Palestine Action: From Protest to Proscription, Starmer’s Authoritarian Drift

“I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail.” — Muhammad Ali, boxer and anti-war activist.

Protest Is Not Terrorism: Labour’s Assault on British Democratic Tradition

The working class has always been the engine of protest, the inconvenient truth-teller that has dragged this country towards something resembling democracy. Without it, we don’t just become a province of Oceania, we become “Airstrip One,” plunging headfirst into a chilling dystopia where Orwell’s Big Brother doesn’t just watch, he’s our constant, suffocating family member.

The Labour government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation isn’t merely a dangerous escalation against one particular group. No, this is a calculated, chilling assault on the very bedrock of the British tradition of dissent.

Let’s be excruciatingly clear: protest, even when inconvenient and disruptive, is not terrorism. It is the messy, uncomfortable, absolutely essential engine of democratic progress. Without it, we wouldn’t possess the meagre rights we cling to today. From the peasant revolts to Magna Carta, the Peterloo Massacre, the Levellers, the Chartists, the suffragettes, the indomitable women of Greenham Common, and the millions who marched against the Iraq War in 2003. They all broke laws, crossed lines, and royally annoyed the establishment. And in doing so, they etched their names into history. Today’s Labour government, in its profound wisdom, would have had them all branded as terrorists.

It is unquestionable: “This government was founded on protest.” A protest against fourteen years of Tory rule, its incompetence, corruption and overreach. Ironically, now it has become the very thing, like all neoliberal governments before it, that we now protest against.

When Civil Resistance Was Still Legal

You can compare Palestine Action’s protest at RAF Brize Norton to countless historical acts of civil disobedience – protests that were seen for what they were and not branded acts of terrorism, even under governments far less ostensibly “progressive.”

In 1983, the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was at the heart of Britain’s anti-nuclear movement. It wasn’t just a footnote in protest history, it was a defining act of civil resistance. Thousands of women lived in makeshift camps, facing down the relentless militarisation of Britain by the US and NATO. One now-iconic protest saw women dressed in absurdly brilliant teddy bear costumes scaling the perimeter fence with ladders, a surreal, poignant symbol of innocence obliterated by nuclear warheads. It was theatrical, yes, but fiercely powerful, deeply subversive, and unequivocally political. They breached fences, cut wire, chained themselves to gates. The government, bless its cotton socks, was embarrassed, not terrorised.

Today, those same women would be facing counter-terrorism raids and decades in prison.

Starmer’s Spectacular Hypocrisy

In 2003, anti-war activists broke into RAF Fairford to stop US bombers heading to Iraq.

Keir Starmer defended their actions and said it was justified to prevent war crimes.

Now his government is banning Palestine Action for doing the same.

The Prime Minister is a hypocrite. https://t.co/vr9e87hols

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) June 22, 2025

Let’s not forget 2003. Activists, driven by an urgent moral imperative, broke into RAF Fairford to disrupt US bombers en route to Iraq. Their aim? To prevent what they believed to be war crimes. One of their most vocal and eloquent defenders at the time was none other than Keir Starmer, who argued their actions were not only justified but necessary. Today, Prime Minister Starmer presides over a government that actively seeks to jail those doing precisely what he once defended – shining a spotlight on UK complicity in horrific war crimes and its unwavering role in arming the Israeli war machine.

That’s not just hypocrisy. That, dear reader, is the cold, hard face of authoritarianism.

The Private Military Scandal They Don’t Want Exposed

Here’s what makes this whole charade even more sinister. The RAF squadron that Palestine Action targeted for its role in supplying Israel’s genocide doesn’t actually belong to the RAF at all. As Craig Murray has revealed, it belongs ultimately to Polygon Global Partners LLP, a hedge fund.

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

So Palestine Action wasn’t even targeting government property, they were targeting a private hedge fund’s military assets being used to facilitate genocide. The government is using anti-terror legislation to protect private profit, not national security. They’re criminalising activists for spray-painting privately-owned war machines while pretending it’s about defending Britain.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper claims Palestine Action poses a threat to national security for targeting military sites and companies like Elbit Systems. But what this really reveals is the government’s growing fear, not of violence, but of visibility. When activists expose the web of private contractors profiting from genocide, they threaten something far more dangerous than national security: they threaten the cosy relationship between government and the merchants of death.

Building an economy on "Military Keynesianism" means feeding the war machine you need endless wars to keep the economy afloat. More bombs, more battles, more bodies. War is growth, and peace becomes a threat to GDP. It's an Orwellian dystopia you're creating. https://t.co/L3cFkQNls6

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) June 26, 2025

Imperial Fantasy vs. Democratic Reality

This government is patently less concerned with safeguarding Britain’s citizens than with meticulously protecting its polished international image and its dubious alliances. Spending billions on aircraft carriers and submarines to project power in the distant South China Sea while simultaneously crushing fundamental dissent at home is not the nuanced policy of a secure nation. It is the definitive hallmark of an empire in its death throes, clinging desperately to a deluded fantasy, funded by public money.

What the hell are you playing at @YvetteCooperMP. You're abusing your power and you've failed Tony Benn's 5 questions about power. Specifically Q3, ie, in whose interests do you exercise your power. We all know the answer to that question: Israel.https://t.co/A8KmEYFtJE

— Chris Williamson (@DerbyChrisW) June 26, 2025

They condescendingly assure us this proscription won’t affect “peaceful protest.” But let’s be brutally honest: if you require express government permission to protest, it’s no longer protest. It’s a meticulously choreographed parade. And when the state decides which forms of dissent are acceptable, democracy becomes a mere performance for the powerful rather than an inalienable right for the powerless.

The Death of Democratic Tradition

From the hallowed Magna Carta to the gritty miners’ strike, protest has not merely shaped Britain; it has forged its very soul. Every right we enjoy today was won by people willing to break unjust laws and face the consequences. The eight-hour working day, women’s suffrage, civil rights, even the vote, all achieved through disruptive protest that made the powerful profoundly uncomfortable.

Criminalising the use of direct action today isn’t just ahistorical, it’s monumentally cowardly. When the state can no longer tolerate those who hold it to account, it ceases to be a democracy in any meaningful sense. It becomes something else entirely: a managed spectacle where dissent is choreographed and resistance is neutered.

This is how democracies truly die, not through thunderous military coups or dramatic foreign invasions, but through the insidious, gradual criminalisation of opposition. First, they come for the “extremists.” Then they redefine “extremism” to conveniently include anyone who dares to seriously challenge power.

Welcome to Airstrip One

In the name of defending freedom, Starmer’s Labour is systematically dismantling it. The Prime Minister once stood for civil liberties, once defended the very activists he now wants to imprison. Today, he presides over a party that criminalises conscience and calls it counterterrorism.

We’re witnessing the transformation of Britain into Orwell’s Airstrip One, a surveillance state where Big Brother watches, listens, and punishes anyone who steps out of line. Where war is peace, freedom is slavery, and protest is terrorism.

The working class built British democracy through centuries of struggle, sacrifice, and civil disobedience. From Peterloo’s martyrs to today’s activists, they’ve paid the price for progress in blood and imprisonment. Now their supposed representatives are tearing down that legacy with anti-terror laws and police raids.

They’re not protecting us from extremism, they’re protecting extremism from us. And that should terrify every honest citizen in this country who still believes democracy means more than voting for which set of authoritarians gets to rule over you.