‘Toxic’ and ‘radioactive’: Labour MPs turn on Palestine Action ban after 4,000 arrests

Labour MPs who backed the ban on Palestine Action now say the government pressured them into voting to list the direct-action group as a terrorist organisation, a decision that has led to almost 4,000 arrests of protesters over the past year and that several now admit has damaged the right to protest in Britain.

The Observer reported the MPs’ regret yesterday. It says ministers held a series of meetings in Westminster to bring MPs into line ahead of the Commons vote on 2 July last year. One senior backbencher said the security minister, Dan Jarvis, had assured Labour members that peaceful protesters would not be affected. “That is very clearly not the case,” the MP told the paper. “People who just go to a protest, a general Palestine protest, and hold up a sign, that is egregious overreach.”

Palestine Action was founded in 2020 to take direct action against Israeli arms manufacturers in Britain, especially the Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems. Former home secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed it under the Terrorism Act 2000 after activists broke into RAF Brize Norton in June 2025 and sprayed paint on two military aircraft in protest at British support for Israel during the Gaza genocide. Since the ban, showing support for the group, including holding a placard, has been a criminal offence that carries a prison sentence of up to six months.

The ban passed by 385 votes to 26, and 114 Labour MPs abstained. Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South, voted against it. He said most of the Labour MPs he knows who voted for the ban or abstained “have buyer’s remorse”. “Of all the toxic legacies Starmer left us, this is one of the most radioactive,” he said, referring to former prime minister Keir Starmer, who resigned in July.

A third Labour MP, who voted for the ban, described it as “a case that feels built on sand” and said: “It is a vote I struggle to justify.”

A second MP said proscription was the wrong tool. “The tool itself is too broad, and not narrow enough to address the acts of violence without also getting the protests,” they said. “It was never intended to stop old ladies from peaceful protest – which is a fundamentally British thing to do.”

Several MPs, including some who still broadly support the ban, are unhappy that the Home Office would not fully explain its reasons. It said doing so could prejudice the trials of activists charged over a raid on Elbit Systems’ site at Filton, near Bristol.

MPs also object to how the vote was handled. It came the day after a major Labour rebellion forced the government to retreat on cuts to universal credit and personal independence payments, which left little time to scrutinise the ban. Cooper also bundled Palestine Action into the same order as two other groups, the neo-Nazi Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist organisation. That made it harder for Labour MPs to vote against.

“It was one of those days that crushed your faith in the Starmer government,” the first MP said. “Those two days were definitely a big part of the reason why Keir Starmer is no longer the prime minister of this country.”

The MPs spoke out as the Supreme Court heard a challenge to the ban this week. It was brought by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori, who was granted permission to appeal in July. Her barrister, Raza Husain KC, told the court the ban was a “colossal invasion” of the rights to freedom of assembly and expression protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. He said this was especially true for supporters who had taken no part in violence or sabotage. He argued that Cooper had failed to give those freedoms proper weight and that Palestine Action belongs to a long British tradition of peaceful and sometimes disruptive protest.

In February, the High Court ruled the ban unlawful, but in June the Court of Appeal reinstated it, drawing condemnation from Amnesty International UK and the civil liberties group Liberty. The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming months.

A Home Office spokesperson said the ban “does not affect lawful support of the Palestinian cause” and followed “a rigorous and evidence-based decision-making process, endorsed by parliament.”

The cabinet has largely backed Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s defence of the ban. However, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told LBC radio in September: “I don’t think anyone’s intent was to have those people criminalised.”

Enforcing the ban has also strained the Metropolitan Police after more than a year of protests that deliberately defied it. Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes said “many thousands of officer shifts” had been taken away from community policing. He added that the force could not “pick and choose which proscribed organisations we enforce the law around.”