British “justice” has an extraordinary procedure whereby the defendant is not allowed to know the evidence against him, but can be defended on that point in a closed court, without the defendant, by a court-appointed barrister known as a “Special Advocate”.

Martin Chamberlain was such an advocate for ten years, and it is impossible for anybody with a slightest modicum of honesty to view a large quantity of intelligence reports without understanding that a high proportion of it is simply inaccurate.

I speak as someone who read an average of perhaps twelve secret intelligence reports every day over a 22-year career.

This is hopeful because the Secretary of State had indicated that in the substantive hearing, there will be intelligence reports on which the government will rely in its evidence against Palestine Action.

It has been widely leaked to the press that this includes intelligence reports that Palestine Action receives funding and backing from foreign states – which really is nonsense.

Justice Chamberlain also ruled against the legality of certain British arms exports to Saudi Arabia if they would be used against the civilian population in Yemen. He has argued for the strengthening of the freedom of speech provisions of the European Convention of Human Rights.

It was therefore not a shock that he was prepared to annoy the legal Establishment by agreeing at least to hear the case as to whether there should be a judicial review of the proscription. He might be the only High Court judge who would have agreed.

Proscribing Palestine Action had been an extremely high profile action by Starmer and Cooper in facing down mounting public anger at the Gaza Genocide, and seeking to restore the Zionist narrative that Palestinians and supporters of Palestine are terrorist.

For the court to prevent the proscription from taking effect subject to legal proceedings, would be massive news and a further blow to Starmer’s authority.

So the stakes were very high. Chamberlain gave no indication of this. He appeared enthusiastic to engage intellectually with the subject. He was eager and inclined to muse aloud in his discussions with the lawyers, interrupting sometimes almost out of excitement. He was like a slightly less annoying version of Robert Peston.

Raza Husain KC opened the case for the claimant, Huda Ammori, in the standard form by introducing both teams of bewigged barristers. This took some time as the teams were large – six barristers on each side, while Huda had in addition two firms of solicitors. It was one of the few immediate indicators of the gravity and import of what was happening.

But another was the demeanour of Raza Husain. Normally the smoothest of operators, he rather stuttered into his opening. This struck me throughout the case: Huda’s lawyers sounded slightly detached, not because they did not believe what they were saying, but because they could not believe that we were in a situation that required them to stand there and say it.

Husain opened by stating that civil disobedience has a long and honourable history in the UK. Very often people who had broken the law had been vindicated by history, such as the suffragettes. This was the first time in that long history that a civil disobedience group not advocating violence had ever been branded in law as terrorist.

Five UN Special Rapporteurs had written to oppose the proscription of Palestine Action, including Professor Ben Saul, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, who had asked to intervene in the case.

The special rapporteurs identified three fundamental flaws in the UK legislation. There was an overbroad definition of terrorism, an overbroad definition of a terrorist organisation and an overbroad definition of what constituted support for a terrorist organisation.

The overall effect of deprivation of liberty was characteristic of an authoritarian state.

Husain referred to the evidence of Andrew Feinstein. He had experience of the liberation struggle in Southern Africa and had become an ANC MP. Feinstein testified that Nelson Mandela himself had been designated a terrorist by the British state for decades, and that the anti-apartheid movement used all of the direct action methods used by Palestine Action.

Husain then turned to the evidence of Huda Ammori, who stated that in founding Palestine Action she had been directly inspired by the long history of civil disobedience movements in Britain and the many instances where courts had found such methods, including direct action against the arms industry, to be lawful.

Palestine Action had never included or targeted any violence or injury to persons. Their actions were focused on Elbit, an Israeli state-owned enterprise which was fundamental to the Israeli military system. Elbit themselves referred to their staff as “civilian soldiers”.

Husain continued that the proscription of Palestine Action was ill-considered, discriminatory, authoritarian law. It was contrary to both the common law and the Human Rights Act.

For 20 months the Israeli military had been committing acts which most genocide scholars and experts consider to be genocide. The population was now being starved, and the very distribution of humanitarian aid had been turned into a killing field, according to UNRWA.

To say that Palestine Action were committing terrorism was the precise opposite of what they were doing. They were rather seeking to prevent terror and genocide.

At this stage Judge Chamberlain interposed what appeared something of a non sequitur. He asserted that he would have the power to create an order suspending the operation of the proscription to a later date, and that this was accepted by the Secretary of State.

Chamberlain continued that this could be done one of two ways. He could issue a statutory injunction, or the Secretary of State could submit a fresh order to Parliament. The proscription Order also proscribed two other organisations, including the Maniac Murder Cult, so the suspension would need to be crafted to benefit only Palestine Action.

Judge Chamberlain stated that the need was to do justice or to cause the least injustice to persons affected in the interim should the case be decided the other way. The Secretary of State had not evidenced a national security reason for the proscription to be introduced immediately.

After this apparently heartening judicial intervention, Husain continued that the definition of Terrorism in the Act referred to serious damage to property. “Serious” in this case must be read, as argued by Professor Saul, in relation to international law standards. That was not a measure of financial loss, but damage that threatened further consequences such as to nuclear facilities or civilian aircraft.

The powers of the Secretary of State must be exercised proportionately within (ECHR) Convention rights, such as Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly. Therefore it could be that even if an organisation fell within the overbroad definitions of the Act, it still could not be proscribed.

Judge Chamberlain countered this by citing a Supreme Court ruling in another case (Gould) that overbreadth in legislation can be mitigated by prosecutorial discretion.

[To translate this into plain English, this means that because a law gives the state far too broad a power, it does not mean that the state will choose to exercise that power in all cases. Which gives of course power to the state selectively to prosecute only its chosen “enemies” using overbroad legislation.]

Husain countered that when the legislation was passed through parliament, the then Secretary of State had given a categorical assurance the power of proscription would never be used against domestic direct action groups. Yet here we are.

Judge Chamberlain responded that to reverse the proscription on the grounds Husain proposed, he would have to demonstrate that it led to an absurdity, citing another case (Hunt).

Husain replied, “It is absurd. It is absurd to pronounce a non-violent group terrorist.”

Judge Chamberlain said that what counted was whether if fitted the statutory definition of terrorism, not “some colloquial definition of terrorism”.

Husain said the statute specified that terrorism was designed to induce a climate of fear, influence the government or intimidate the public. None of these applied to Palestine Action.

Judge Chamberlain asked what was the purpose of the attack on RAF Brize Norton if not to influence the government? Palestine Action’s own submissions claim that Brize Norton supplies RAF Akrotiri which is supporting the Genocide.

Husain said that one isolated or sporadic incident did not define the purpose of the organisation, which was to disrupt Elbit and the arms industry. Palestine Action has a non-hierarchical nature. Ascribing responsibility for individual actions was complex.

Judge Chamberlain stated that in December 2024 the UK government had suspended arms licenses to Israel. Could it not be inferred that Palestine Action was attempting to attain this end?

Hussain replied that was not the design of the organisation. It is designed to disrupt the arms supply chain.

He then attempted to make further ground with his next point: documents showed that the Government had engaged both the Israeli government and Elbit Systems in the decision making process to proscribe Palestine Action.

Judge Chamberlain noted that some of these documents were heavily redacted. It was not plain what some of them meant.

Raza Husain referred to a document which involved the phrase “act of vandalism” and reference to “a certain person” intervening. It appeared this process had taken place in March. The decision had therefore been taken before the Brize Norton incident.

Judge Chamberlain asked why it would be unlawful to take into account the views of the state of Israel?

At this point Raza Husain dropped his papers and stared at Judge Chamberlain in incredulity. “Israel to interfere? In our criminal law? In our domestic process?”

Chamberlain responded that the government took a range of views into account. Why should it be unlawful to listen to Israel? Husain replied that interference by another state in domestic criminal matters was unconstitutional.

Chamberlain stated that there was nothing in the legislation that precludes taking Israel’s views into account.

Husain again asked incredulously, “To decide if it is terrorism?”

Chamberlain responded, “They are the victims. They suffered criminal damage.”

Husain said that does not go to the definition of terrorism. Chamberlain countered they could evidence the seriousness of the damage. Husain said he returned to the international definition underlined by Ben Saul. The damage to property had to go to the level of endangering nuclear installations or civil aviation. We were not in that territory.

Husain continued that while both Israel and Elbit were consulted on the decision to proscribe, no pro-Palestinian group had been consulted. Judge Chamberlain replied that the statutory basis may preclude any common-law right to due process. The Secretary of State had stated that pro-Palestinian groups could not be consulted, because in effect that would give Palestine Action 21 days’ notice of proscription, in which period it might take pre-emptive action.

Husain responded that may be a claimed reason, but how does it apply the law?

Chamberlain had rather destroyed the flow of Raza Husain’s argument. He now handed over to his colleague Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh KC. Readers of my blog last encountered Blinne when she held spellbound the International Court of Justice in the Hague, speaking for South Africa in the Genocide case against Israel.

There the world stopped and held its breath, and the dramatic architecture of the great hall of the Palace of Justice matched the occasion. Here Blinne stood in the much more modest circumstances of court 73.

A plain, three-tier dais of utilitarian wood occupied one long side for the judge and clerks. It is the kind of unnatural wood finish that you get on steel-legged stacking tables, a peculiarly dark reddish brown with unbroken black lines of grain running straight across.

The bench seats for the lawyers were in the well of the court, four rows of those, and then there was a small platform at the back for the public gallery, containing fourteen seats – occupied by the press, as was the jury box. Everything was the same kind of wood or veneer. Fitted bookshelves covered the walls around the court, and a very few contained cloth-bound tomes of law, but it appears that someone had forgotten to buy any books for most of them.

Judge Chamberlain was perched on the top dais of the bench, in a rather austere black gown with a neat pressed linen collar known as “court bands” around his neck, which featured two long tabs of about six inches hanging down in parallel at the front. He rather resembled a Danish Lutheran preacher.

I was in court 76 watching the large screens, as though in the world’s dullest sports bar. The construction was identical to court 73, of the same wood, only the entire thing was three times the size. We observers occupied the well of the court. There was a public gallery of 48 seats which was almost entirely empty.

