On 10 July 2025 it was reported that the Home Office had rejected the application submitted on 9 April by Riverway Law, asking the British Labour government to remove Palestinian liberation organisation Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah (Hamas) from the list of organisations banned under the Terrorism Act (TA) 2000.* This rejection came just a week after the government moved to proscribe activist group Palestine Action under the same legislation (see p1). Meanwhile trials continue against students, journalists, musicians and campaigners whose solidarity with Palestine has been criminalised on the basis that they have either encouraged support for or displayed the symbols of an illegal organisation. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Hamas was founded in 1987, following the start of the First Intifada. Since elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006, its political wing has been the de facto government in Gaza, running all facets of civil administration. Hamas’ armed wing was included on the initial list of organisations proscribed in Britain following the passing of the TA 2000 by Tony Blair’s Labour government. The political wing, however, was only added to the list in 2021 by avidly Zionist Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel.
The application
The deproscription application is a serious legal submission, persuasively making out the case in terms of both domestic and international law. Written as it is, however, by barristers whose commitment to using the legal process to the advantage of oppressed individuals and groups goes far beyond the lip service paid by so many ‘human rights lawyers’, it is also a highly political document.
The application opens:
‘For more than a century, the British State has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine. From the Balfour Declaration of 1917 to the Nakba of 1948 and all the way up to its present complicity in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the British State has played a critical role in the persecution of the Palestinian people. It has done so pursuant to its enduring policy of Zionism, an ideology that is the root of the violence in historic Palestine.
‘… The legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral, legitimate and explicitly enshrined in international law…
‘The continued proscription of Hamas means support for – and complicity in – the unrelenting colonisation of Palestine and crimes against humanity and acts of genocide being perpetrated by the Zionist State. That support and complicity is irreconcilable with the obligations of the British State under both international and domestic law. This deproscription application seeks to remedy that ongoing illegality.’
The legal arguments which follow rest essentially on the three grounds that continued proscription is:
- contrary to Britain’s obligations under international law, including the prevention of genocide;
- incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to freedom of expression and assembly;
- disproportionate, as Hamas has never targeted British citizens or operated outside historic Palestine, and as the proscription of a political party which has been freely elected prevents both the current delivery of humanitarian assistance and the conduct of any meaningful future peace talks.
These contentions are supported by a wealth of material, including testimony from expert witnesses ranging from Oxford professor Avi Shlaim to Palestinian prisoners’ rights activist Charlotte Kates.
Terrorising populations
In November 1974 the then Labour government introduced the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Temporary Provisions) in response to bombings in England by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in furtherance of its struggle to rid Ireland of British colonial domination. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was deliberately draconian and described as such by then Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. It proscribed the IRA, making membership a criminal offence, instituted a system of ‘internal exile’ whereby people could be banned from travelling between the north of Ireland and the so-called ‘mainland’ of Britain, and increased police powers to arrest and detain.
The government promoted the PTA on the basis that the stage of the war in Ireland at that time was uniquely dangerous, and that harsh, emergency powers were required on a short-term basis. The temporary provisions therefore had to be voted on annually by the House of Commons.
In 2000, when the current Terrorism Act was going through Parliament, we wrote in FRFI about the earlier legislation:
‘In reality the PTA was not used to combat terrorism… What the PTA did was put the Irish – all the Irish and their supporters – beyond the pale. It provided the climate for intimidation and harassment, for false arrest, manufactured evidence and confessions, grave miscarriages of justice and the brutal treatment of prisoners.’ (‘Special powers to police the crisis’ – Carol Brickley, FRFI 153, February/March 2000)
The TA 2000 took this vicious, racist treatment of Irish people and generalised it into a state weapon against all types of political, religious or ideological opposition to the status quo. Organisations deemed to be involved in committing, participating in, preparing, promoting, encouraging, or otherwise ‘concerned in’ terrorism, would be added to a list. Membership of or support for those organisations would be a criminal offence. Under both Labour and Conservative governments, law after law subsequently increased the harshness of this regime, with, for example, the definition of ‘encourage’ broadened under the Terrorism Act 2006 and prison release provisions for those convicted of terrorism harshened under the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021.
