Our Rights, Their Laws – Resisting the Repression of pro-Palestine activity
16 July 2025 - Richard Haley
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This article by Richard Haley, written in March 2025, was first published in the Spring 2025 (25/1) edition of the Secure Scotland and Peace & Justice newsletter.
The protests held for Palestine since October 2023 have no recent precedent in their scale, continuity and variety. Some brushes with the law would be unsurprising amidst all this activity. Instead, we are witnessing an escalating, politically-driven state campaign against our activism.
Earlier Palestine protests were by no means free from police harassment. Police targets were mostly those suggested by Israel’s policies. Israel’s priority for a decade or more was to counter international campaigns for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Police Scotland helped by making arrests at BDS-related protests, often adding racial aggravation to the charges on the basis of the supposed anti-semitism of the protests. These charges were generally unsuccessful in court.
Israel’s October 2023 assault on Gaza was met by lively demonstrations around the UK. Protest tactics included occupations of railway stations, first at London’s Liverpool Street and then elsewhere, including Edinburgh and Glasgow. Two new organisations, the Glasgow-based Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee and the Edinburgh Gaza Genocide Emergency Committee were formed to coordinate the activity of various existing pro-Palestine groups.
In line with this spirit of militancy there was an attempt by protestors in Edinburgh and Glasgow to act on the presumption of a right to protest separate from the process of notification to the city Council. Police countered this with threats of arrest coupled with attempts to initiate back-channel contact. By the spring of 2024 several people had been charged with organising illegal demonstrations.
The legal framework for the charges was set by the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 requirement to give notification of a “procession” to the City Council, which may then ban or impose conditions on the procession. The legislation is poorly drafted, appears not to have been clarified by Scottish case law and could in some circumstances conflict with the right to protest derived from the Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights.
In August 2024 Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign founder member Mick Napier was found guilty in Glasgow Sheriff Court of organising illegal demonstrations. He was fined a total of £800 and the Sheriff said that he viewed the offence as being of a “regulatory” nature. This sits uncomfortably with the draconian bail conditions initially imposed on Mick Napier, restricting his movements and his right to participate in demonstrations. Police and prosecutors appear to have been more concerned with limiting protests than with justice.
Similar charges were brought against Edinburgh activist Willie Black, but were dropped at trial.
More seriously, police have used hate crime and terrorism laws to control what is said on demonstrations. In late 2023 it was reported that arrests on Palestine demonstrations in London were made under the direction of senior officers in a Special Operations Room, that senior prosecution lawyers had their own desk in the Special Operations Building, and that the Home Secretary’s Special Lead Advisors for Hate Crime and Media and Communications had regular access to the Special Operations Room. The Metropolitan Police says it works in “real-time” with the aggressively pro-Israel Community Security Trust.
Whether Police Scotland operates in a similar way is unknown.
On 7 December 2023 two people were violently arrested outside the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Glasgow while protesting a visit by Keir Starmer. They were charged with police assault, resisting arrest and breach of the peace. All the charges were either dropped of defeated in Glasgow Sheriff Court in January 2025. It is hard to avoid concluding that the heavy-handed policing was politically motivated.
Mick Napier had to face a terrorism charge in Glasgow alongside the charges of organising illegal demonstrations. As a result of remarks about Hamas that he made in a speech on 16 December 2023, he was accused of supporting a proscribed organisation contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000.
Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) commented that his remarks “do not fall within what we in SACC believe to be the established scope of Section 12(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000.” The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COFPS) appears to have agreed, because the charge was dropped six weeks later. But people in England, including anti-Zionist campaigner Tony Greenstein, have terrorism charges outstanding against them that also appear to have a flimsy basis.
Mick Napier was arrested again in March 2025 and charged with hate crime for two incidents at Barclays Bank protests in Glasgow on 15 February and 1 March. The charges were the result of complaints to police by a member of Glasgow Friends of Israel.
The London demonstration organised on 18 January 2025 by the Stop the war Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others encountered a level of police hostility that was unprecedented for a demonstration of that kind. Demonstrators were prevented from marching to the BBC on the pretext of supposed concerns for the feelings of the congregation of a synagogue in the vicinity. 77 people, including Chief Steward Chris Nineham, were arrested. Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was subsequently interviewed under caution by police over his involvement in the demonstration.
A number of organisations, including SACC, have written a joint letter to the Metropolitan Police posing questions on police orders and instructions that have yet to be answered. Since then, police have expanded their campaign of intimidation by interviewing other participants in the demonstration, including 87 year old Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos and actor Khalid Abdalla.
On 15 February 2025 6 pro-Palestine activists were arrested following a peaceful BDS action at a Home Bargains store in Aberdeen. The police response was particularly heavy-handed and involved an armed officer.
The organisation Palestine Action has since 2020 been at the forefront of direct action against weapons factories that supply Israel and companies that work with those factories. Its tactics include blockades, occupations, smearing with red paint and destruction of equipment.
The police response has escalated steadily. 18 people arrested in connection with an action at an Elbit facility in Filton, Bristol in August 2024 were held on terrorism charges. One of them was arrested at gunpoint. The terrorism charges were dropped and the defendants now face other charges. But the terrorism allegations gave the police extra powers and allowed prolonged pre-charge detention.
These police tactics prompted the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism and other UN experts to write to the British Government in November 2024 expressing their concerns and posing some questions. The Government gave its response on 24 January 2025. To a question as to whether the UK’s definition of terrorism would be amended to exclude “acts of advocacy, dissent, protest, or industrial action” the Government replied that the application of the definition of terrorism was an operational decision for the police and the CPS. But it isn’t credible that police would have acted as they did without at least a nod from Government.
The 18 Filton defendants are all being held on remand. One of them, Kamran Ahmed, was granted bail at the Old Bailey on 28 February but the decision was reversed a few days later on appeal by the prosecution. Prosecutors appear to be trying to use remand as a punitive and deterrent measure and judges are evidently willing to accommodate them.
In August 2024 5 Palestine Action activists were jailed over a 2022 occupation of Thales weapons factory in Glasgow. A successful blockade of the factory in July 2024 was met with a violent police response that led to several arrestees attending hospital. 11 protestors were charged and are awaiting trial.
The Leonardo arms factory in Edinburgh has been the target of actions and protests on several occasions since Israel began its onslaught against Gaza. The “Leonardo 5”, who blockaded the factory in December 2024, are facing charges that include crimes “aggravated by prejudice relating to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), or ethnic or national origins.” It’s hard to imagine a more surreal use of hate crime legislation than against protestors against the arms industry.
The cases outlined above are just a sample of those progressing through the courts. Repression of pro-Palestine activism is escalating. Political interference in policing, evident from the outset in Priti Patel’s remarks about “hate marches”, is becoming more significant. All of us who stand up for Palestine need to stand together. Our solidarity should be built on a presumption of support for anyone arrested as a result of their activism for Palestine, whether or not we agree with their specific tactics.
Events in Palestine are pitting a mass movement against the policy of the British state more sharply than at any time since the miners’ strike. Political interference in policing at that time was systematic and ruthless. We must be ready to stand against any repetition of that strategy.
Note: Palestine Action has been banned by the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000, with effect from midnight 4 July 2025.
Photo: pro-Palestine demo in London, 18 January 2025 © Aldo Shoots/Alamy
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