Had the hearing been held in court 76, everybody could have been in the actual courtroom itself. Why the large courtroom was the overspill court and the proceedings were in the tiny courtroom is an interesting question in itself. The result was that no members of the public were in the actual court, despite their right in law to attend.

I raced out to be sick again before Blinne started, so for her first three minutes I am grateful to the whispered advice of my neighbours.

Blinne was addressing the irreparable harm that would be caused in the next two weeks were the proscription not to be set aside pending the next hearing.

She said that the context of the situation in Gaza was that the Palestinian people there faced annihilation and genocide. The UN Secretary General himself had described what was happening as “A stain on our common humanity”.

The explosive force that had been landed on the tiny area of Gaza was the equivalent of six Hiroshimas. There was firm evidence that Israel was now conducting daily massacres of those Palestinians attempting to obtain food for their families.

Judge Chamberlain interposed that, since December 2024, it is not permissible for the UK to provide any arms to Israel save for F-35 parts. Blinne replied “That’s a big “save” when people are being massacred”. There was much evidence of continuing arms supply and other forms of military support.

This massacre is what Palestine Action have been attempting to disrupt and prevent.

If the proscription goes through, how will you differentiate between Palestine Action supporters and other people who hold similar views and take similar actions?

Irreparable harm will be done to protestors. Some will carefully follow the law. Some will attempt to walk the invisible tightrope on what expressions of support for Palestine are permitted and what expressions are not, and will fall off. Some will openly defy the proscription as an act of civil disobedience – and some, such as Sally Rooney, live in other jurisdictions.

This was all the unprecedented impact of the unique proscription of a grassroots protest group.

Three key offences would be created immediately upon the order coming into effect.

It would be an offence to belong, or profess to belong, to Palestine Action

It would be an offence to invite, or to recklessly encourage, support for Palestine Action

It would be an offence to arrange a meeting to support Palestine Action or to hear from a member of Palestine Action.

All of these carry a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.

Wearing clothing or a badge associated with the organisation were offences of strict liability, bringing a six-month prison sentence.

Any person convicted would be branded a “terrorist”. A policeman could arrest at any time on suspicion of these offences. They could stop and search. They could enter and search people’s homes and remove property. All of these without a warrant from a court.

Any refugee convicted of any of these offences is deemed a danger to the community, justifying expulsion from the UK.

All of this will chill free speech. Those who have supported Palestine Action in the past will fall under suspicion for actions which were perfectly lawful at the time.

Judge Chamberlain interrupted to say that this would not happen; the general principle of non-retrospectivity would apply.

Blinne said that Palestine Action was a non-formalised body. How did you become a member, and how do you stop being a member? How can you prevent being suspected of being a member if you take direct action on behalf of Palestine without any connection to Palestine Action?

Direct action and civil disobedience were not necessarily against UK law. A great many of those charged for direct action by Palestine Action had in fact been acquitted by the courts, and therefore their actions had been perfectly legal. There had been few actual convictions. The basic activity was not illegal.

Any organisation, for example one called “Yvette Cooper”, could be “suspected” by the police of being Palestine Action. [A new pro-Palestine direct action group has been announced named ironically after the Secretary of State.]

How would the police decide what symbols showed support for Palestine Action? Were red boiler suits now banned? Judge Chamberlain attempted to pooh-pooh these questions, and Blinne retorted that people had already been arrested for carrying Palestinian flags and wearing keffiyehs. There had been an actual trial for carrying a banner showing a palm tree and two coconuts.

What about republishing? What of those who had Facebook photos wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt that might still be seen? How could you argue for deproscription of the organisation if any mention were likely to bring you under “reasonable suspicion” of support?

Judge Chamberlain replied that in due course he would like to hear the government KC, Mr Ben Watson, address the question of the legality of arguing for deproscription.

Blinne said that the harm caused during proscription would be irreparable.

Palestinians will continue to be killed while the efforts to disrupt the arms supply to kill them would be banned.

The chilling effect on free speech would be extreme. There were hundreds of thousands of supporters of Palestine Action on Twitter and other platforms. There would be mass mobilisation. Over forty organisations opposed the proscription, including Liberty and Amnesty International (both had representatives in court).

This was a fundamental attack on free speech. Judge Chamberlain responded that they would be able lawfully to advocate for deproscription. Blinne replied that they would not, because this would give rise to the offence of appearing to give support.

Judge Chamberlain asked her to specify which offence was that? Blinne replied that under Section 12, giving intellectual support to the organisation and appearing to support the organisation were both covered.

Judge Chamberlain persisted, asking how arguing for deproscription can be confused with this. Blinne responded that the answer is that nobody knows how it will be applied, and therefore it will chill free speech. The definition of support for terrorism is really widely drawn. It is therefore certainly capable of being interpreted in that way.

What would be the consequences of simply saying “I think Palestine Action did the right thing in protesting the Genocide”? The consequences of straying the wrong side of the invisible line were potentially extreme.

Furthermore what would be the position of lawyers acting for Palestine Action in future? Would they be permitted to take instruction? How could they be paid?

In addition to violating Article X of the ECHR on freedom of speech, there was a clear violation of Article XIV on non-discrimination due to the discrimination in selecting a pro-Palestinian direct action group for proscription, when similar direct action groups concerned with other subjects of protest, such as climate change, had not been proscribed.

According to the Human Rights Act it was unlawful in domestic law to violate the European Charter of Human Rights. Articles X, XI and XIV were all engaged. [Freedom of Speech; Freedom of Assembly; Non-Discrimination.] There was clear Strasbourg case law that neither violence nor financial loss can abnegate Article X and XI rights.

Judge Chamberlain replied that the Secretary of State stated that there was “significant damage to key national infrastructure” affecting “components that supply UK and allied forces” and “damage that amounts to hundreds of millions of pounds”.

We broke for lunch, and I reacquainted myself with the bathroom. The sound of my dry retching reverberated around the vast, unflinching stone vaults and halls of the Royal Courts. I trust it was not taken as an expression of support for Palestine Action.

I emerged into the sunlight, and for the first time I saw the large demonstration outside. I did a number of interviews for media all around the world. I had intended to give a quick speech to the crowd explaining what was happening inside, but the protest was extremely lively and involved bare-chested young men rapping and a great deal of dancing, so I figured nobody would want to hear from a fat old man in a suit.

Was at Pal Action protest at the Royal Courts of Justice, and surprise surprise who comes out?@craigmurray pic.twitter.com/j4gcAvO8o9

— Matt Ó Branáin #PardonAssange (@MattOBranain) July 5, 2025

There was a massive police presence, and I witnessed two instances of young men being dragged from the fringes of the crowd by the police and searched – for no reason I could discern, other than an attempt by the police to provoke a violent reaction that would discredit the protest.

When we restarted at 2pm, Raza Husain noted that the Secretary of State had submitted no argument as to why the proscription had to enter into force immediately.

He continued that the Statutory Instrument proscribing Palestine Action was not to be viewed as having the same authority as primary legislation, and had undergone a very truncated parliamentary procedure. Amendment had not been possible.

It was more properly characterised as an executive instrument subject to parliamentary veto.

Judge Chamberlain agreed, and noted it had also included the Maniac Murder Cult and it had not been possible for Parliament to separate the groups.

Ben Watson KC then rose to argue for the Secretary of State. He stated that the proceedings amounted to a substantive challenge to the proscription itself. But it showed no serious issue to be heard.

Parliament’s intentions are very plain in the Terrorism Act. It sets out clear procedures to add organisations to the list. These had been followed.

The legislation sets out at section 5 the method for appeal against proscription, to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission (POAC). The route for appeal is, in the first instance, to the Secretary of State, and in the second instance to POAC.

Judge Chamberlain intervened that when the legislation had been passed, there had been no mechanism by which a court could see secret intelligence. [The inference being this is why POAC was established]. Such a mechanism now existed. At this stage, it was ambitious for Watson to argue that there is no serious issue to be tried by the court.

Watson responded that there is fundamental uncertainty as to whether the court can do this. Chamberlain responded that fundamental uncertainty means there is an issue to consider. The kernel to be addressed today was, are the grounds arguable? If so, what is the balance of convenience?

Watson responded that this case is still narrower than the PKK case. Here there are no fundamental grounds to claim that the order is wrong. Yet the court in the PKK case still concluded that proscription was an issue for Parliament.

This was a constitutional point. Any appeal must go to the Secretary of State first. The issues are precisely the same as in the Tamil Tigers case. All of this is finally in the territory of POAC. If interim relief were granted, the organisation would not currently be proscribed, and so POAC would not be able to look at the case.

In instituting POAC as the route for appeal, parliament had made no provision for interim relief pending appeal, so it plainly was not parliament’s intention that such relief should be possible. This court has no power of judicial review of proscription. Parliament had provided an adequate route in POAC. The first appeal is to the Secretary of State.

Watson was working on the basis of boring the court into submission by repetition. He resembled an insufficiently trained yoga teacher.

Judge Chamberlain asked Watson to confirm that his argument was that if an organisation that clearly does not fall within the definition of terrorism were to be proscribed, they would have no remedy other than to appeal through the Secretary of State, and would remain proscribed while they appealed?

Watson concurred, and went on to argue that if there is an unassailable case that you are doing serious damage to property, then Article X freedom of speech protection is much diminished.

Judge Chamberlain asked whether the chilling effect on Article X and XI of proscription – including on people not involved in criminal damage – might be serious. Watson replied that in the Tamil Tigers case it was ruled that the chilling effect on speech on Tamil self-determination does not have substantial weight against the suppression of terrorism.

Watson said that it was difficult for Palestine Action to argue they were not trying to influence government, when they had targeted an RAF base. There was no evidence that consultation with Israel and Elbit Systems by the Secretary of State had amounted to improper influence.

Judge Chamberlain concurred, stating that it was necessary to consult with the victims to assess damage. Watson agreed: it was important to take into account the views of foreign governments in the fight against terrorism. Any argument that the public consultation provision had not been properly enacted could not be sufficiently strong to void the proscription.

Watson said that the fundamental kernel, that Palestine Action is engaged in terrorism as defined in the Act, had not been challenged by the claimant. You cannot grant interim relief on the basis that the definition in the statute is too broad.

