There is a direct action group in this country which the government fears so much that its very existence has been criminalised. The Home Office accuses it of holding ‘provocative street demonstrations’ and ‘stunts aimed at intimidating local communities’. The authorities say the organisation’s ‘activities and propaganda materials are particularly aimed at recruiting young people’. Explaining its reasons for proscription, the government charges the group with ‘condoning and celebrating’ a terrorist attack and of ‘the unlawful glorification of terrorism’.
Mere membership of this network brings dire legal consequences. Among those arrested for taking part in the group’s activities have been the young parents of a newborn baby and members of the armed forces. Half a dozen young activists were jailed for belonging to the organisation and, in one case, for putting up branded stickers around a university campus. Little wonder those sympathetic to the group, or who harbour concerns about freedom of speech and association, question the decision to proscribe and want to see the ban lifted.
We are speaking not of Palestine Action, much in the news lately, but of National Action, the neo-Nazi outfit that was proscribed following the 2016 assassination of Jo Cox by Thomas Mair, who does not seem to have been a member of the extreme right sect. I wanted to raise the case of National Action not because it is an exact parallel to Palestine Action but because the current effort to deproscribe the latter raises unavoidable questions about the status of the former. If we believe, for example, that mere membership or expressions of sympathy for Palestine Action should not be a crime, on what basis should it continue to be an offence to belong to or endorse National Action?
You might argue that racism is more objectionable than anti-Israelism but the potential for public disorder, property damage and intimidation of identifiable groups surely exists in both organisations. Ditto the prospect of providing material support. While the removal of Sally Rooney’s novels from shelves has belatedly recruited Britain’s liberal middle classes to the cause of free expression, it is not clear what rule they are trying to establish. If an author pledges the proceeds of his next book to the coffers of National Action, would the banishing of his works represent a similarly chilling act of censorship?
I hope it is obvious that I am not advocating deproscription of National Action, a racist and fascist shower who are most certainly for the watching. The problem I’m trying to tease out is a familiar one: when liberals insist the rules should not apply to people and causes they like, they create an opening for their enemies to make the same demands.
The law cannot return to the status quo ante
Whatever the merits of the decision to proscribe Palestine Action – prior to the Home Office’s decision, I made the case for measures short of proscription – the law cannot return to the status quo ante, in which the group was breaking into military bases, taking sledgehammers to police officers and targeting Jewish-owned businesses, simply because the Waitrose wing of the Palestinian solidarity movement is demanding it over on Bluesky. Sometimes we just have to say No to affluent, graduate progressives, no matter how mad or sad it makes them.
The far right — not the ideological boogeyman that stalks the fevered imaginings of liberal hysterics, but the actual far right — will be watching with interest the effort to get Palestine Action delisted. Truth be told, they don’t have much of a beef with the keffiyeh kids, who are, after all, taking on… well… you know… (((them))). But right-wing radicals looking to shift the parameters of respectability in their favour will regard any climbdown on Palestine Action as a model for lifting the pall of disapproval, whether legal or societal, from organisations whose worldview they share. Right-wing extremists have no greater ally than hypocritical progressives who believe they should make the rules but never be bound by them.
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