What now after Palestine Action ban ruled unlawful?

The High Court ruling that it’s unlawful to ban Palestine Action has created an almighty “mess”, said The Independent.

The three-judge panel concluded on Friday that the proscription of the direct action group as a terrorist organisation was “disproportionate” because only “a very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism”. Palestine Action’s criminal activities, said the judges, could be dealt with using “general criminal law.”

But Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has indicated that the government will appeal the judgement, so the ban remains in place for now – leaving Palestine Action’s supporters, the police and prosecutors in a “legal twilight zone” said the Financial Times.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the commentators say?

This ruling is “fantastically naive”, said barrister Alexander Horne in The Spectator. “Rather than making it clear that groups which incite action against UK defence targets” can be banned, “it encourages legal uncertainty and is likely to embolden further such activity”.

“There are better ways” for Palestine Action to win arguments “than by using violence”, said The Independent’s editorial board. But “it was always absurd” to categorise the group as terrorists, putting it “in the same bracket” as al-Qaeda or Hizbollah. The “mistake” the government made “was to choose the wrong measure to keep the peace”.

“Never before had a direct action group been banned,” said Haroon Siddique, The Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent. And now “not only has the government suffered a humiliating defeat, it has transformed Palestine Action from a little-known protest group to one that is on the front page of newspapers”.

With the ban, as yet, unquashed, there is “difficulty for police in determining whether or not to make more arrests” of Palestine Action supporters, “as well as for prosecutors and judges in how to press ahead with pending criminal cases”, said Alistair Gray and Robert White in the Financial Times. The Metropolitan Police has already indicated that it would no longer arrest people holding placards expressing support for the group. “Once the ban is fully quashed,” said Harriet Williamson on Novara Media, Palestine Action supporters “who have been arrested under the Terrorism Act“ will “have grounds to sue” the police.

What next?

While the ruling is “embarrassing”, said The New Statesman, the quashing of the proscription could actually get the Home Office “out of a hole”: most of the 2,000 people arrested are “pushing” for expensive, court-clogging “jury trials”.

The High Court’s decision has also “triggered calls for the whole system of proscription to be overhauled”. The Independent Commission on Counter-Terrorism last year advised that the definition of terrorism should be tightened up, and now it looks set to “lobby for proper parliamentary oversight of proscription orders”.