The Secretary of State has no obligation to consider the interests of the organisation that is being proscribed. There are no rules on who can make representations to the Secretary of State nor when they should be heard. Parliament did not put in any judicial controls on the Secretary of State. This was deliberate.

Judge Chamberlain remarked that if the justification stands for not giving notice of proscription, that this would allow Palestine Action to make preparations to continue, then the same justification stands for not consulting on the question.

Watson replied that the grounds for objecting to proscription are not substantial anyway, so there could never have been any worthwhile representations on behalf of Palestine Action in any consultation.

Watson said that there was secret intelligence evidence about Palestine Action that could be tackled at a later stage through the Special Advocate process. In the meantime what they had was the Secretary of State’s evidence and her statement to parliament.

The police need to be able to implement the law of the land. The courts must not trespass on the rights of parliament, nor appear to do so.

Judge Chamberlain, for the first time, seemed annoyed. “I am not going to worry about that” he said, “you have conceded that this court has jurisdiction”.

Watson said that this was a grave matter of national security, where the courts conceded to the judgment of the executive.

Judge Chamberlain backed down immediately. He said that national security consideration weighs heavily in the scale. “I cannot say that this does not impinge on national security if the Secretary of State says so and that belief is rational.”

Watson continued that POAC is the statutory scheme for appeal,. The public interest represented by the Secretary of State outweighs any private interest of groups or individuals.

Judge Chamberlain agreed. He said the Order exists because the Secretary of State believes it will provide the public with certain protections. If the Order is suspended it will be denied that protection.

The Secretary of State had said that people will be able to continue to oppose Israel’s actions; they will be able to continue to describe those actions as Genocide or other breaches of international humanitarian law.

Judge Chamberlain then suggested that if someone who had once been a member of Palestine Action decided to spray paint on something, that would not make it any more or less lawful than it had been before.

This time Watson refused to agree. He asserted that there can be no private right to do something criminal.

Judge Chamberlain was now enthusiastically strolling around his own fantasy world where the police and prosecutors are kindly and reasonable. “There is no reason for anybody to regard somebody’s past association with a now proscribed organisation as blameworthy”, he suggested.

Watson replied that the government’s determination is that the organisation is terrorist. So the existence of stigma is irrelevant. It already exists. The priority is national security. In conclusion, Watson spoke the chilling words that made me jump in my chair.

Watson said precisely: “We accept of course that it is Draconian: and deliberately so.”

[Say that to yourself out loud, and consider what kind of state it is where the government can openly say this in court.]

Blinne then rose to rebut. She quoted Andrew Feinstein, that the methods of Palestine Action were identical to those of anti-apartheid activists. Feinstein stated that the majority of Palestine Action activists he had encountered were not terrorists, but pacifists. All of the actions were capable of being protected under Article X and Article XI.

Not every act of damage to property is criminal. There are many examples of Palestine Action activists being acquitted. Judge Chamberlain interjected that they will only in future be illegal if under the aegis of Palestine Action. Blinne retorted that Palestine Action protest outside arms factories regularly. If the same activists turn up to protest, they will be accused of being Palestine Action.

The case of the Tamil Tigers is not apposite, she continued. The Tamil Tigers were engaged in armed action. The Secretary of State had said that all actions of the Tamil Tigers had an axis to violence. That is absolutely not the case here.

Statements in favour of Palestine Action before proscription would be interpreted by the police as giving suspicion of continuing support. What is Palestine Action, other than a loose network of people who want to see Elbit shut down?

The Secretary of State says that somehow people’s Article X and XI rights will magically be protected. This will not be the case. Palestine Action is not being proscribed on the grounds that it rejects the tenets of a democratic society. It rather opposes corporate complicity in fundamental breaches of international law.

There is clear Strasbourg case law that you do not lose protection of the ECHR because of any violent act by another member of the same organisation.

Timing and context are key. Palestine Action are attempting to prevent the most serious crime of all in the middle of a Genocide. In the case of the Christian Democrat Party of Moldova, the Strasbourg court had found it was wrong to ban them without notice just 21 days before an election. Context and timing are important.

People were today protesting outside this court. Those continuing to protest this proscription in the next two weeks would be branded as terrorists, were interim relief not given now.

Ben Watson now interjected – I am not sure on what basis – to say that the correct appeal against proscription was through POAC.

Raza Husain then closed for the claimant. He stated that Palestine Action were a group of people who put their bodies on the line between genocide and its planes and weapons.

The Secretary of State had been granted extra time to give evidence of what harm would arise if the interim relief were granted, and she had given nothing. The harm might be the deprivation of liberty to literally thousands of people.

Arrests were foreseeable. This was a civil disobedience movement. There will be an I Am Spartacus wave. Civil disobedience is not illegal but has a long and honourable history in British society. It will carry on.

The public interest is indeed engaged. It does not all fall on one side. Hundreds of thousands of people support Palestine Action. There was real and lasting damage to the right of the public to freedom of speech and to protest.

That closed the hearing. It was now 3.15pm on Friday 4 July. Judge Chamberlain said that he would attempt to return with his decision by 5.30 pm.

Outside the drummers were still drumming and the dancers were still dancing. I gave a few more interviews. I really wasn’t feeling well at all at this stage.

At 5.30pm we were back in the court for Chamberlain to give his decision. He started that he had considered the likelihood of success of the appeal for judicial review, and had decided that the only ground where there was arguably a strong case to be heard was that of disproportionate interference with Article X and Article XI rights under the ECHR.

Some of the other grounds may be plausible, but he was not in a position to judge that today.

However, he considered that the claimant had not demonstrated that irreversible harm would be caused if interim relief were not granted. Therefore he was not suspending the proscription, which would come into force at midnight according to the Secretary of State’s order.

He assumed that the claimant would seek leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal. He would not grant leave to appeal. However the claimants could try to ask the Court of Appeal for leave to appeal, this evening before the proscription came into force.

Chamberlain then disappeared through the door behind his chair. The legal team were left staring at his detailed judgment.

His incredibly detailed judgment. It is 24 pages long, and runs to 104 paragraphs, many of which have sub-paragraphs.

Let me try to offer a perspective. I have a reasonable claim not to be stupid. I topped the civil service exams in my year and became the UK’s youngest Ambassador. It has taken me eight solid hours to write this article to this point, not including probably twice that in thinking time.

Chamberlain’s judgment is over twice the length of this article so far. Produced in two hours, at the rate of almost one paragraph per minute? Plainly the bulk of it was written before the hearing – or written by somebody else. Just a thought.

With the disturbing insight that this was all a charade, I joined the Palestine Action legal team who were having to digest this judgment and work out how to launch an appeal to the Court of Appeal after 6pm on a Friday evening.

Otherwise the proscription took effect on the stroke of midnight.

Despite being extremely experienced, nobody on the team had ever been through a similar procedure. Judges are not given to hanging around the courts out of hours, and indeed are strongly inclined to find reasons to wrap up proceedings in trials and hearings early on a Friday. And this was in the middle of both Wimbledon and a Test Match…

Having such a large legal team finally made sense, as they all, including four barristers who had not spoken, scanned through the judgment looking to find grounds of appeal.

Raza gave instructions to telephone the duty clerk of the Court of Appeal and find out if the duty judge were available. The question then was whether the duty judge would be prepared to sit and hear an appeal as a single judge, or would want a panel of three.

The call was made, while we several times had to fend off security guards who were attempting to clear the building. Huda had been giving instructions via videolink, and it was only now that I discovered there was in fact someone from Palestine Action present with the team.

One of the legal team said to me mischievously “If they ask you to leave, we can ask Huda to say that you are with Palestine Action – pause – she had better add until 11.59pm”.

Within five minutes of the call being made, a security guard came to us and told us we were to move to Court 4, the court of the Lord Chief Justice. We had to gather up all the files and move there, a long trek through the bowels of the building, and at one stage diving off on a shortcut up a staircase that nobody in the team knew existed (there are over 100 staircases in this extraordinary building).

We entered Court 4 at around 7pm. We were now in the grandest area of the building. Forgive me if I recycle a description of this courtroom I have used before:

“It is very high, and lit by heavy mock-medieval chandeliers hung by long cast iron chains from a ceiling so high you can’t really see it. You expect Robin Hood to suddenly leap from the balconied gallery and swing across on the chandelier above you. The room is very gloomy; the murky dusk hovers menacingly above the lights like a miasma of despair; below them you peer through the weak light to make out the participants.

A huge tiered oak dais occupies half the room, with the judges seated at its apex, their clerks at the next level down, and lower lateral wings reaching out, at one side to house journalists and at the other a huge dock for the prisoners, with a massy iron cage that looks left over from a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

This is in fact the most modern part of the construction; caging defendants in medieval style is a Blair-era introduction to the so-called process of law – as indeed is the Terrorism Act.

All the walls are lined with high bookcases, housing thousands of leather-bound volumes of old cases. The stone floor peeks out for one yard between the judicial dais and the storied wooden pews, with six tiers of increasingly narrow seating. The back of each bench has a little ledge for those behind to place their papers. Watching people attempt to balance laptops on a five inch shelf is quite amusing.”

Gareth turned to me and said that we were honoured to be in such a historic spot, which had already witnessed some of the world’s greatest miscarriages of justice.

As we sat ourselves down, out of the door at the back of the dais appeared in all her majesty the Lady Justice of England and Wales, Lady Carr, who was flanked by Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis.

Evidently these three had just been hanging around the court at 7pm on a Friday evening, and happened to be available to hear the request for permission to appeal. I had a moment of crystal clarity. I had spent the whole day participating in a charade, and even the wonderful legal team around me were at base also just participants in that charade.

Lady Carr opened by grumbling loudly that there was very little time, they had not seen the supporting evidence, they had only just received Chamberlain’s judgment, and had no idea what were the purported grounds of appeal. She asked Raza Husain if he had grounds of appeal, and what were they?

She reminded us that an appeal was not a rerun of the case but had to find specific errors in law by Judge Chamberlain. “Where do you say that he erred?”

Raza Husain evidently had not been expecting to present the grounds of appeal instantly, and the team had only just finished reading the judgment and started thinking about how to appeal it when we had been called to Court 4. He was now instantly standing in front of the Court of Appeal.

