Palestine Action and the trouble with defining terrorism

The “dangerous fanatics” of Palestine Action have been given a “free pass” to continue promoting hatred and committing acts of violent disorder, said The Sun. Last Friday, the High Court ruled that the government’s decision to proscribe the group as a terrorist organisation had been unlawful.

Palestine Action had, the three judges accepted, carried out some acts of terrorism, said Alistair Gray in the Financial Times. But they ruled that the challenge to the ban – which was put in place last July, after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two planes – was successful on two main legal grounds. The first was that the decision to outlaw the group amounted to “unjustified interference” with the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The second was that the decision, taken by then-home secretary Yvette Cooper, was “disproportionate”, because Palestine Action’s activities had not yet reached “the level, scale and persistence” to fall within the legal definition of terrorism.

‘Good intentions’

This ruling is “disturbing”, said Melanie Phillips in The Times. Between August 2024 and June 2025 the group was responsible for 158 “direct action events”, 28 of which caused damage to property exceeding £50,000, or required a significant police presence. In 2024, an activist allegedly attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. Are ministers just supposed to wait around “until more people are injured, or someone even gets killed by these activities”, before they’re allowed to ban the group?

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“There were clearly good intentions behind the proscription, but the problems with such a blanket measure became apparent as soon as the police began putting it into practice,” said The Daily Telegraph. Among the more than 2,700 people arrested, were many who would generally never be considered terrorists, from priests to pensioners. To class these people, however “ignorant or misguided” they were, as terrorists, in the same league as militants from al-Qa’eda or Islamic State, threatened to “make the ban look ridiculous”, and those locked up look like martyrs.

‘Fundamentally unsound’

“One does not have to endorse the vandalism perpetrated by Palestine Action supporters” to understand that the proscription of the group was “fundamentally unsound”, said David Littlefair on UnHerd. It’s notable that “the same people who might become apoplectic at citizens being disciplined over social media posts have been remarkably sanguine in response to thousands of pensioners facing prison time for poorly defined crimes”. Many seem now to feel “that the value of free speech as a concept is contingent on how annoying they find the speaker”.

The ban will remain in place while the government prepares to appeal, said Haroon Siddique in The Guardian. But the debacle has already been a “humiliation” for Keir Starmer’s beleaguered government – and “has transformed Palestine Action from a little-known protest group to one that is on the front page of newspapers”.