The British judicial system has once again exposed itself as nothing more than a shield for the imperialist war machine. The retrial of the ‘Filton 6’ – Palestine Actionists who dared to physically disrupt the Bristol headquarters of the British branch of Israeli weapons manufacturers Elbit Systems’ in 2024 – has concluded with a desperate, vindictive attempt by the state to salvage its failing prosecution. On 5 May Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatima Zainab Rajwani – four of the Filton 6 – were found guilty of criminal damage by a unanimous verdict and have been remanded in custody awaiting a sentencing hearing in June. This is a judicial farce, a legal performance designed to protect the profits of death-merchants while Gaza burns.
The verdicts in the initial trial in February were a humiliation for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Despite the best efforts of the judge to blinker the jury, the state failed to secure any convictions for aggravated burglary, violent disorder or criminal damage, returning a mix of Not Guilty and inconclusive verdicts. Rather than accepting the jury’s refusal to criminalise those standing against genocide, the state then opted for a retrial on the criminal damage charges. The British state is clearly prepared to waste millions in public funds to ensure the punishment of anyone who challenges its close relationship to the Zionist state.
The trial process has been a masterclass in state-sponsored censorship. Throughout the proceedings, the judiciary has acted as a defence team for Elbit. By systematically stripping away the activists’ ability to argue ‘necessity’ or ‘prevention of a greater crime’, and outlawing all discussion of Elbit’s activities or the defendants’ motivation, the judge managed both to inflate an act of international solidarity to terrorism and to reduce it to mere crime, stripped of political meaning. Real Media reports highlight how the court sought to sanitise the reality of Elbit’s business. While the defendants spoke of the flesh-shredding reality of drones and the ‘battle-tested’ cruelty of the Zionist entity, the prosecution obsessed over broken windows and paint.
Outside the court, protesters from Defend our Juries were arrested for carrying placards reminding the jury of their right to act according to their conscience. Arrestees included Trudi Warner, who in 2023 successfully challenged an attempt to prosecute her for contempt of court for holding an identical placard outside the trial of climate activists.
Not content with witch-hunting protesters who seek to remind the jury of the law, in an almost unprecedented development, there are now contempt proceedings against Rajiv Menon KC, the barrister representing lead defendant, Lottie Head. In the first trial Menon made a powerful closing speech in which he reminded the jury of its fundamental right to acquit based on conscience, directly against the orders of the judge, Justice Johnson. In the second trial, aware that the judge would again attempt to muzzle any political defence their barristers would put forward, five of the defendants ‘sacked’ their lawyers after all the evidence had been heard, and made their own closing speeches directly to the jury.
Time to stand in renewed solidarity
Despite the best efforts of the state to rig this trial, it could not achieve a full victory. While the second jury found four of the six guilty of criminal damage, it pronounced Not Guilty verdicts for Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin. All six had freely admitted that they damaged drones and other weaponry at Elbit, and that they were proud to have done so.
Samuel Corner – who had been held on remand since August 2024 – was also convicted of criminal damage, as well as of inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH) on a police officer, but was acquitted of a more serious GBH with intent charge. Corner’s GBH charge, has been ceaselessly exploited by Zionist media and the state to frame Palestine Action as an inherently violent organisation.
We have no illusions about the British legal system. These courts are the same ones that institutionalised the colonisation of Ireland, India, Palestine and other countries subject to British rule. They are not neutral arbiters; they are the domestic enforcement wing of British imperialism. The ‘farcical’ nature of the retrial is not an accident – it is the system working exactly as intended, to exhaust, bankrupt, and silence those who stand on the side of the oppressed.
The sentencing of the four activists will take place on Friday 12 June – campaigners worry that the judge could invoke the Sentencing Act 2020, where the sentence can be impacted by whether ‘the offence has a terrorist connection’. The earlier use of terrorism legislation at the point of the Filton 24’s arrests has heightened fears that it will impact the length and severity of their sentences.
While we celebrate the acquittals of two activists, we must recognise that the state’s pursuit of a retrial is a declaration of war on the right to resist. We must meet this judicial repression with increased militancy on the streets.
The Filton 6 have shown that the British state is vulnerable. Its desperation to convict them only proves how much it fears the power of the movement against Zionism and imperialism. We will continue to expose this judicial circus, and to fight or the freedom of all political prisoners.
Mobilise for the sentencing hearing on Friday 12 June at Woolwich Crown Court. An injury to one is an injury to all!
Defend the Filton 24!
Rally Against State Repression!
Jacob O’Neill
