A policeman spoke into his radio, a touch nervously: “They’ve not got much space.” The occasion was Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s anticipated proscription of Palestine Action (PA) as a terrorist organisation. In response, the campaign group had called for an “emergency mobilisation” outside Westminster Palace at noon today, 23 June 2025. Soon before that, though, the Metropolitan Police declared Westminster an “exclusion zone”, so the protest relocated to Trafalgar Square. But, as the square itself was fenced off for the dismantling of a stage from a weekend event, the protest was packed into the northeast corner of the square, outside St-Martin-in-the-Fields church, blocking the traffic on the Charing Cross Road for over an hour.
Proscription would allow the police to use greater force when suppressing PA’s activities. A moderately heavy police presence had issued from vans with recruitment appeals on the side. Some officers held cameras aloft, pointing at the crowd. Protestors filmed them back, as well as passing around boxes of face masks and distributing “Bustcards”. Produced by volunteer group Green and Black Cross, Bustcards contain advice about your rights and the best course of action if you are arrested while protesting. For example, “Say ‘NO COMMENT’ to all police questions during casual chats…For your protection and that of other people don’t answer further questions.” Amnesty International said it was “deeply concerned at the use of counter-terrorism powers to target protests”.
Cooper’s announcement follows two PA activists infiltrating Oxfordshire’s RAF Brize Norton and tampering with two planes on Friday. Keir Starmer called the break-in “disgraceful”. The Times estimated that Palestine Action has now caused £55 million of damage to military equipment. Other reports hold that the activists only spray-painted the jets, and that anyway they had just cycled or e-scootered into the base with no obstruction from any security.
Protestors mocked the government’s response on these grounds. One man’s sign read “Oh no I spilled some paint! Does that make me a terrorist?” He told me he had been on the same spot in 2003 to protest the Iraq war, and said “It’s ridiculous that Palestine Action, which has never killed anyone, is labelled a terrorist group. In that case the word terrorism has no meaning.” He wondered if any other non-lethal group had attracted the same proscription. Another man asked me, laughing, “Are you a terrorist, sir?”
More seriously, the first protestor said, the proscription was “quite clearly an attempt to suppress pro-Palestinian voices… especially when this government has quite clearly contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Gaza.” To “uphold the law”, one sign insisted, was to “stop the genocide.” Others echoed the sentiment: “To us, terrorism is killing kids”, “terrorists don’t spray paint they bomb kids”, “Protest is a human right: protesting genocide is a human obligation”. One protestor, Alex, said he was supporting Palestine Action “because they are fighting actively to stop this government colluding with genocide. We believe that the people who need to be proscribed, and counted as terrorists, are Starmer and his government.”
The first eddy of confrontation came when the police forced two men to the ground to arrest them. One of them was elderly and appeared to be winded and quite dazed once he was brought back to his feet. Chants of “shame on you” rose. The rest of the physical confrontation occurred as the police escorted these detainees to a corner and behind a cordon, then as they escorted them from the scene. I did not see the violence escalate beyond firm shoving, but several of those shoved were old or otherwise frail. One man shouted “You can’t just push me what the fuck are you doing?” Another, after arguing with an unreactive officer, said “They’re not human. They’re dehumanised.” The crowd asked “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”, jeered “Oink oink piggy wiggy”, and cried, most potently, “Over a hundred thousand dead, you’re arresting us instead.”
Cooper made her announcement while the protest was ongoing. She said “this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.” A draft proscription will be laid before parliament next Monday, 30 June.
There was a broad cross-section of people protesting, and I was told there is broad support for Palestine Action in the country. It was raised that 350,000 people in the UK marched for Gaza on the weekend and that Jeremy Corbyn, in both the general elections he fought, won more votes than Keir Starmer did when he entered Downing Street. So if we are past the longest day of the year, the hottest are still to come. One activist said, “Whether you’re fighting for benefit rights, whether you’re an asylum seeker breaking the blockade of the channel coming here to fight for themselves, whether you’re a refugee, whether you’re a worker, a public sector worker on low pay. There’s a spirit of rebellion and it’s coming together. This summer is going to be a very hot summer.”
Additional reporting by Megan Kenyon.
[See also: The British Left will not follow Trump into war]
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