The scenes of police on 6 September 2025 violently assaulting protesters in London’s Parliament Square simply for displaying placards opposing the proscription of Palestine Action provided a sharp contrast with their laissez-faire attitude the following week, as racist hordes thronged the streets of central London, spewing anti-Muslim and anti-migrant slogans with impunity. Yet the so-called ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally on 13 September was not designated a ‘hate march’ by politicians or their complicit media – unlike the mass Palestine Solidarity Campaign demonstrations in the first months following the Zionist onslaught on Gaza, where the large numbers of young black and Muslim people taking to the streets were dis-proportionately targeted by police for harassment and arrest. Nor was it coincidental that the blue and white flag of the Zionist state fluttered prominently among the sea of Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses. Just two days later, the genocidal Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hammered home the point, saying ‘Western Europe has large Islamist minorities. They’re vocal. Many of them are politically motivated. They align with Hamas, they align with Iran…The governments of western Europe are being overtaken by campaigns of violent protest and constant intimidation.’
The Israeli government has spent millions of dollars on research amongst Western European populations to conclude that its best propaganda weapon to undermine growing hostility to Zionism and support for the Palestine struggle is to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment. Thus do the interests of the forces of reaction align, from the British state as it foments hostility to ‘illegal migrants’, through Tommy Robinson’s bootboys, to Zionism. Those marching to the tune of the state’s racist anti-immigrant rhetoric understand how the battlelines are being drawn. For them, flying the Zionist flag goes hand in hand with their anti-Muslim propaganda; the far-right initiated ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ is in large part a hostile reaction to the widespread flying of the Palestinian flag, which in predominantly Muslim areas such as London’s East End is defiantly displayed from homes and lamp-posts; it is not surprising that RCG street stalls and rallies in solidarity with Palestine have recently come under attack from emboldened right-wing thugs. It is all those who today stand in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle who must therefore, in the first instance, form the vanguard of anti-racist and anti-imperialist resistance in Britain.
Young Muslims in Britain have been amongst the most militant and radical challengers to Labour’s support for Zionism, targeting the offices of Labour MPs who failed to support a vote for a ceasefire in Gaza in 2023 – and the most heavily targeted by police for harassment including through the Prevent programme. They have a profound understanding of the role of British imperialism in the Middle East and racism here in Britain.
The British state understands only too well the potential challenge it could face from these forces and that is why it is cracking down with such ferocity on any incipient movement that could mobilise them. From the start, it has sought to criminalise all those who stand against genocide and the actions of the British state. The proscription of Palestine Action was driven by fears about the uncompromising anti-Zionist stance of an increasingly radicalised section of the movement that has rejected the compromise and ‘respectability’ of the official Palestine Solidarity Campaign. That is why, despite more than a thousand arrests and outrage from even the mainstream press (reserved mainly for the arrests of elderly, white, middle class protesters), the British Labour government is doubling down. In a rare legal move, the Home Office appealed against a judicial review of the group’s proscription, scheduled for November. The government case was heard on 25 September; a decision is expected in late October. A victory for the Home Office will have significant repercussions not just for those facing charges over opposition to the ban, but in galvanising the state to intensify further its crackdown on Palestine solidarity.
Already we have seen the wider application of the Terrorism Act, with pro-Palestine human rights lawyer Fahad Ansari detained and interrogated at a UK border under Schedule 7 on 6 August. Ansari has been pursuing a legal challenge against the government over the proscription of the Palestinian resistance organisation Hamas. He has launched legal action against his unlawful detention. In early September, seven spokespeople for the organisation Defend Our Juries, which has been organising the protests against the Palestine Action ban, were detained and face a combined 43 terror charges for speaking on public Zoom calls. Five were arrested in dawn raids on 2 September, and six were held in custody for two days before being released under restrictive conditions including curfews, ankle tags and no access to technology without police approval.
Originally brought in as the Prevention of Terrorism Act to intimidate supporters of Irish liberation in the 1970s, (see FRFI 307, ‘Terrorism legislation: an attack on solidarity’), the Terrorism Act 2000 is now used by the state against a wide range of anti-imperialist struggles, not just those fighting in Palestine. On 19 September six Kurdish activists appeared at the Old Bailey facing terrorism charges. They have already spent ten months wearing electronic tags and subject to curfew for opposing Turkey’s savage repression of the Kurdish struggle. Any emerging movement must understand that the Terrorism Act is a ruling class tool to criminalise all anti-imperialist struggle and must be opposed in its entirety.
In this context, a mass civil disobedience campaign that focuses only on the narrow goal of de-proscribing Palestine Action, however laudable the motives of those taking part, risks becoming a distraction especially if it does not follow through with a clear political and legal defence of all those facing charges. The state is organising to crush all resistance; we have to organise to fight back on every front. That means standing up to Zionists and other racists on the streets, challenging the actions of the British police, opposing the Terrorism Act, fighting through the courts and mobilising all those who have every interest in fighting back against the unholy alliance of reaction between the British state, Zionism and the far right. In doing so we will create a pole of anti-racist, anti-imperialist resistance.
Cat Wiener
FRFI 308 October/November 2025
