Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was confronted by a pro-Palestine Action activist in a Pizza Express on Sunday evening as police arrested demonstrators for allegedly supporting the banned group outside the Labour Party conference.
Footage posted by campaign group Defend Our Juries, which organised the protests, shows the man approaching Miliband at his table and asking him to engage with protesters being arrested nearby.
BREAKING
— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) September 27, 2026
Ed Miliband gently questioned in the Pizza Express directly opposite where 200 people are being arrested under the UK Terrorism Act for holding pieces of paper.
Refuses to come and have a conversation with arrestees.@Ed_Miliband - Deproscribe Palestine Action. pic.twitter.com/pzIVS3bloD
“We would like you to de-proscribe Palestine Action,” the man says. “We would like you to declare genocide in Gaza.”
“If you would like to have a conversation, come and talk to us.”
Miliband appears to brush off the approach with a wave of his hand before saying: “Nice to meet you anyway.”
The activist continues, referring to those being detained outside the conference venue.
“There are 200 people being arrested over there because of a decision that your ministers have made,” he says, adding that they were being arrested for “peaceful protest” in Britain.
“I voted for you to become leader of the Labour Party. I believe in you. Come and talk to us,” he adds.
Miliband does not appear to enter into a discussion with the activists before they left the restaurant.
The encounter took place at Pizza Express on Monarch Quay, at the King's Waterfront, close to the Labour conference venue and the Wheel of Liverpool.
The confrontation came as hundreds of people took part in a Defend Our Juries demonstration against the government's proscription of Palestine Action.
Merseyside Police said more than 50 people had been arrested by Sunday evening, on suspicion of “wearing/carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation”.
Defend Our Juries subsequently said more than 150 arrests had been made. Other reports put the number of people taking part in the demonstration at around 200.
The proscription came into force on July 5, 2025, making membership of the organisation and inviting, recklessly expressing or displaying articles in support of it criminal offences.
The confrontation with Miliband came shortly before he addressed the Labour conference, where he was due to speak about the government's approach to Israel.
Miliband has argued that Labour has changed its approach to the conflict under Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
“I want to say to the millions of people in this country and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: we hear you, you were right,” Miliband said during his conference speech.
He also pledged the government would “call out the evidence of war crimes in Gaza” and “call out Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine”, while announcing further measures against Israeli settlements.
A spokesman for Defend Our Juries said: “We had hoped the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, would do the sensible thing and bin the ban on Palestine Action given the weight of public pressure to do so and the escalating amount of resources required in enforcing it.
“Continuing the charade of the proscription of Palestine Action is illogical, unsustainable and immoral.”
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