The government has confirmed that direct action group Palestine Action is set to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, said in a statement to Parliament that a draft proscription order will be laid before the House of Commons next week.
If MPs back the move, it will be “illegal to be a member of, or invite support for, Palestine Action”, she said.
Cooper described the group’s attack on RAF Brize Norton in the early hours of Friday morning as “the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action”.
“The UK’s defence enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk”, she added.
The home secretary also said Palestine Action’s “nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions” had targeted defence firms that also supplied Ukraine, NATO and Britain’s allies.
Warning that the group’s disruptive activities had “increased in frequency and severity since the start of 2024”, Cooper’s statement claimed that Palestine Action’s “activities meet the threshold set out in the statutory tests established under the Terrorism Act 2000.
“This has been assessed through a robust evidence-based process, by a wide range of experts from across government, the police and the Security Services.”
Cooper emphasised that the protest activities of those “opposing the actions of the Israeli government, and those demanding changes in the UK’s foreign policy” would be unaffected.
On Friday, when reports first emerged that the government was going to proscribe Palestine Action, the move was welcomed by Jewish communal groups including the Board of Deputies and the Community Security Trust.
According to Cooper, proscription would allow law-enforcement authorities to “effectively disrupt the escalating actions of this serious group”.
In her statement, the home secretary referenced the attack by the group on a Jewish-owned business in Stamford Hill.
“Such incidents do not represent legitimate or peaceful protest”, she said, adding: “Regardless of whether this incident itself amounts to terrorism, such activity is clearly intimidatory and unacceptable. It is one that has been repeated many times by this organisation at sites the length and breadth of the UK.”
Some parliamentarians have voiced their opposition to the government’s course of action.
Labour backbencher Nadia Whittome, who described Palestine Action as “non-violent protesters”, said in a post on X that proscription was “a misuse of terrorism-related powers” that “sets a dangerous precedent, which governments in future could further use against their critics”.
Green Party MP Ellie Chowns described the group’s break into RAF Brize Norton and damage caused to a military aircraft as an “overreaction to a couple of protesters using paint”.
The MP for North Herefordshire added: “Such a move would be completely non-proportional and a hugely worrying restriction on the right to peaceful protest which is a cornerstone of democracy.”
In a further statement to the Commons on Monday evening, armed forces Minister Luke Pollard confirmed that two RAF Voyager aircraft were damaged by paint thrown by Palestine Action activists who broke into RAF Brize Norton, a move he called “disgraceful”.
He told MPs he had spoken with the “Chief of the Defence Staff and the Chief of the Air Staff about this incident” and that security around the key airbase would be increasing.
"Counter Terrorism Policing South East and Thames Valley police are leading the investigation to establish the exact circumstances of the events and to identify those responsible. We will continue to work with the police and pursue those responsible for this unacceptable act of vandalism. This incident is subject to a live counter-terrorism investigation, so I hope the House will understand that I cannot provide any further details at this time”, he added.
More MPs – including Labour’s Kim Johnson, Green Sian Berry and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – expressed opposition to the plan to proscribe Palestine Action.
However, Sir Julian Lewis, former chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee, urged the government to make sure their position, when it came to proscription, was legally watertight.
“It would do the country and the government no favours if they were to lose in court a challenge to the process of proscription, because whereas the secret sabotage of planes would certainly have been an act of terrorism leading to proscription, the fact is that this was a performative act that these people announced they had done, said the veteran Conservative MP.
He added: “My advice to the government is to make sure, when these people are prosecuted, that it is not solely on the grounds of committing terrorist acts, rather than committing treasonous acts of sabotage.”
Pollard responded by saying that “the decision to proscribe has not been made without considerable thought, or without reflecting on the information in the public domain and information that perhaps is not and that it was underpinned by a very serious legal process.”
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