He extemporised that there were three grounds of appeal at least. The judge had erred in law in that he had failed to take into account the weight of mass arrests in assessing the balance of convenience argument. He had failed to insist upon evidence of the urgency of immediate imposition. He had failed to accord due weight to the failure of the Secretary of State to consult before proscription.

Lady Carr said that the court would hear an application for permission to appeal. Skeleton argument for the appeal must be submitted in one hour, by 8:15 pm, and the court would hear oral arguments at 9pm and endeavour to deliver judgment before midnight.

This was somewhat confusing. They were granting a hearing for permission to appeal, not agreeing to hear an appeal. So if they granted permission, there would have to be a further stage of the actual appeal hearing. How could that be done if their decision on permission to appeal were not given much before midnight?

There being no time to retire anywhere else, the legal team starting beavering away immediately on the benches. At 9pm we were listening to the appeal.

Raza Husain said he would make five very brief points.

1) Civil disobedience had a long and honourable history in the UK.

2) This was the first time a non-violent direct action group had been proscribed as terrorist.

3) Five UN special rapporteurs had written opposing the proscription.

4) Huda Ammori had been inspired by the suffragettes.

5) Andrew Feinstein compared the methods of Palestine Action to the liberation struggle against apartheid.

And there were five grounds of appeal

1) The judge had erred in law in saying that there would not be substantial irreparable harm if the proscription were not delayed. There were undisputed consequences of arrest for expressing support for Palestine Action – this harm was deprivation of liberty, loss of employment and stigma.

2) The judge had afforded insufficient weight to the up to 14-year prison sentence for simply stating “I support Palestine Action”.

3) The judge had given undue weight to national security considerations, where no evidence of urgency had been given.

4) Blinne took over for Ground 4. Chamberlain had erred in law in failing to take proper account of the impact of Articles X and XI of ECHR.

Lady Carr interjected that Chamberlain did say there were Article X and XI grounds for the application for a judicial hearing against proscription. Blinne responded that however he had failed to give this sufficient weight against national security in the balance of convenience exercise, and that he had erred in saying that future evidence on this will be forthcoming from the Secretary of State. He had to do the balance of convenience exercise on the evidence before him, today.

If the proscription order came into account, it would have a chilling effect on protests outside Elbit factories, even from people unrelated to Palestine Action. It would chill free speech on Palestine. Any action for Palestine might be claimed by the police to be support for Palestine Action, and people would be jailed on remand.

Palestine Action was an extremely loose organisation. What constituted support was extremely unclear in such a case, and there could be hundreds of arrests.

5) Raza Husain took over again for ground 5. The availability of an appeal to POAC does not oust judicial review. There were consequences for the common law right of free speech and for articles V and X of the ECHR.

Ben Watson stood to respond for the Secretary of State. He said Chamberlain’s judgment was measured and detailed. The claimant in this appeal had not challenged Chamberlain’s finding that the Secretary of State had rightly designated Palestine Action as concerned with terrorism.

They had not appealed against the crucial argument of the public interest in allowing the law of the land to take effect. Their criticism of the judge’s decision goes only to weight afforded to varying factors, on only one of the strands which the judge was balancing.

The court could not give weight to the threat of mass flouting of the law. The claimant was merely attempting to relitigate matters which had been properly considered by the court.

Chamberlain said that there was a serious issue to consider under Article X and XI. That is not the same as saying there was a strong case. The judge was not depending on future evidence, he was merely indicating that further evidence might come.

Lord Justice Edis asked Watson how he responded to the argument that not all members of an organisation should be held responsible for the actions of an individual. Watson replied that Palestine Action were responsible for a long pattern of criminal activity.

On rebuttal, Raza Husain said there had been no denial that the judge had failed to weigh the correct counterfactual against Article X and XI. Political speech on Palestine is protected speech. It attracts significant Article X protection and must continue to do so.

Blinne added that the appeal is not about what will happen to people engaging in unlawful conduct, it is about what will happen to people who are engaging in conduct which would be perfectly lawful were it not for the proscription. That is how the effect on Article X must be measured.

This was the first ever proscription of a non-violent movement. The harm was that it would criminalise the Article X protected actions of law-abiding people.

That concluded the appeal, at about 9:30 pm.

In less than an hour the judges were back with their verdict. Again it was available in writing, and despite Lady Carr making a point of fussing about typos due to the haste, I quite simply do not believe that it was produced in under an hour. It contains 52 paragraphs, some of which have many sub-paragraphs.

It is possible to make an argument that Judge Chamberlain had pre-written most of his judgment based on the documents and skeleton arguments that had been submitted in advance and only had to make some amendments to reflect the oral hearing.

But the Court of Appeal were supposed not to have known they even had a case until 10 minutes before they sat. I simply do not buy the speed with which these judgements were produced.

Lady Carr set about delivering the judgment. She said that these remarks were just for information; the written judgment was the actual judgment and anything she said did not vary that.

The proscription had followed an attack on RAF Brize Norton. The Order had been passed by each House of Parliament.

Judge Chamberlain had refused to grant a stay of the proscription and had refused to give permission to appeal and had refused any stay pending an application to appeal.

The merits of the decision to proscribe are not a matter for the Court of Appeal. Nor is the court looking into the claims of Palestine Action. The Court of Appeal is only considering whether Judge Chamberlain erred in law.

On the principle of balance, Judge Chamberlain was right that the court must give great weight to national security and the executive’s approach to it.

Judge Chamberlain was entitled to the view that individuals must obey the order while it was in force.

It will remain lawful to express opposition to Israel or to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“No person will be prosecuted in relation to conduct before proscription”.

There was no prospect of a successful appeal and permission to appeal was therefore refused.

Raza Ali rose to request permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. Lady Carr responded that plainly that could not happen before midnight. A written application should be submitted by 2pm on Monday.

There followed a horrible display by Lady Carr of sickly congratulation. In response to a correction by Blinne to the accents on her name in the judgment, Lady Carr gushed about her “lovely name.” She congratulated all the lawyers effusively on being brief and helpful, and said the case “upheld the best traditions of the bar”.

What it upheld, of course, was a further step into authoritarianism. This was the next morning: an 83-year-old priest arrested for supporting Palestine Action.

———————————

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The political Right throughout the Western world is baying to lock up all opponents of genocide. The very notion of free speech is under fundamental attack. We need to take a long hard look at the question of imprisoning people for saying things.

Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old mother of a 12-year-old, was imprisoned for 31 months on 17 October 2024 under the Public Order Act 1986 for publishing material intended or likely to cause racial hatred. There is no doubt that she did this. In an immediate reaction to the stabbing to death of three young girls in Southport, she published a tweet calling for the burning down of hotels housing asylum seekers, specifically with the inhabitants still inside. This is a textbook example of hate speech directed at a vulnerable group.

Connolly’s remarks were part of an emotionally charged social media storm in the immediate aftermath of the murders, which included false allegations about the killer’s status and religion. There is no doubt that Connolly crossed a line of incitement to violence. She is an avowed racist – she has a history of racist tweets – but I do not think she should be in jail.

PRISON DOES NO GOOD

My first argument is that prison does no good whatsoever, and it will likely reinforce Connolly’s racism.

When imprisoned for four months for publication myself, I learnt that our overcrowded prisons are chock full of the left-behind members of the working class – 80% of them addicts by official reckoning, and still higher in my experience – born into poverty and addiction, and ill educated.

Many were there for domestic violence yet they were now locked into a community which supported and reinforced their violence. I personally witnessed inmates recounting their crimes against women to other prisoners, who sympathised and told them the world was crazy when you could be locked up for keeping women in their place or punishing them for infidelity. The general consensus was that women needed to be kept down more so they would not go to the authorities.

We punish people by locking them into the one community which is guaranteed to support and encourage their wrongdoing: then we are alarmed at re-offending rates. Over 50% of prisoners who serve sentences of less than three years, are caught re-offending within six months. I have no doubt that Lucy Connolly has found the company of those who are fuelling her racism and hate. What good is this doing to anybody?

Our system of criminal justice, with massively overcrowded jails and the highest proportion of our population in prison in all of Europe, is a Victorian abomination, a senseless retributive regime. Anything that you have ever heard about education or rehabilitation in jails is a lie. In practice no such functioning schemes exist.

The authorities are concentrated entirely on ever-greater movement and living-condition restrictions for prisoners, to keep a lid on the overcrowding powder keg and try to staunch the flow of drugs into jails. To give one example, books were forbidden to criminal prisoners in my jail lest their pages be soaked in drugs.

Prisons are themselves a form of institutionalised violence. The beds made from solid iron sheet and two-inch-thick non-resistant foam mattresses are a deliberate corporal punishment – I am left with permanent back pain.

This is an inappropriate, worthless and brutal regime. In Lucy Connolly’s case, I make no apologies for saying that when you separate a mother from her child, you are also punishing the child, and imposing an anguish upon the woman which men can only partially comprehend.

Imprisonment should be a last resort to protect society from those who otherwise pose a definite risk of physical violence to others.

A rational society would find far more useful means to punish Lucy Connolly.

Community service would let her still be with her child and provide an element of restorative justice. She should also be made to spend a substantive amount of working time – as in several months – in the company of immigrants and learning about their lives, perhaps in some of the Mosques that play a large part in our communities. She should meet asylum seekers and hear their stories.

Education and restoration should be central to any form of justice. The irony is, of course, that Lucy Connolly’s supporters are, by and large, the last people who would support such reform in general. That should not deter us.

THE LIMITS OF FREE SPEECH – IMMEDIATE HARM

The classic position in western jurisprudence is that free speech should be limited where it is liable to cause immediate harm, which cannot be countered in reasoned debate by other arguments because there is no time. That is the basis of the famous judgment by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1919 that

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic

Here it is not stating a falsehood which is the problem. It is doing so (assuming knowingly) in circumstances which may cause immediate physical harm through the effects of panicking a crowd. This judgment established the “clear and present danger” test.

Which is the same principle as set out by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty:

No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions. On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.

