I was arrested three times in 2025 for holding up that now-infamous sign (opposing genocide in Gaza and allegedly supporting Palestine Action!) as part of Defend Our Juries’, Lift The Ban campaign.
Each arrest gets treated separately, and yesterday was my first ‘Plea Hearing’. I wanted to make a short statement in Court before pleading, but the presiding Judge was having none of it. So this is what I would have said — before pleading Not Guilty.
Thirty of us got processed yesterday. That’s a whole day of court time. One Judge, six or seven court and Crime Prosecution Service (CPS) staff, and two or three security people to eject those of us who tried to make a statement!
Five hundred of us have been processed in this way so far, with around another 2,200 still to go, all charged under Section 13 of the 2000 Terrorism Act which prohibits the wearing of any clothing or display of any article “in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that they are a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”. So that means around 90 full court days just to hear our pleas! And then we’ll all be tried — and however fast they try to jam us through the courts, that’s going to be at least a further 250 days, even though each of these trials is ‘judge only’ without a jury. Just what our already massively congested judicial system needs!
I guess what I hadn’t anticipated was the sheer weight of bureaucracy to ensure that each of us is processed (more or less!) fairly. We all got our ‘Evidence Bundle’ from the CPS when we got to court, and then had to fill in our ‘Preparation for Effective Trial’ form — and so it starts! Before the trials there will then be initial disclosures, Defence Statements, and then secondary disclosures, with paperwork flying back and forth.
To describe this as ‘surreal’ doesn’t quite cut it.
There will, in time, be a reckoning. Both literally (as in the tens of millions of pounds – and eventually hundreds of millions of pounds — of public money spaffed down this legal drain) and politically. That reckoning will surely be laid at the door of former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Prime Minister Keir Starmer (both ardent members of Labour Friends of Israel) for their despicable decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation back in July last year — essentially to cover up their continuing complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
And before anyone starts blaming me and my fellow supporters of the Lift The Ban campaign for such an abuse of public money, let’s just remember what this is all about — in terms of the ‘All Too Real’. In terms of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. (And it really is ongoing, despite the fact that our despicable mainstream media can barely be arsed to provide any serious coverage).
For those who still can’t get their heads around what this means on the ground, here’s one gobbet of genocidal data that you might be able to remember:
“Israeli Defence Forces have killed the equivalent of a classroom full of children every single day since the assault on Gaza in October 2023”.
