Palestine campaigners are calling for government minister Yvette Cooper and Met police boss Mark Rowley to resign after the High Court ruled that the ban on Palestine Action is unlawful.
The decision to implement the ban by then Home Secretary Cooper and police chief Rowley means that they have been responsible for some 3,000 wrongful arrests.
Yvette Cooper took the unprecedented step of declaring a peaceful direct-action group as a terrorist organisation in July 2025.
Since then, thousands have been arrested, mainly in London, for holding signs reading ‘I support Palestine Action’.
Lindsey German said, “this outrageous attack on civil liberties is a black stain on the justice system and a disgraceful overreach of police powers. The people responsible, the then Home Secretary and the current Commander of the Met Police should help restore public faith in the Labour government and justice system by resigning immediately.”
When the ban was imposed Yvette Cooper claimed that the government had secret information that would justify the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. But despite part of the High Court proceedings being held in secret the government clearly had nothing which convinced the three judges in the judicial review the should justify the ban.
The high court upheld two grounds of challenge to the ban, including that the ban was a disproportionate interference with the right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
But the ban will stay in place because the new Home Secretary, hardliner Shabana Mahmood, has vowed to appeal the ruling.
Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action, said, “This is a monumental victory both for our fundamental freedoms here in Britain and in the struggle for freedom for the Palestinian people, striking down a decision that will forever be remembered as one of the most extreme attacks on free speech in recent British history.”
In the wake of Yvette Cooper’s original imposition of the ban arrests for terrorism rose by over 600 percent in the UK, simply as a result of the decision to criminalise Palestine Action. If all those now charge with terror offences were convicted the UK would have more political prisoners than Putin’s Russia.
The High Court ruling follows the recent not guilty verdict in the jury trial of Palestine Action protestors who took direct action against an Elbit factory.
The government however continues to attempt to prosecute Palestine activists. Later this month the vice chair of the Stop the War Coalition, Chris Nineham, and the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, will be in court on charges relating to a peaceful demonstration in January 2025. Campaigners, including Liberty, at a rally in London last night called for those charges to be dropped.