Here it is plain that immediacy and context are important. Saying something in one circumstance may be acceptable but the same words may not be acceptable in another circumstance. It separates debate from direct incitement to violence.

This nuance is completely lost, for example, in the UK’s Terrorism Act. The proscription which is in train will make it illegal to argue, even in calm debate, that Palestine Action is engaged in legitimate protest and ought not be banned. Just expressing that opinion, even in an academic setting, might get you imprisoned. Mill would be appalled.

Superficially, Mill’s example may seem to indicate that Lucy Connolly is indeed highly culpable. She was urging people to set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, and right-wing rioters did in fact attempt to do just that. But it is not quite that simple. Lucy Connolly tweeted on the day of the murders. No mobs had yet gathered and the attacks on hotels were still several days away.

Hindsight is wonderful. It is not plain that there was a “clear and present danger” that this would come to pass, at the time she wrote – and she deleted her tweet after a few hours. She actually put out tweets against the violence once it started some days later.

Furthermore, to compare Mill’s 19th-century circumstance with a 21st-century social media post requires care. Mill was imagining someone in the position of a leader – able to access the platform as an orator to the mob, or alternatively to get an article or letter published in a newspaper. In the melee of social media, Lucy Connolly is perhaps more akin to a member of Mill’s mob than the person urging it on to action.
Connolly probably did not envision at the time of her tweet that mobs actually attacking hotels was likely to arise some days later. She deleted her tweet after three and a half hours, once she calmed down, and did not repeat it when actual mobs existed. Once they did, she put out other tweets including “I know people are angry, but violence is not the answer” and “Protest yes, violence no”. She also apologised for having spread disinformation.

Connolly’s initial tweet was an incitement to violence, and goes beyond contribution to public debate on the role of immigration in events like the Stockport media. It is culpable and I think on balance does rightly fall foul of the law on those grounds. But I think it is rather marginal on the clear and present danger test. The evidence is non-existent that any member of the mobs who went out a few days later were in fact critically motivated by Connolly’s tweet. This lack of clear causality should be given more weight (which is not a necessary step in the legislation).

My conclusion: the conviction is correct as it was incitement to violence, but the sentence is disproportionate to the seriousness of the offence.

Let us then compare this to the statements by the group Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, which are under investigation by the Police and which the entire British Establishment has rushed to condemn.

This is entirely clear: “Death, death to the IDF” chanted to a live crowd at Glastonbury clearly does not pose an imminent threat. There is no clear and present danger. Nobody in the Glastonbury audience was in a position immediately to attack the IDF, and I can see no serious argument that anybody in the TV or online audience would immediately attack the IDF, who was not already in a position and of a mind to do so.

The argument that attacking the IDF is a legitimate aim I cover below.

There is simply no case to prosecute the members of Bob Vylan on the basis of imminent threat or “clear and present danger” from their speech.

HATE SPEECH

The classic liberal defence of all speech which does not pose imminent danger has been replaced in much of the Western world in recent years by a tendency to ban “hate speech”, generally defined as speech expressing hate towards a protected group defined by gender, race, sexuality or other qualifications.

That intellectual shift against free speech has been broadly driven by the “Left”, particularly by anti-racist and feminist groups. However the incorporation of this principle into the Public Order Act of 1986 was enacted by the Thatcher government. Thatcher had a thorough understanding of the dynamics of hard political power.

I am generally not in favour of the banning of “hate speech”. I agree with Mill that the answer to an incorrect opinion is to engage with it and refute it, not to ban it. Banning it is often counter-productive as it both glamourises the opinion and prevents its proper deconstruction.

This is where I shall part ways with much of the Left, which will believe that Lucy Connolly should be locked up for hate speech. But here we encounter the problem of who defines what is hate speech?

The Right is screaming that “Death to the IDF” is hate speech that indicates a generalised hatred of Jews. There are several answers to that, including that the IDF is a military force committing Genocide and is by no means supported by all Jews.

But in a real sense, once you have got into the argument of why Lucy Connolly’s hate speech is wrong and Bob Vylan’s speech – characterised by the political Establishment as hate speech – is right, you have already lost. You are making distinctions of geopolitical analysis. Essentially you are arguing as to whether the political value judgments of the left or the right are correct.

With the state as, literally, the judge, that argument will only be resolved one way in the real world.

It was in fact the push from the left for hate speech laws which destroyed the western consensus in favour of freedom of speech which does not initiate immediate physical harm. Which was extremely stupid of the left, because it should be blindingly obvious that once you hand the state the power to imprison for speech, it is the left who will be the primary target.

Most foreseeable of all was the use by the Zionist lobby of its power in the state to seize upon the criminalisation of “hate speech” to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism and attack pro-Palestinian sentiment. The Left made this rod for their own back when they led the charge against freedom of speech
In my view, political opinions, even ones I find hateful like racialist attacks on asylum seekers, ought not be criminalised but ought to be tackled in Mill’s field of debate. An opinion with which we disagree should be countered by argument and refutation, not by banning its expression.

At present, the toxic mix of culture war and criminalisation of speech is giving far too much power to a state which I in no way trust.

PRACTICAL EFFECTS

We are currently facing a unified neoliberal political Establishment which is introducing more and more restrictions on protest and speech and which delights in locking up its opponents.

This same Establishment has used, throughout the world, the tools of state control of economies to massively increase the wealth gap between the billionaires who are actually in control, and the 99.5% of society who are reduced to helots.

As a result of the social tensions thus unleashed, there has been a fracturing of support for the traditional political parties, which have all been captured by this neoliberal agenda. However the Establishment has managed to defend itself by the use of media and social media to channel popular discontent at popular poverty and loss of status into hatred for immigrants. Scapegoating has been simple but deadly effective.

The factors of social alienation which drive support for right-wing movements like Reform are the same factors which, more properly understood, motivate the Left to campaign for greater social equality. Excessively punitive actions against the misled foot soldiers of the right simply feed in to the right-wing narrative of dispossession and unfair treatment.

In short, the imprisonment of Lucy Connolly has been the best recruiting tool that alt-right leaders like Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson have been given.

We should not fall into this trap.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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If you thought RAF jets were owned by the RAF, think again.

The RAF squadron targeted for a repaint by Palestine Action due to its involvement in supplying Israel’s genocide, does not in fact belong to the RAF at all. It belongs ultimately to Polygon Global Partners LLP, a Hedge Fund.

Through a chain of seven cutout companies, which I will take you through, the direct ownership is with Airtanker Ltd, which gives its address as RAF Brize Norton. It owns, maintains and operates the RAF’s Voyager refuelling aircraft, which have been providing mid-air refuelling to the Israeli Defence Forces as well as carrying, in their cargo role, munitions to the IDF.

Note that Airtanker Ltd states that five of the Voyager aircraft while available to the RAF: “can also be made available to other parties. This can include providing military capability to other nations…”.

Whether the aircraft have been operated by the RAF on behalf of the Israelis, or whether they have been “provided to” the IDF direct, is an interesting question. Is this designed to build in plausible deniability for the UK government?

Eight of the Voyager Aircraft though fully painted in RAF livery, actually are the property of Airtanker Ltd.

It is not plain whether the other six – also the property of Airtanker Ltd but only occasionally used by the RAF – are also in RAF livery. The company does not show any photographs of jets not in RAF livery.

So who owns Airtanker Ltd? Well, the “person with significant control” on the Companies House register is Airtanker Holdings Ltd. They own over 75% but less than 100%. It would be interesting to know who owns the rest.

So who owns Airtanker Holdings Ltd? Well, it is owned – more than 25% and less than 50% – by Airbus, which provides the actual aircraft, and more than 25% and less than 50% by Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd, which presumably provides finance. As both own under 50% it would be interesting to know who owns the rest, and why.

So who owns Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd? Well, Equitix Capital Eurobond 6 Ltd is owned by Equitix Holdings Ltd, a company at the same address in the City of London.

So who owns Equitix Holdings Ltd? Well, Equitix Holdings Ltd is owned by Pace Bidco Ltd, a company curiously enough also at the same address.

So who owns Pace Bidco Ltd? Well, Pace Bidco Ltd is owned by Pace Topco Ltd, a company which turns out to be also at the same address!

So who owns Pace Topco Ltd? Well, here, we finally get the name of a human being. It is a Mr Reade Griffith whose address is given as Polygon Global Partners LLP, 4 Sloane St, London.

On another page of the register a Mr Reade Eugene Griffith is given as a Director of Pace Topco Ltd, presumably the same person. This would also appear to be the same individual as the E Griffith Reade who is listed as – amongst other interests – the 10% owner of Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.

Polygon is a hedge fund. It would appear likely from the register to be either Polygon or Griffith’s umbrella hedge fund Tetragon that owns these liveried RAF aircraft. We have therefore simply no idea who the investors are: it could be anyone from BlackRock to Kim Jong Un. The true ownership is deliberately shrouded in secrecy.

This spaghetti tangle of ownership of RAF aircraft is rather surprising to those of us who naively believed that RAF military aircraft belonged to the RAF, and that the hundreds of billions of pounds the state lavishes on “defence” was used to do things like buy military jets, rather than make rich financiers still richer.

The long tree of subsidiary companies is not only to disguise ownership. At every single stage it provides opportunity for tax avoidance and for other forms of corruption, like consultancy contracts or directorships handed out to the contacts or nominated go-betweens of the politicians and senior civil servants. If you saw a company called Pace Bidco Ltd were giving a remunerative consultancy to the son of an ex-government minister, or to a firm registered to his local landlord, why would that ring alarm bells or connect to the RAF?

To be plain those are entirely hypothetical examples. I am not accusing Pace Bidco Ltd of anything. I merely explain the system.

Defence spending is more prone to corruption than any other form of spending and that is why venal politicians are always extremely keen to boost it. No UK politician has ever proposed to increase defence spending by more than Keir Starmer, who wants to lift it by £120 billion a year.

The RAF’s Voyager aircraft are effectively being provided under the Private Finance Initiative. Exactly how much money the hedge fund managers and this string of companies are taking out of the defence budget is hard to know.

One particularly surprising fact is that it is plain that the private companies are also providing the RAF ground crew. Who employs the flight crews is not entirely clear.

