A Labour Home Office minister asked Green Party leader Zack Polanski this week whether he supports Palestine Action. This sounds like a normal political question. It is not. Palestine Action was banned by the Labour government as a proscribed terrorist organisation earlier this year. Under the proscription, expressing support for the group carries a maximum sentence of fourteen years in prison.
Mike Tapp, who is honorary vice chair of Labour Friends of Israel, posted the question in reply to Polanski on X. Polanski had written: “This government’s branding of protest as terrorism has seen grandparents arrested and dragged through the courts simply for holding up signs. It’s deeply authoritarian when people are speaking out against the genocide and for a free Palestine.”
Tapp’s reply: “Do you support the Palestine Action Group?”
Polanski’s response cut through it neatly. “The fact that your government has made it illegal for me to answer yes is a damning testament to your flagrant disregard for civil liberties. This may be targeted at those taking action against the genocide, but it sets a very dangerous precedent that puts everyone at risk.”
It is worth being clear about what Tapp was doing. He was not asking a casual question about Polanski’s political sympathies. He was asking a political opponent – one whose party poses a growing electoral threat to Labour – a question that, if answered honestly with yes, would constitute a criminal offence and potentially result in arrest, prosecution and imprisonment. There is no other explanation for why a Home Office minister, who will know the law his own government passed, would pose that specific question.
The broader context matters. Palestine Action is a direct action group whose activities have included smashing equipment at an Israeli weapons factory and throwing red paint at two RAF planes. One person was convicted of GBH without intent during an arrest. Its two co-founders, Huda Amori and Richard Barnard, are publicly known individuals who give media interviews and issue press releases. The group has a website and social media accounts.
It has been proscribed on the same legal footing as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Owen Jones, whose video on this exchange has been widely shared, noted on his channel that under the proscription you can legally post “I support the IDF exterminating over 100,000 Palestinians” with a laugh emoji. What you cannot do is say “I support Palestine Action” and risk a fourteen-year sentence.
The Court of Appeal this week also upheld the ban after the High Court had initially ruled the original prescription unlawful. The Lady Chief Justice, in her judgment, argued that Palestine Action was not comparable to the suffragettes because it operated as a “covert organisation.”
The history here is not straightforward. The suffragettes planted bombs and burned down residential homes. They attacked churches, schools and art galleries. Between 1913 and 1914 they were responsible for over 300 incidents of arson and bombing and killed at least four people. Academic researchers have specifically described the later phase of the WSPU as meeting “the definition or criteria of what we call a covert social movement network.” Whatever one thinks of Palestine Action’s activities, the comparison drawn in the judgment is disputed, to put it politely, by anyone who has read the historical record.
After the exchange, Tapp responded to criticism with: “The antisemitism I’ve woken to from the extreme left overnight is utterly unhinged, shameful, and disturbing.”
There is a specific problem with this. Polanski, the political opponent Tapp had attempted to manoeuvre into committing a criminal offence by answering a direct question, is Jewish. He has described himself as the only Jewish party leader in Britain. Tapp is not Jewish.
Critics pointed out that invoking antisemitism, after asking a Jewish politician a question specifically designed to result in his potential arrest under a law his government passed, is not a comfortable position to defend. Jones described it as “hiding behind Jewish people, using Jewish people and the hatred they suffer as a shield to protect him from scrutiny.”
What Polanski’s reply accomplished was to make the trap visible. He did not say yes. He pointed out that the government had made yes illegal, and that this itself was the problem. The civil liberties argument – that Britain now has laws under which expressing political support for a group can result of a 14-year prison sentence – is the argument Tapp’s question actually amplified.
The broader question Jones raises, and it is worth putting on the record without necessarily endorsing every element of his framing, is about inheritance. The legal infrastructure being built now – proscription of protest groups, 14-year sentences for expressed support, the chilling effect on political speech – does not disappear when governments change. These are the powers that will pass to the next government. What that government does with them is not a hypothetical.
Polanski, at least, found a way to answer the unanswerable. “The fact that your government has made it illegal for me to answer yes is a damning testament to your flagrant disregard for civil liberties.”
That is the answer the question deserved.
Leave a Reply