Politics
Judicial Review ruling on Palestine Action imminent
The fate of the 2,787 people arrested for terrorism offences for peacefully holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” in silent vigils in towns and cities in all four nations of the UK, will be decided on Friday 13 February at 10am in Court 4 of the Royal Courts of Justice when the long-awaited Judicial Review ruling will be finally read into court.
Outside the court, supporters of the Lift The Ban campaign will again risk arrest by holding the same signs in a display of the ongoing defiance of the government’s authoritarian attempt to treat protest as terrorism. The Lift The Ban campaign – which aims to de-proscribe Palestine Action and end government complicity in genocide – has become the largest UK-wide campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience in recent history.
A spokesperson for Defend Our Juries said:
The Filton 6 verdicts show that only a Judicial Review ruling that strikes down the Palestine Action ban as unlawful will be in tune with the public’s understanding of justice. Unlike the government, the public knows the difference between protest and terrorism.
The Filton 6 verdicts have been a huge blow to government ministers who have tried to portray Palestine Action as a violent group. They have repeatedly referred to the single incidence of alleged harm to an individual in the case as justification for banning Palestine Action before the allegation was proven in court.
Yet Palestine Action never advocated causing harm to people and never caused unlawful violence to a person in over 400 actions. Their aim was always to save lives by causing damage to companies like Elbit Systems whose made-in-Britain quadcopter drones have been killing innocent civilians in Gaza.
Our action outside the Royal Courts of Justice will create yet another dilemma for the police – will they arrest us as the result of the Judicial Review is being read out? If the appeal against the proscription is successful, their action looks ridiculous.
If it is unsuccessful, more people will be added to the queue for prosecution in the courts – and people of conscience who want to defend our fundamental rights and freedoms will have no option but to continue to resist this unjust, unnecessary and unenforceable law.
Lobbyists for proscription
As the Channel 4 documentary Palestine Action – The Truth Behind The Ban showed, home secretary Yvette Cooper held meetings with lobbyists for arms companies and Israel that were revealed by Freedom of Information requests. Even the government’s own adviser on terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, condemned Cooper’s “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” approach to justifying the ban.
We also know about pressure from arms companies and lobbyists for Israel that was put on the government, and that in March 2025 Keir Starmer took two phone calls from Donald Trump about Palestine Action after the group painted “Gaza is not for sale” on Trump’s golf course in Scotland.
The decision was made despite warnings that the move would backfire, and despite deep and widespread concerns amongst civil servants, international experts, human rights observers and civil society.
Impacts of the proscription
The decision to proscribe has not only led to 2,787 people being arrested for sitting peacefully, holding signs in front of the world’s press. It has also resulted in the the misapplication of counter-terror resources, international condemnation, the exhaustion and lowering of morale of police officers and the possibility that people might be criminalised for showing support for the Palestinian people.
But it has not stopped people taking direct action against the properties of the companies who are complicit in genocide.
The judicial review grounds
Huda Ammori was granted four grounds on which to challenge the proscription in a judicial review which was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice over three days between 26 November and 2 December 2025.
On 30 July 2025 Mr Justice Chamberlain granted two grounds: that the proscription was a disproportionate interference with Article 10 and Article 11 rights Convention Rights, namely the rights to expression and assembly; and that Palestine Action should have been consulted.
Two additional grounds were granted by the Court of Appeal on 17 October 2025: that the home secretary failed to have regard to domestic public law principles and that she did not apply her own policy including the proportionality of the proscription.
Allegations of a judicial stitch-up
Avaaz launched a petition demanding an explanation from justice secretary David Lammy MP as to why the judge overseeing the case was removed just days before it was about to begin. The lack of an explanation has meant the Judicial Review has been dogged by allegations of a ‘stitch-up’ with questions about the suitability and independence of the three replacement judges demanding to be answered. A former British ambassador suggested the result had been to “load the dice for Israel”.
The judicial review
On the opening day of the Judicial Review, Raza Husain KC, representing Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori, noted that the group was the: “first direct-action civil disobedience organisation that does not advocate for violence ever to be proscribed as terrorist.” He said the ban was an “ill-considered, discriminatory, due process-lacking, authoritarian abuse of statutory power … that is alien to the basic tradition of common law and the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Defend Our Juries’ Lift The Ban campaign was cited as evidence of mass civil society disagreement with the proscription.
Intervening in the Judicial Review, United Nations Special Rapporteur Ben Saul warned the ban makes the UK “out of step with comparable liberal democracies” and “sets a precedent” for further crackdown on other protest movements in the UK such as climate protesters.
Amnesty International UK said it represented a substantial departure from established responses to protest movements which use direct action tactics and that it breached our fundamental rights to protest and free speech.
Liberty argued the ban was disproportionate because counter-terror powers have historically been directed at groups whose modus operandi includes intentional violence against people
Best-selling author Sally Rooney told the hearing how she may no longer be able to sell or publish her books in the UK due to her support for Palestine Action.
On the final day of the Judicial Review – Tuesday 2 December 2025 – the government presented part of its defence using the secret court system known as Closed Material Procedure. This method has come under criticism for allowing evidence to be presented without challenge and has been described by Angus McCullough KC as being a system “in meltdown”.
Government would have let hunger strikers die
During a rolling hunger and thirst strike running from November to January, Lammy refused to meet lawyers for the families and loved ones of hunger strikers, or even to reply directly to the several letters that they sent. This was despite warnings from medical professionals that participants had passed the point where there was a high risk of death and serious permanent injury.
UN experts said any death and injury would be the government’s responsibility:
The State’s duty of care toward hunger strikers is heightened, not diminished … Preventable deaths in custody are never acceptable. The State bears full responsibility for the lives and wellbeing of those it detains.
The conditions of Palestine Action-connected prisoners held without trial were earlier criticised by the UN in a letter to the UK government.
Government complicity in crimes against humanity and genocide
Evidence of UK complicity in crimes against genocide continues to mount. In October 2025 the UN issued its draft report Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime detailing the complicity of states including the UK in the destruction of Gaza. Amongst other things, the UK continued to supply arms including components for F-35 stealth bombers, undertook daily surveillance flights over Gaza for Israel, maintained normal trade relations, and allowed Israel to undertake international crimes with impunity.
In December Declassified UK released its film Britain’s Gaza Spy Flight Scandal, investigating the hundreds of RAF intelligence flights conducted on behalf of Israel.
The genocide continues but the government is silent
The genocide continues to unfold in Gaza. Since the 11 October 2025 “ceasefire”, Israel has killed at least 556 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 1,500. The total recorded death toll since 7 October 2023 is now 71,824.
In October 2025 the UN reported that 81% of buildings in Gaza had been either damaged or destroyed rendering the vast majority of the population homeless and relying on temporary shelters. Israel continues to destroy buildings in Gaza.
Israel recently banned 37 aid groups from working in Gaza. UN experts said:
Banning life-saving organisations from operating in Gaza marks a new phase in a policy that renders life unbearable for a population already devastated by genocide. This strategy will create conditions that force Palestinians into chronic deprivation, threatening their very survival as a group and further violating the Genocide Convention – it must be stopped …
We have entered a new phase in which Israel and its supporters have reached the genocide without witness stage. With journalists being killed, denied access, or forced out, humanitarian organisations paralysed or expelled, and a misleading global sense of ‘ceasefire’, atrocities are being committed without public scrutiny.
Featured image via Defend our Juries