That such an obviously rotten and corrupt arrangement exists in the RAF I had no idea. Some British military personnel are in fact contracted mercenaries. It gives new context to the active RAF involvement in the Genocide in Gaza.

Palestine Action’s excellent act of resistance in vandalising this Hedge Fund Air Force has brought all of this to our attention. Which is yet a further reason to be grateful to Palestine Action.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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The Phantom Ceasefire is simply Trump’s off ramp. He announces a ceasefire and bows out, having been advised that regime change would only be achievable with extreme military commitment and massive cost in lives and treasure.

You can never trust the Israelis – or indeed the Americans – with either a ceasefire or a negotiation. Reuters reported that a senior Iranian official had confirmed the ceasefire had been agreed. Israel then repeated precisely what I had seen in Beirut – massive carpet bombing of the city just before the 3.30am deadline for the Israel/Iran ceasefire.

That picture is Beirut literally minutes before the ceasefire came into effect. Israel then proceeded to violate the ceasefire anyway, and has done so virtually every single day in the past months of ceasefire, often several times a day, racking up over 1,000 violations.

The Iranians very sensibly responded to last night’s carpet bombing with a missile salvo. Israel has claimed a violation of the ceasefire (as ever the aggressor is the “victim”) and fighting has resumed.

I believe this may be for the best. Although it does benefit Netanyahu – who for domestic reasons is desperate to avoid peace – the Israelis would never have observed a ceasefire and would have used it to replenish their exhausted missile defence systems, with help from the USA, UK and the other genocide participants.

The Iranian “attack” on the US airbase in Qatar was purely performative. They used old, expendable, low-level missiles certain to be shot down and warned that they were coming. It was part of the structure of Trump’s off ramp.

So the question now is whether Netanyahu can drag Trump back into the war. I am hopeful he will not. Trump will be able to say that he has, with his strikes on Iran, redeemed the hundreds of millions of Zionist dollars that got him elected. I guess we will discover in the next week or two whether that money really is all that was motivating him, or whether Musk was right about Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. For what it is worth, I think that Trump’s street cunning and independent access to East European models were probably enough to keep him out of that trap. But we will see,

Without the USA, Netanyahu has opened a war that will not remain popular very long. Keeping Israel’s settler colonists – who are hilariously cowardly when faced with anybody who can actually fight back – locked in as human shields is going to have interesting social consequences for the terrorist entity.

Meanwhile the shooting of Palestinians in the Gaza food queues and the dispossessions and killings in the West Bank continue apace.

The UK government is sending planes to bring back dual UK/Israeli nationals. That includes active IDF participants in genocide.

FCDO official guidance reads:

Lammy has made a decision to airlift back those Israeli passport-carrying colonists who are also British nationals. This directly contradicts British government longstanding policy of not assisting dual nationals in their country of second nationality. This policy is normally rigorously enforced, even (and perhaps especially) in times of war. There is a huge contrast between the red carpet for Israeli war criminals returning to the UK and the appalling treatment of thousands of British Sudanese families in the 2023 evacuation from Khartoum.

The Iranians have already done a great service to humanity by puncturing the facade of Israeli invincibility. They have also laid bare the appalling Zionism of Arab ruling elites and their sectarian propagandists, in a way which they believe the Arab populations understand. The ramifications of the last two weeks following Israel’s attack on Iran will play out over years. But this is part of the process of the disintegration of the colonial settler state.

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Israel and the USA have each attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations. Iran must not fall for it a third time. Negotiation is dead.

Israel attacked Iran during negotiations between Iran and the US, with the next scheduled meeting just three days away – including assassinating the lead negotiator.

Trump then gave Iran a two-week ultimatum to agree a peace deal. Iran held one foreign-minister-level meeting with the UK, Germany and France and scheduled a second meeting. Trump then attacked Iran with 11 days of the ultimatum still to run.

Plainly the Zionist West not only has zero interest in peace, it is engaging in morally abhorrent levels of dishonesty and deception, attacking under a false flag of truce. The idea that Iran should now return to “negotiation” with such appallingly deceitful interlocutors is risible.

It is also plain that the USA has no intention of stopping the attacks. Trump’s statement said that further attacks will follow unless Iran stops fighting. Plainly the objectives of the USA are not in truth merely the destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme, but total victory for Israel in the war it has started with Iran. Trump’s demand of “unconditional surrender” still stands and the aim remains, as I have stated, regime change to install the “Shah” with a Sunni Prime Minister.

Zionist regimes have been installed in Lebanon and Syria in the last six months. They already existed in the Gulf states and Jordan. The aim to install a Zionist regime in Tehran is overreach by Netanyahu and Trump. You cannot bomb the Iranian people into Zionism.

The extent of bombing, and the extent of death, that would be required for regime change in Iran is astonishing. Contrary to neoliberal expectation but obvious to anyone with a brain, the attacks on Iran have rallied support for its government. I find nothing more nauseating than the Western “feminists” who are campaigning for war against Iran to bring about regime change.

Not only would regime change involve the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women in war, there is no doubt whatsoever that Western destruction of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq made the lives of women in those countries much worse, both in terms of infrastructure and conditions of life and also in terms of women’s position in society.

The attempt to gaslight the public with abject lies about Iran’s nuclear weapon capability is so blatant a repeat of the Iraqi WMD scam that I am astonished they dare to try it. The attacks on Iran are completely illegal – and I am quite sure will in fact lead to Iran changing its mind and deciding to possess a nuclear weapon, which will be achieved within five years.

You can have watched or listened to hundreds of hours of BBC broadcasting on the current war on Iran, and never have heard once that Israel possesses nuclear weapons. The levels of propaganda are truly extreme.

The attacks on Iran are illegal. There is no doubt of that. Iran faces a monumental struggle, but has no choice but to fight.

In the meantime not a single day has passed when Israel has not shot and killed Palestinians in Gaza in the queues for food. The Genocide goes on, and the US and Israel have succeeded in turning the world’s attention and bringing their Western satraps back into line, just when the Gaza Genocide was alarming politicians internationally by its blatancy.

I see much futile discussion as to whether Israel is controlling the US or the US controlling Israel. Plainly the answer is both; there is a deep symbiotic relationship of the political classes in both places. The key point is that the Israel settler colony carries an insupportable weight in the policy decisions of Western politicians. Like all colonialism – and as outlined by Lenin and Hobson – this is because colonialism benefits the personal interests of the wealthy and military classes but is a burden on working people.

I find Hobson offers an invaluable perspective to look at the Israel settler colony. Long-term readers will know that I have stated that J A Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study had more effect on my understanding of the world than any other book. I strongly recommend it (there is a new edition with a foreword by Jeremy Corbyn).

I am a thinker and writer who tries to use my experience to explain and analyse what is happening. I am also a campaigner and activist. What I am not is a political organiser. Those who put together the March to Gaza or the Freedom Flotilla have my admiration, and have skills which I do not possess.

I therefore put forward this idea with no apology that I am not the man to organise it. The British sovereign base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is fundamental to the logistics of the attacks on Iran for the UK, USA and Israel. A gathering of thousands of activists in Cyprus to close down the base appears to me the most viable and useful option to cause real problems for the neoliberal genociders.

The Akrotiri base has a very large perimeter and far too few RAF Regiment troops to guard it against thousands of determined activists. The government of Cyprus is unlikely to defend the British sovereign base from peaceful activists. Cyprus is a very easy place to reach.

As our panicked rulers seek to ban Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” – despite the fact they have never injured anybody – it seems to me essential we continue and indeed increase the resistance. The very notion of “terrorism” has been debased to include journalism and peaceful protest. We must not be terrified into allowing fascism to prevail.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Western governments’ abandonment of the very system of international law which they created was embodied in a tweet from the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which sought to justify the illegal Israeli attack on Iran as “Targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities”.

The former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority, Mohamed ElBaradei, was left to point out that far from a justification, it is specifically against international law to target nuclear facilities.

He refers to Article 56 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions. While we are on the subject, you might also wish to see article 54:

It is worth noting that the exception on destruction of foodstuffs at Article 5 refers to the right of a country which is defending against invasion, not which is invading another country. It means that it is not illegal for a country to destroy crops and stocks of its own, on its own territory. Which is to say a scorched-earth policy against an invader is legal. It does not give the right to refuse supplies to a population under occupation.

The German justification was of course just part of a chorus of Western support for the Israeli attack on Iran, in which numerous Western leaders all parroted a co-ordinated line about “Israel’s right of self-defence”, even as Israel conducted an entirely illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran during peace talks.

There are dozens of examples, but I give you the openly genocidal von der Leyen as one:

Spoke with President @Isaac_Herzog concerning the escalating situation in the Middle East.

I reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people. At the same time, preserving regional stability is vital.

I urge all parties to act with maximum restraint and work…

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) June 13, 2025

On Thursday, before Israel attacked Iran, I attended the UN General Assembly debate on Palestine. This had limited utility as it mandated no specific measures and did not suspend Israel from the United Nations, the one truly useful action the General Assembly has the power to implement.

The motion called for an immediate ceasefire and for states to take “all necessary measures”, but that is the last we shall hear of it. It passed by 150 votes to 12, with opposition from the United States, its de facto colonies and the small far-right collection of Argentina, Paraguay etc.

But there was one interesting point in the Statements, known as Explanations of Vote, of the national delegations. These too were very routine, with Arab states that have not the slightest intention of actually doing anything, condemning Israel and western nations all launching blood-curdling condemnations of Hamas (yes, really, that was still their priority, 60,000 dead Palestinian civilians later).

But the UK explanation of vote made one point that absolutely nobody else made. It stuck out like a sore thumb. The British Ambassador to the UN stated that

“While the UK voted in favour of this resolution, we wish to clarify that our long-standing position remains that there is no legal obligation on states to ensure respect for international law by third parties.”

When the EOV was published, this part of the statement was bolstered by a reference to Common Article 1 of the Geneva Convention. I do not recall her actually saying this and it is not in my notes.

Common Article 1 (so called because it is present in every one of the Geneva Conventions) reads:

Article 1
The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.

So why did the UK, and the UK alone, say that it is not responsible for ensuring that other parties comply with international law, adding later a specific reference to the Geneva Conventions?