The names of 14 Irish organisations banned under the PTA were carried over into the new Act. The power to proscribe more widely was implemented from March 2001, when the Home Secretary designated 21 organisations, including the armed wing of Hamas, alongside Kurdish, Tamil and Basque national liberation movements, Greek and Turkish armed political groups and Islamic formations such as Al Qaeda. From this initial batch, the use of proscription as a political tool escalated and there are now 81 organisations on the ‘international’ list, alongside the original 14 Irish ones which remain banned to this day despite the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which aimed to bring an end to the war in the north of Ireland.
To date four organisations have been deproscribed, the most recent in 2019 being the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Al Qaeda affiliated organisation which had fought against the secular Libyan state led by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in pursuit of an Islamic republic – an endeavour supported by western imperialism.
Shooting the messenger
The submission of the Hamas deproscription application on 9 April was met with howls of rage from the establishment and right-wing press, with Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick demanding that the lawyers who had the temerity to accept Hamas’ brief be struck off. This is just hot air, however, as the TA 2000 contains the right to apply for deproscription and organisations on the list therefore have every right to instruct lawyers to represent them.
Rather than shy away from the attack on them, the legal team which had submitted the application used the media to press the argument that it was fully appropriate and lawful to submit it, and that the sickening Zionist genocide we are witnessing makes it urgent for it to be considered. At the same time, they repeatedly stressed to interviewers that ‘the story’ should be the application itself, not those representing the organisation bringing it. Attacks on the legal team have nonetheless continued, with the Campaign Against Antisemitism reporting solicitor Fahad Ansari to the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority and the massed ranks of Zionist twitter baying in particular for the blood of outspoken barrister Franck Magennis. Disappointingly, rather than defend him against such attacks, Garden Court Chambers, to which Magennis is affiliated – and which claims on its website that it is ‘fearless in the pursuit of justice‘ and that it fights ‘hard for our clients every step of the way, no matter how powerful the opponent’ – has issued statements distancing itself from him and insidiously stressing that it ‘unequivocally condemn[s] racism and antisemitism in all its forms’.
Repeal the Terrorism Act!
There is no limit to how many applications for deproscription of a particular organisation can be submitted and no requirement that it is the proscribed organisation itself, as opposed to an interested party, which makes the submission. On 10 June, campaigning group CAGE International, which had already provided expert evidence for the Riverway Law case, submitted its own separate application to desproscribe Hamas, focusing on the effect which the ban has had on free speech within Britain.
The CAGE application includes 24 anonymised case studies spanning six sectors:
- Teachers suspended or dismissed, students facing lengthy disciplinary proceedings, and doctors investigated or suspended for online comments;
- Activists, academics and professionals subjected to house raids and confiscation of property;
- Stops at airports under Schedule 7, arrests under Section 12 of the TA 2000, and onerous bail conditions.
- Immigration sanctions including visa revocations or deportation orders for expressing support for the right of Palestinians to resist;
- Children as young as eight years referred, or threatened with referral, to Prevent for expressing solidarity with Palestine;
- A consistent pattern of arrests and harassment with unsuccessful prosecution, yet leaving lasting damage
Once an application for deproscription has been rejected, the next step in the legal process is to take the case to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission which will then convene a tribunal hearing.
As the law currently stands it is a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison to voice support for Hamas or any other proscribed organisation in a way which might be construed as inviting others to also support that organisation. It is not, however, a crime to state your support for deproscription applications submitted via the legal process. It is also perfectly legal to campaign, as we all should, for the repeal of the pernicious TA 2000 in its entirety.
The banning of the IRA and other Irish organisations under the PTA had a seriously detrimental impact on the ability of people, both in the occupied North of Ireland and in Britain, to voice any kind of meaningful solidarity with the struggle against British occupation of Ireland. Similarly, today, the proscription of Hamas has resulted in the charging of many protesters and activists, including our own comrades (see p2), with offences under the Terrorism Act. This stifling of free speech is replicated for supporters of other international movements for change, such as that of the Kurdish people, and we are now seeing the results in weekly arrests of peaceful protesters following the use of the TA 2000 to proscribe a domestic pressure group.
Defend the right to speak out for Palestine!
Support the applications to deproscribe political movements!
Repeal the Terrorism Act!
* The full application submitted on 9 April 2025 can be accessed at hamascase.com
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 307 August/September 2025
