When Pensioners Are Terrorists: Audrey White and the Criminalisation of Conscience in Starmerβs Britain…
What kind of nation handcuffs a 76-year-old woman for holding a placard?
This week in Liverpool, Audrey White, veteran trade unionist, feminist, and lifelong socialist, was arrested under the Terrorism Act. Her crime? Expressing solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide. This wasnβt just an act of heavy-handed policing. It was a grotesque illustration of Britainβs descent into authoritarian absurdity, where the line between democratic dissent and “terrorism” has been deliberately and dangerously blurred.
Whiteβs arrest, alongside three others at a peaceful demonstration, is not some isolated anomaly; it is part of a calculated campaign to crush dissent and silence opposition to Britainβs shameful complicity in Israelβs war on Gaza. In Keir Starmerβs Labour Party, a Party that once stood for the voiceless, the real threat isnβt violence or extremism. The real threat is truth.
And the truth is this: the state is now using counterterrorism powers not to protect the public, but to protect itself, from scrutiny, from accountability, and from a growing wave of moral outrage.
Red Paint Is Not a Bomb
At the heart of this crackdown is the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. This is a group whose βterrorismβ involves vandalising weapons factories that supply arms used in Gaza. Spray paint. Red dye. Broken windows. These are now on par with suicide bombs and mass murder in the eyes of the British state.
It would be farcical if it werenβt so terrifying.
Letβs be clear: Palestine Action is not ISIS. Itβs not Al-Qaeda. We leave that kind of fraternisation to our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, and his newfound champion of democracy, Ahmad al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golaniβthe Westβs favourite former jihadist, once flying the black flag of global terror. Palestine Action is a non-violent direct action network. Their real crime? Daring to expose Britainβs cosy financial and military complicity in Israelβs war machine. For that, the full weight of the state comes crashing down. Because in Starmerβs Britain, war criminals are partners, but those who call them out are the ones branded dangerous.
From Glenda Jackson to Gaza
Audrey White has been here before. In the 1980s, she was fired for standing up to sexual harassment in the workplace, then smeared and blacklisted by the media and corporate elite. Her story became the basis for the film Business as Usual, where she was portrayed by Glenda Jackson. Decades later, she confronted Starmer in a Liverpool cafΓ© over his broken promises and spineless backtracking.
Starmer, visibly rattled, couldn’t answer her simple, damning question: βWhy are you lying?β
Now, that same woman, who has given her life to workersβ rights, womenβs rights, and anti-racism, is being treated like an enemy of the state. What a fitting metaphor for the Labour Party she once supported: terrified of its own conscience, and utterly captured by the machinery of state repression.
A Flag, a Placard, a Prison Cell
Audreyβs arrest is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a political and media culture that equates criticism of Israel with extremism, and turns solidarity into sedition. The very same government that refuses to condemn the bombing of hospitals and refugee camps in Gaza has the gall to arrest British citizens for opposing it.
Worse still, they are doing so under laws supposedly designed to prevent terrorism.
But the real terror here is political: the terror of a ruling class so afraid of democratic accountability that it brands dissent a security threat.
UN Special Rapporteurs have warned that its proscription may violate international law. Legal experts, human rights defenders, and civil liberties groups have all raised alarms.
And yet the state continues to arrest, intimidate, and surveil citizens simply for raising their voices against injustice.
Whose Side Are You On?
Letβs stop pretending this is just about Palestine. If they can brand activists targeting Elbit Systems as terrorists today, they can do the same to Just Stop Oil tomorrow. Oh, wait, they have. Or to striking workers. Or to you.
This is the neoliberal Iron Heel in motion, and once it begins its descent, it knows no natural terminus. George Orwell understood this remorseless dynamic when he wrote:
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But alwaysβdo not forget this, Winstonβalways there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”
The boot that today presses upon Audrey White’s weathered shoulders seeks tomorrow to crush every voice that dares speak truth to power’s comfortable lies.
This, then, is the Britain Sir Keir Starmer is building. It is a place where the press handles him with “kid gloves,” as Audrey observed, and where Labour MPs and Party members are “intimidated by threat of suspension and expulsion for saying anything.” It is a managed, sterile space where difficult truths are not debated but proscribed, and where lifelong champions of the working class are treated as enemies of the state.
The Party that was once a vehicle for the aspirations of ordinary people has become a hollowed-out vessel, bankrupt of ideas and hostile to the very principles it was founded to defend.
When dissent becomes terrorism, we are all suspects. When pensioners with placards are labelled extremists, the democratic contract has been ripped apart.
To all MPs still clinging to their consciences: speak up now. To the trade unions who claim to fight for justice: Audrey White is your comrade, defend her. And to those who think they can sit this one out: the machinery of repression, once built, does not discriminate or dismantle.
The Will Not Be Overcome
Audrey White has spent her life shining a light into the dark recesses of power. Now that power wants to silence her, for good. We cannot allow it.
The proscription of Palestine Action must be overturned. The Terrorism Act must be reviewed. And those responsible for abusing their powers to suppress protest must be held to account.
In an era where the truth is labelled dangerous, and decency is treated as subversion, the question isnβt whether we agree with every tactic or slogan, itβs whether weβre willing to defend the fundamental right to dissent.
Because if Audrey White is a terrorist, then so is everyone whoβs ever stood on the picket line, marched for justice, or dared to say: Not in my name.
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