It is perfectly simple. Starmer and Lammy are terrified about future charges of complicity in Israeli war crimes. So the UK, only, feels it necessary to emphasise that they do not bear legal responsibility for Israel’s actions.

They claim they are not responsible for what Israel did with the supplies of UK munitions, which the UK increased to fuel the genocide.

They claim they are not responsible for what Israel did with the targeting information they gave Israel on a daily basis from RAF Akrotiri flights over Gaza.

They claim they are not responsible for the Israeli use of weapons flown in through the UK and Akrotiri.

They claim they are not responsible for use of the F-35 jets attacking Iran now, which they continue to supply with UK-manufactured spare parts.

We simply do not yet know what else they have done to support Israel based on the secret UK-Israeli defence treaty, but whatever it is, Starmer and Lammy want to make absolutely plain that the UK had no responsibility to prevent Israel from committing war crimes.

The claim that this is longstanding British policy is of course a rather frivolous bit of gaslighting. Indeed given that this argument runs completely counter to the doctrine of “the responsibility to protect” – of which the UK was the leading international proponent – it is simple nonsense.

[As it happens I always opposed the “responsibility to protect” argument because it is used as an excuse for Imperialism, cf. the destruction of Libya.]

The Genocide Convention in fact explicitly does create a duty on states to prevent genocide by third parties.

Article I of the Genocide Convention reads:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

So the declaration by Starmer and Lammy of not bearing responsibility really does not wash. The interesting thing is that they felt compelled to make it.

The evening after the debate I attended receptions hosted by both the British Ambassador and then by the Russian Ambassador, and I spoke to a large number of Ambassadors to the UN. Of course we discussed the debate, and everybody had noticed both the extraordinary and unusual addition to the UK statement and its motive.

They all specifically realised it was an effort to back away from responsibility for complicity in Israeli crimes.

I understand and share your disappointment at the collapse of international law. But I can tell you that the prospect of eventual retribution at the Hague still terrifies Starmer and Lammy.

Netanyahu’s desperate gamble in attacking Iran is an attempt to force the USA to join the war on Israel’s behalf, and to prevent peace talks.

It is of course simply untrue that Iran was about to produce a nuclear weapon. Every Spring a CIA-led US intelligence exercise formally reviews the situation, and the firm position of Five Eyes intelligence remains that Iran genuinely was not seeking to make a nuclear weapon.

I hope that Iran learns the lesson of Southern Lebanon. There, over many months, Israeli air superiority enabled them to substantially degrade missile systems of various resistance factions. Israel does – not least because of the traitors ruling Jordan and Syria – have air superiority over Iran. In a long war of attrition, Israeli bombing raids could do real damage to Iranian capabilities.

Iran’s best strategy would be to view this as the existential crisis, and seriously unload its missile capacity on Israel without restraint. The period of measured tit-for-tat reprisals is at an end. The decision of nuclear-armed Pakistan to stand behind Iran was extremely helpful. These are early days in the Israeli-Iranian war. I do not sense any popular enthusiasm in the USA to be involved. Even the mainstream American media is characterising Iranian attacks as “retaliation” and the Israeli victim card is no longer as Platinum as it used to be here in the USA.

Germany has been refuelling Israeli jets en route to attack Iran, and the UK may also have been doing so. Starmer and Macron have both expressed determination to defend Israel with their own military but both would face massive popular resistance.

We wait to see what happens next. But having lived through vicious Israeli bombardment of Beirut, having been menaced by drones in the Bekaa Valley, having stood on the line at Kfar Kila while a twelve-year-old boy was shot standing next to my producer, having witnessed 100,000 Lebanese homes destroyed, I have no sympathy left for Tel Aviv.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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There is a stunning contrast between the access given by the UK to the Israeli Embassy to influence prosecutions of anti-Genocide journalists and protestors, and the repudiation by the UK of United Nations querying such prosecutions. The UK has rebuked the UN for “outside interference”.

I cannot state enough how unusual it is for the UK to give direct access to the Israeli Embassy to the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, in order for the Israeli government to influence the prosecution of UK citizens. This is not about extradition, in which case there may be treaty arrangements for direct contact between prosecutors. It is just not normal nor right for an Embassy to be involved with domestic prosecutions in this way.

This is one of a series of heavily redacted emails seen by the Guardian, Middle East Eye and lawyers for Palestine Action. They show the Israeli government being granted direct influence with UK police and prosecutors, to urge the prosecution of UK citizens protesting in the UK, against a genocide for which Israel stands accused at the International Court of Justice, with her leaders indicted before the International Criminal Court.

There is no British precedent for this situation and it is very much against international practice, although comparators may be found in influencing prosecution decisions in Vichy France or the Eastern European communist bloc by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – though there were instances of pushback even there. By contrast the UK system is openly influenced by the Israelis.

There is no reticence from the UK government in forwarding Israel influence. Although all released correspondence has been heavily redacted, it is plain that individual cases have been discussed with the Israelis, including those of Palestine Action.

The United Nations has written to the UK on the subject of its treatment both of pro-Palestinian protestors and journalists and the abuse of anti-terrorism legislation. It is almost certain that some of the same cases the UN cites are those the Israeli Embassy has been involved in. The contrast between the UK’s treatment of the Israelis and of the United Nations could scarcely be different. The Israelis are invited in, while the Starmer regime has repudiated the United Nations.

This is stunning hypocrisy. It is characterised as being in the interest of those being persecuted by the UK and Israel, to prevent “interference from international organisations” such as the United Nations. This is beyond the pen of Orwell or Kafka. You can imagine the authors sniggering as they wrote it.

But the truth is the exact opposite of the UK government line. Unlike the Israeli Embassy, the United Nations really does have a right to interfere. The Special Procedures mechanisms by which the United Nations approached the UK are a well-established part of international law, and the UK is a party to them. These are instituted by the Human Rights Council, and it has always been the position of the UK that all nations are subject to them.

In addition the UK is since 1971 a full party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is monitored by the Human Rights Committee and to the provisions of which the UN Special Rapporteurs specifically referred in querying the UK’s actions in this matter.

So the Israel Embassy has no right to interfere, and the United Nations has a direct right to interfere; yet the UK has encouraged the illegitimate while repudiating the legitimate. This is a classic example of the way that Zionism has fundamentally poisoned public institutions in the UK, and also of the profound Zionist capture of New Labour.

Yesterday’s revelation that David Lammy has lied to parliament and the country about suspending trade talks with Israel, while UK “trade envoy” Lord Austin is actually there, should be no surprise.

The hypocrisy does not even end there. The UK has been the most vociferous of countries in weaponising the UN Special Procedures against its own designated enemies, such as Russia and China. For the UK now to repudiate these UN investigations as “interference” is precisely to adopt the position of those states it has long argued against.

I have no doubt that this has been duly noted by any dictatorship the UK may seek to criticise in future.

You will recall that I am among a number of journalists about whose detention under the Terrorism Act and the seizure of whose electronic equipment, and thus correspondence, the United Nations interrogate the UK. You can read the UK government reply in full here.

ukgovtreply

Since the UN wrote, there have been further high-profile arrests of journalists, including Sarah Wilkinson and Asa Winstanley. The basic UK response is that the UN should not interfere, but one point of detail the UK states is particularly worth noting. Detentions and confiscations such as mine under the Terrorism Act specifically do not require the police to have any “reasonable grounds of suspicion”.

What kind of state makes a point of empowering its police to act unreasonably?

But read this further from the UK government reply:

I was detained and my electronics seized under Section 7. That means the UK government is claiming that I was “concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”. Just digest that for a moment.

I might say that nothing in my questioning – which was roughly equally split between the subjects of Wikileaks and Palestine – related in any way to the potential commission of any acts of terrorism. Is the government really pretending that, in travelling home from an Assange campaign meeting in Iceland, they truly suspected I was preparing to commit terrorism? This is ludicrous.

It has often been noticed that despite Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley, Richard Medhurst, Johanna Ross, John Laughland, Vanessa Beeley, Kit Klarenberg, Ernest Moret, Richard Barnard, Tony Greenstein and Natalie Strecker all being swept up under the Terrorism Act in a campaign against journalists this last two years, there has never been a single mention in UK mainstream media of the UK’s arrest of journalists under the Terrorism Act.

Even following the United Nations intervention to question the UK on the arrest of journalists the UK did not mention it. Even the UK’s tiny number of licensed anti-genocide voices in the mainstream media, such as Owen Jones, have never mentioned it.

Yesterday Asa Winstanley won an important legal victory at the Old Bailey where a senior judge ruled that the police raid on his home and seizure of his equipment was unlawful. That is an important and rare legal victory, and I am tempted to attribute it partly to the turning of the tide of Establishment opinion against sacrificing all principles of law to the interests of Israel.

You may perhaps not be surprised to learn that this victory, too, has not been covered by the mainstream media. This conspiracy of silence over extreme abuse of police power against journalists is deeply troubling.

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My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

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Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Imagine my hilarity when the front page headline new “Iranian plot”, trailed by MI5 as involving weapons stores, attacks on the Israeli Embassy and on Whitehall, turned out to be yet another faked “surveillance operation” against Iran International, the “media company” that is dodgier than Al Capone’s accountant.

The BBC still made it the second item on Saturday’s main news, as “Iranian Terror Plot discovered”. Three men have been charged and remanded on bail before a hearing at the Old Bailey on 6 June.

This is another exercise of the UK’s draconian new legislation, the openly fascist National Security Act 2023, where it is an offence to gather information, whether classified or not, as “Engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service”.

This is an incredibly low bar – prosecutors don’t have to prove there is any actual contact with a hostile power. So if you take a photo of Downing Street, as many tourists do, that can be an offence as it could be “useful” to non-existent “Iranian terrorists” or others. We already have one person in jail for taking photos of Iran International despite absolutely zero evidence that he had ever had any kind of contact with Iran.

———————————

My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.

Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.

Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.

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Back in the “War on Terror” days, the UK security services fabricated multiple fake terror plots. There was, for example, the 2009 Easter Bomb Plot in Manchester, taking entire front pages of newspapers. Gordon Brown as PM hyped it as a “very big terror plot”. It was a total fabrication, nobody was convicted and it eventually emerged that the trumpeted “bomb-making ingredient” the police confiscated from kitchens was sugar – in normal quantities.

