There were tens of thousands of people all over the country celebrating the decision in the High Court on Friday that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision in July last year to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was indeed UNLAWFUL — all those courageous Palestine Action supporters, all those arrested for supporting Defend Our Juries’ ‘Lift the Ban’ campaign, family, friends, indirect supporters and sympathisers.
It was an astonishing moment, perhaps most of all for Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, in whose name the challenge in the High Court was made. Her advocacy and courage over the last nine months have been quite extraordinary.
The Government intends to appeal – of course. But before I come back to that, I just want to sing out the praises of Defend Our Juries as one of the most astonishingly inspired – and effective – civil disobedience organisations we’ve ever seen here in the UK.
Three years ago, it didn’t exist. It came into being to support the equally inspiring Trudi Warner after she first held up that sign on the 27th March 2023, defending the rights of jurors to give their verdicts according to their conscience – not according to the direction of their trial judge. The so-called ‘Jury Equity’ principle.
That campaign was successful – after a lot of oppressive to-ing and fro-ing in the courts. And we saw the fruits of that on February 5th, when the jury in the critically important trial of the first of the Elbit 24 campaigners returned either Not Guilty or No Verdict decisions.
After the Jury Equity campaign, Defend Our Juries pivoted to an even more essential human rights campaign – as a direct response to the Government’s draconian (and now unlawful!) decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. As many of us have argued, it did this primarily because Palestine Action had proved to be so effective in highlighting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and our Government’s persistent and abhorrent complicity in that genocide.
Outraged at the fact that only 26 MPs voted against Yvette Cooper’s deeply manipulative Executive Order in Parliament to ban Palestine Action alongside the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement (which we now know to have been larded with lies about “confidential information we cannot put into the public domain”), Defend Our Juries stepped in again. And stepped it up several gears, inviting members of the public to call the Government’s bluff by holding up a sign saying “ We Oppose Genocide. We Support Palestine Action,” to which thousands of us responded.
This is already one of the most extraordinary campaigns in the long and wonderful story of civil disobedience across ages, countries and causes.
But what you can’t see is what lies behind that high profile campaign – the detailed legal briefings (and a massive shout out here for solicitors Hodge, Jones & Allen which has walked hand in hand with Defend Our Juries over the last six months), the unbelievably patient and compassionate online hand-holding (most of us never imagined we would ever end up facing charges under the Terrorism Act – trust me, that is genuinely quite scary!), the bog-standard logistical coordination, and the nurturing of a unique and extraordinary community from pretty much a standing start.
I’ve been in this world of radical campaigning, on and off — from Friends of the Earth and the Green Party back in the 70s and 80s — for 50 years. I’ve never experienced anything quite like this. It has moved and inspired me in a way I still can’t quite make sense of.
Which is why I’m not unduly worried about the possibility that Friday’s High Court judgement (that the Government acted unlawfully in proscribing Palestine Action) may well be overturned in the Appeal Court, or ultimately in the Supreme Court.
Indeed, a bit of me, after a weekend of cautious celebration, is saying “BRING IT ON”. If Ministers still don’t understand the determination and the power of this community, which their own continuing genocide-denying moral depravity has brought into being, then……
