Following a vote in the House of Commons, the group Palestine Action has been officially designated a "proscribed terrorist organisation" in the UK. As of 5 July 2025, both membership of the group as well as support for the group constitutes a criminal offence. The decision has been a major source of controversy and deserves a critical comment.

• The war in Gaza, despite multiple ceasefires, has now gone on for almost two years. The Israeli regime, with backing from the US, has used the attacks of 7 October as a pretext for revising the balance of power in the Middle East.⁽¹⁾ Fighting has spread to Lebanon, Syria and Iran, with serious consequences for the region and the wider world. The human cost has been staggering. For Palestinians, starvation, displacement and slaughter (even at aid distribution points) are a daily reality. According to available estimates, at the very least 60,000 Palestinians (and counting) have died, thousands more are dead across Lebanon, Iran, and Israel. This is not to mention the millions of refugees, livelihoods and neighbourhoods destroyed.
• A significant number of international bodies and humanitarian organisations now describe what's happening in Gaza as a "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing". However, as current events once again demonstrate, the international world order is not governed by moral principles or concern for human life but imperialist self-interest.⁽²⁾ The British state (father to the Balfour Declaration which favoured a “homeland for Jews in Palestine”) has made mealy-mouthed denunciations of the worst of the violence and put sanctions on some of the more prominent Israeli settlers but, since it shares the strategic considerations of the US in the region, it continues to support the Israeli war effort in ways both direct and indirect. This includes companies in the UK producing equipment and technology for the Israeli military.
• For over 70 years now the Palestinians have been gradually dispossessed of land by the machinations of the leading imperialist powers of the day which supported the formation of Israel to further their own interests. Today, the Israeli regime, led by an expansionist radical right coalition, is on the ascendant and has been given a free hand to do as it will. Understandably, the renewed plight of the Palestinians has attracted much sympathy around the world. In the West, this has mainly taken the shape of regular street demonstrations, university campus occupations, and instances of "direct action". The UK group Palestine Action was formed back in 2020 and since then, through activist stunts and damage to property, has been targeting sites with alleged links to the Israeli war effort. The recent action, in which activists broke into an RAF base on scooters and spray painted some military aircrafts, has certainly been an embarrassment to British state security. But the decision to ban Palestine Action — which, unlike most of the other proscribed groups on the list, has not carried out acts of violence against people — seems to be largely the result of consistent lobbying of ministers by pro-Israeli groups and the arms industry. It's also happening in the context of the increasing clampdown on protest in the UK, of which the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 are just the most recent expressions.⁽³⁾
• Politically speaking, Palestine Action is only anti-war in the sense that it opposes the Israeli regime. The group sees itself as part of the "Palestinian resistance", the meaning of which can be garnered from the fact that some prominent members have made statements expressing support, critical or otherwise, for the attacks of 7 October and groups like Hamas. And so it is that, when Palestinians in Gaza are bravely protesting, raising slogans against not just Israel but also Hamas, much of the Western left continues to exonerate Hamas.⁽⁴⁾ In other words, we are in the realm of nationalism (even if underdog nationalism). This aligns Palestine Action with much of the capitalist left, which is why it has received political backing from various Trotskyist and Stalinist outlets, as well as elements within the anarchist scene.⁽⁵⁾ Furthermore, the “direct action” framework that Palestine Action espouses is implicit in its rejection of the working class as the revolutionary subject, instead basing itself on professional activists who sacrifice themselves in more and more extreme ways in order to put pressure on governments and shift the tide of public opinion.
• Capitalist states all around the world are gearing up for war, and activist stunts, no matter how well-meaning or how extreme, will not stop this. The drive to war is evident by the rise of nationalist tendencies, increased military spending, and demands for workers to accept new austerity. Another symptom of this is the reduced tolerance for internal dissent. Under such circumstances, states are only more and more likely to resort to the use of force and repressive legislation. The ban on Palestine Action will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts, and there will be protests about it. For the capitalist left — which is currently trying to regroup behind former members of the Labour Party, Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn — reversing the decision might become a cause célèbre. For workers however, this should be seen as a sign of things to come and a reminder that, as our living and working conditions are chipped away at, the capitalist class will want to prevent any real fightback. Without a mass movement, able to self-organise the struggles to defend our interests, we are no more than isolated individuals at the mercy of history not of our making. Our strength as workers always lies in our organisation, the solidarity which unites us as a class, as well as our consciousness, the awareness that in order to get rid of war, exploitation and oppression, the capitalist system has to be replaced by a world community of freely associated producers in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”. For the Palestinians themselves, real liberation will only come with the abolition of all national frontiers, not as a vassal enclave of Israel or any other expansionist power (which inevitably is all that either the “one-state” or “two-state” solutions can amount to).

Notes:

(1) Unending Barbarism: The Causes that Led to the Middle East Crisis

(2) Imperialist Hypocrisy in the East and West

(3) Police Powers Bill: Preparing for Class War

(4) Anti-War Protests in Gaza

(5) The Tasks of Revolutionaries in the Face of Capitalism's Drive to War