The Great Ricin Plot in in 2003 was again kitchen obsessed, and the media that ran screaming headlines about the discovery of ricin did not bother to later report that the amounts the police announced they had discovered turned out to be the almost undetectable trace which might be found in any kitchen.

The propaganda was the purpose, all ramping up Islamophobia to justify the Western destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. When the Manchester Arena attack eventually did happen, it turned out that MI5 had been the perpetrator’s sponsor and he and his father had been ferried from Libya by the British armed forces. Sponsorship of terrorism abroad is always likely to result in blowback at home.

The propaganda is now being ramped up again to promote the Islamophobia intended to drive public support in the UK for the Genocide in Gaza and a forthcoming attack on Iran.

MI5 Head Ken McCallum is arguably the most prolific and sustained liar in the history of the UK public service. He has not yet generated the deaths with his lies that Alistair Campbell caused, but give McCallum time for his Goebbels-like repetition to pay off. McCallum has a much more compliant media landscape to work with than existed a quarter of a century before.

I have to remind myself that my continued outrage at the destruction of millions of very real and ordinary people in the Middle East from 2003 onwards, to secure hydrocarbons for rich and evil men and based on total lies about Iraqi weapons, is something extremely vivid and fundamental to me, but the average university student was not even born at the time.

The myth of a “good” West continually self-propagates. The media distracts and obfuscates in a constant and prolonged process of attrition of the truth; it is tempting to believe that the Genocide in Gaza has awoken a public consciousness which may be a historic break of the system. But it is already becoming harder to access true news from Gaza. Fewer images are available as the murder of countless citizen journalists and the throttling of internet in Gaza takes effect.

Social media suppression of the reach of pro-Palestinian accounts and massive boosting of Zionist accounts are reinforced by systematic state persecution of pro-Palestinian voices.

Even as Israeli ministers openly proclaim their Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, European ministers continue to deny it. I am reminded of Harold Pinter’s great acceptance speech for his Nobel prize, speaking in particular of the lies and atrocities of the Iraq War:

We are still standing up, but the lies keep coming, the exploitation keeps coming and the murder keeps coming.

Now let us return on to the arch-propagandist Ken McCallum and his latest invented plot. This is a biggie – the largest state-promoted terrorism scare for twenty years.

As usual, there is not any actual evidence. This straight propaganda piece from the Guardian accidentally makes that plain:

Of course, the weapons the police are searching for may yet magically turn up under the bed. I recall the search of Charlie Rowley’s house after the death of poor Dawn Sturgess. The police searched the home for five days, looking for a small phial of liquid, with no luck. Then it amazingly turned out that the perfume bottle had been sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter all along!

That perfume bottle obviously had miraculous qualities and could materialise and dematerialise at will, because it had also sat undetected inside a regularly emptied charities’ donation bin for over three months. I suppose an RPG may yet materialise under the settee in the current search; when the British police and security services are involved, the laws of physics are frequently suspended.

As usual, Ken McCallum’s “five plots” last year had not resulted in any convictions, or indeed evidence, and in fact the claim was modest for McCallum – who has claimed that MI5 had foiled “twenty plots” since 2022. Even that was not his record.

McCallum reminds me of the man walking around St. James’ Park scattering rubber bands “to keep the elephants away”. When told there are no elephants, he stated “See, it works, doesn’t it?” McCallum has kept vast amounts of Iranian terrorism at bay in a similar fashion.

But, unusually, in 2023 one of McCallum’s fictional “Iranian plots” did result in an actual conviction, and I would like you to look at this one as a window into the twisted psyche of the security services.

In a crowded field, Iran International is probably the world’s dodgiest media channel. A Saudi Arabian-funded niche Farsi language operation, it caters to those Iranians who support Israel, support the restoration of a Shah and support Saudi Arabia.

As I said, it is very niche.

Yet this tiny media operation was set up with a Saudi investment of a quarter of a billion dollars. Yes, you did read that properly, 250 million dollars. Just where all that money really went is an interesting question. There have been persistent rumours of money laundering and of ties to Eastern-European-organised crime.

There was a brief period, after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, when the UK media would print disobliging things about the Saudis. In that short window, this article appeared in the Guardian.

Iran International, perhaps unsurprisingly, specifically supports a Sunni Arab terrorist organisation operating within Iran: the “Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz” – ASMLA. This is a Sunni ethno-nationalist group conducting armed struggle for the secession of certain Arab districts of southern Iran from the predominantly Persian and Shia state.

ASMLA has exactly the same covert backers as HTS in Syria: namely, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Israel, and Western security services.

In September 2018 ASMLA carried out an attack in Ahvaz which killed over 60 people (ISIS also claimed the attack, but the two organisations are linked). Iran International carried an interview with an ASMLA spokesman which very definitely supported ASMLA, and where he insisted on ASMLA’s right to armed resistance and specifically claimed responsibility for the attack as a victory.

In an era where Western activists are routinely arrested for supporting “terrorism” if they oppose the Gaza genocide, you might imagine that this would be an offence by Iran International. But supporting Western- and Saudi-backed terrorists is not only tolerated, it is official British government policy, and in response to complaints OFCOM found that Iran International were entitled to interview the advocate of the right sort of terrorism.

So how does this relate to the single conviction from all of Ken McCallum’s alleged terrorist plots?

Somebody from Iran International has been convicted of glorifying terrorism, right?

Don’t be silly. Iran International is pro-Saudi and pro-Israeli, and in December 2023 it opened a second HQ in Washington DC with additional CIA funding. Remember they are on the same side as HTS. Iran International are the “victims of terrorism” here.

The conviction under the Terrorism Act was for taking photographs of the Iran International HQ building in Chiswick.

In December 2023 Magomed-Husejn Dovtaev, a Chechen with Austrian citizenship, was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for photographing Iran International HQ in Chiswick, which was deemed to be in preparation for a terrorism offence.

The prosecution case was specifically that Dovtaev was operating on behalf of the Iranian Government.

This is the important bit. No evidence of any kind was presented in court of connections between Dovtaev and Iran. There was nothing on his phone and nothing from surveillance. He had not spoken to any Iranians or mentioned Iran.

The prosecution argued – and I kid you not – that Dovtaev was Chechen, which is in Russia, which is geopolitically allied to Iran, and therefore he was probably acting on behalf of Iran. That was it. It really, really was.

This ultra circumstantial argument is a reach enough anyway, but ignores several individual factors.

Dovtaev is a Sunni, therefore not aligned to Iran. He is definitely not one of those Chechens allied to Russia. His family arrived in Austria as refugees from the Chechen war of Independence and he is an anti-Russian Chechen nationalist and an Austrian citizen. He was actually wearing Chechen Independence gear when caught photographing the building.

The prosecution argument, that Dovtaev must be working for Iran because of Russia’s links to Iran, is therefore complete and utter nonsense. But it fits the official anti-Iranian narrative we are being force-fed. And it was rammed down the throats of the jury.

I might add that the evidence that Dovtaev was indeed casing the joint for some ulterior purpose was very strong, and I do not doubt it. But there was no evidence of any kind that it was for Iran, or for terrorism, as the prosecution alleged. The judgment is not published, which is why I do not link it.

That is the one conviction for Iranian terrorism for all McCallum’s false claims – and no connection at all to Iran was shown.

Which leads me to the only other actual arrest – though not yet conviction, until this week – in all of McCallum’s so-called Iranian terrorist plots. Two young Romanians were extradited from Bucharest to London for stabbing in the leg an employee of … you guessed it, Iran International.

Nandito Badea, age 19 and George Stana age 23 were arrested for stabbing in London the Iran International presenter Mr Pouria Zerati. The assault was captured on CCTV.

Now, you might remember that I said at the beginning that there are alleged links between the dodgy finances of Iran International and Eastern-European-organised crime? Well, the story reported from Bucharest is that the defendants admit to the stabbing but say it was a warning with regard to a business debt. Which, when you think about it, makes far more sense. The CCTV shows that the attackers could have killed the victim, but stabbed him in the leg instead. That is a gangland warning, not a state operation.

The notion that Iran is hiring random teenage Romanians to slightly wound people is a nonsense. Furthermore, does not the “business dispute” narrative make infinitely more sense in the case of Dovtaev, who had no links to Iran? The gangster scenario would fully explain why he would keep his lips firmly sealed about who really hired him and what he was doing, even at the cost of a harsher “terrorism” sentence.

So that is all the concrete evidence, or lack of it, in existence about McCallum’s multiple Iranian terrorist plots. This is now, of course, augmented by this new screamed narrative about a planned Iranian attack on the Israeli Embassy in London.

As the Gaza genocide proceeds, you could write a long essay about the ethics of attacking an Israeli Embassy (and Israel has not shown restraint in attacking other nations’ diplomatic premises, but I shall let that pass as not relevant to the current case).

You have to ask, “cui bono?”. Iran has shown tremendous restraint in avoiding being dragged into a wide war over Gaza in face of continued attacks, and is in the midst of a tense negotiating process over its nuclear programme. The idea that, at this moment, it would attack the Israeli Embassy in London is crazed.

However, the narrative very strongly serves the UK interest, as support for the Genocide in Gaza dwindles further, especially among Labour Party supporters, and of course such an attack, or even the allegation of a planned attack, also boosts the perpetual Israeli narrative of victimhood. MI5’s arrangement of this fake plot now is totally predictable; in fact I have been predicting false-flag operations since the genocide started.

My guess is that there is probably an agent provocateur operation at the base of this, where some poor young men have been entrapped into agreeing with wild statements or a fantasy plan. Alternatively, as usual it will prove to be a complete propaganda invention to influence public opinion at a key moment.

It is worth noting that the United States has this last few days currently concentrated four B-52 and six B-2 bombers on Diego Garcia. This is an extremely rare concentration and indicates preparedness for a major operation; Iran is the most likely target. This kind of force is very much greater than anything deployed against Yemen to date. This anti-Iranian propaganda is not being ramped up right now to no purpose.

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