The Palestine coalition welcomes news of the High Court’s historic ruling which declared the British government’s ban on Palestine Action unlawful. The judgement is a decisive rebuff to the state’s attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide.
Over the past two years of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, millions in Britain have taken action to oppose British support for Israel’s atrocities through protests, campaigns and direct action focused on the arms companies supplying it. The British government should have taken immediate action to end its own involvement in genocide, but instead has been cracking down on protest, including through the unprecedented use of antiterrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action, and attempts to silence all forms of protest through the extraordinary misuse of Public Order legislation.
Today’s ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the government’s overreach is not only immoral, it is unlawful. We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
In light of this ruling, the Palestine coalition calls on the CPS to drop the charges on all who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel’s genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges.
Furthermore, we call on the government to accept today’s ruling, and to withdraw its connected attempts to silence protest.
Finally, we call on the government to address the root causes of these protests and impose a two-way arms embargo on Israel to put an end to British complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Palestinian Forum in Britain
Friends of Al-Aqsa
Stop the War Coalition
Muslim Association of Britain
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament