To add a group to Britain’s list of proscribed organizations, first the Home Secretary has to declare it a terrorist organization–”one that engages in or promotes terrorism,” according to a government website–and then Parliament has to approve the addition. 

If you aspire to get your local birdwatchers group added to the list, those are the hoops you’ll have to jump through. As soon as those two things are done, it becomes illegal to belong to it or promote it. Or invite support for it. Or arrange or assist with a meeting that supports it. Or address a meeting that etc., presumably even if you stand up at the meeting and say, “Everybody stop this and go home.” Or publicly wear clothes that “arouse suspicion of membership or support.” Or display anything that arouses suspicion of etc. 

If this is starting to sound abusably wide-ranging, stay with me. We’ll get to that.

The maximum sentence for any of those things can be as high as 14 years. Plus a fine. 

 

Palestine Action

Not long ago, the British government added a group called Palestine Action to the list, so now anyone who’s a member or who “recklessly expresses” support for the group (I’m quoting from yet another government website there) is dicing with the possibility of a prison sentence. Two other organizations were added at the same time: the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement.

Palestine Action describes itself as disruptive but nonviolent and targets companies involved in arms sales to Israel. They’ve occupied premises, destroyed property, gotten themselves arrested, and used spray paint. They’ve probably even gotten spray paint on their clothes. They haven’t killed, tried to kill, or threatened to kill anyone.

The Russian Imperial movement is a white supremacist and monarchist organization that promotes a Russian imperial state and has been linked to a series of letter bombs and has a paramilitary training wing based in Russia.  

The Maniac Murder Cult is an international white supremacist, neo-Nazi organization that exists mostly online. It encourages acts of violence against homeless people, drug addicts and migrants. Its leader’s known as Commander Butcher and is facing charges in the US for allegedly telling an undercover federal agent to dress up as Santa Claus and hand out poisoned candy to non-white kids and students at Jewish schools. The disconnect between Jews and Christmas seems to have gone over his head. A fair number of non-religious Jews do celebrate it–my family did, although without the poison candy–but families who send their kids to specifically Jewish schools? They’re really not Santa’s target audience. 

What I’m saying here is that in addition to being allegedly homicidal, this guy needs career counseling. And jail time. 

That leaves Palestine Action as the odd one out on the list. 

 

Meanwhile, in what passes for the real world

Banning Palestine Action has led to more than 700 arrests, and here’s where we get to that business about the law being abusably wide-ranging. In Kent, a woman was arrested for holding a Palestinian flag and signs saying “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide.” She filmed the police telling her that the words free Gaza supported Palestine Action and that it was illegal “to express an opinion or belief supportive of a proscribed organization.”  

In Leeds, a man was arrested for carrying a cartoon from the magazine Private Eye. The text read:

PALESTINE ACTION EXPLAINED

Unacceptable Palestine Action 

Spraying military planes with paint 

Acceptable Palestine Action 

Shooting Palestinians queuing for food

“It’s a cartoon from Private Eye,” he told his arresting officer. “ I can show you. I’ve got the magazine in my bag,” 

By that  time, they were putting him in handcuffs. He was released on bail six hours later, but on the condition that he not attend any more Palestine Action rallies.

The rally where he was arrested hadn’t been organized by Palestine Action.

A few days later, charges were dropped. 

“If I go on another demo,” he asked the anti-terrorism officer who called to tell him that, “and I hold up that cartoon again, does that mean I will be arrested or not?” 

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s done on a case-by-case basis.”

As indeed it is. The magazine’s editor hasn’t been arrested. Neither has the cartoonist. 

An 80-year-old woman was arrested at a rally in Wales and the police searched her house, removing a Palestinian flag, books on Palestine and on the climate crisis, iPads, drumsticks, and the belt for a samba drum. They brought in a geiger counter–or what a friend who walked in to feed the cats in the middle of the search thought was a geiger counter–and poked long cotton buds into jars of dry food. 

 

The phrase Palestine Action gets loose in the world

All that is why there was a demonstration in Parliament Square, in London, on August 9, where people showed up with blank signs and markers. Once more than 500 who were willing to be arrested had gathered, they made signs saying, “I support Palestine Action.” All 532 were duly arrested. Half of them were over 60. 

One of them, though, wasn’t holding a sign but wearing a tee shirt that read “Plasticine Action” and was designed to mimic the Palestine Action logo. I’m not sure if that makes it 531 arrests there or 533. Or if we stay with 532. 

As he waited to be booked, his arresting officer reappeared and told him, “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.”

Plasticine Man–his name is Pickering–asked for the good news.

“I’m de-arresting you.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“It’s going to be really embarrassing for me.”

Pickering is now selling the tee shirts to raise money for Medical Aid for Palestine. It comes in your choice of 26 colors.  

As far as I know, I’m not risking arrest by linking to that.

Palestine Action has won the right to appeal its ban, but until the case is heard it’s still officially a terrorist organization. When I went to a local demonstration against the starvation of Gaza, I picked my way carefully through the English language before making a sign asking, “Are we allowed to say Gaza?”

As a naturalized citizen, I’m not in a position to risk arrest.

There have been no demonstrations asking to free the words Maniacs Murder Cult or  Russian Imperial Movement.

The starvation of Gaza continues. And the next planned demonstration against the ban on Palestine Action is asking people who get arrested to refuse to be processed on the street and released. If they’re taken to the police station, they’re entitled to a lawyer and can clog the jails.

*

Meanwhile, in the Protestant section of Belfast, Northern Ireland, vigilantes calling themselves Belfast Nightwatch First Division are patrolling the evening streets, challenging dark-skinned people to produce identity documents and explain what they’re doing in the eastern part of the city, threatening anyone whose responses don’t satisfy them.

One member was quoted as telling a Black man sitting on a bench, “Hey boy, I don’t want to catch you around our parks any more.”

Nightwatch First Division is not on  the list of terrorist organizations, although to be fair to a government that pisses me off with amazing regularity, it’s new and may or may not have any structure behind the name.

A neo-Nazi group called Blood and Honour (the phrase comes from the Hitler Youth) is also not on the list, although the government says it has “reasonable grounds to suspect” it’s involved in “terrorist activities through promoting and encouraging terrorism, seeking to recruit people for that purpose and making funds available for the purposes of its terrorist activities.”

It has frozen its assets.