Former Cabinet minister Peter Hain says the proscription of Palestine Action is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong
Having for nearly ten years consistently voted with my Party, sometimes late into the night, as a Labour Peer, I could not do so on a motion in early July proscribing Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group.
First to be absolutely clear, I support the right of Israel to exist and Israelis to enjoy full security. I am also a long-standing supporter of Palestinian rights to self-determination in their own state.
I was vehemently opposed to widespread antisemitism tolerated under Jeremy Corbyn’s ill-fated Labour leadership.
As far as I remember, I have never been on a Palestine Action platform nor participated in any of its protests.
In 1969-70 I was proud to lead a militant campaign of direct action to disrupt all-white racist South African rugby and cricket tours and we succeeded in getting them stopped for two decades.
No doubt I would have been stigmatised as a “terrorist” today rather than vilified as indeed I then was; also in June 1972 I was sent a letter bomb to kill me by apartheid security (fortunately with a defective trigger); prosecuted for conspiracy in the Old Bailey in August 1972; and framed for a 1975 bank theft I knew nothing about .
That militant action could have been blocked by Palestine Action’s proscription as could other anti-apartheid activity, including militant protests to stop Barclays Bank recruiting new students on university campuses, eventually forcing Barclays to withdraw from apartheid South Africa.
Remember also that Nelson Mandela was labelled a “terrorist” by the apartheid government, by British Prime Minister Maragret Thatcher, by the United States and other Western governments during much of the Cold War.
Mandela even remained on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008, many years after becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
After his African National Congress had been banned, Nelson Mandela was convicted for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid government when he backed armed struggle despite strongly opposing the very essence of terrorism, namely, violent and indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians.
Nevertheless, he became a global icon and in 1996 President Mandela addressed both Houses of this Parliament in Westminster Hall.
The suffragettes too have gained iconic status, treated as heroines today. Yet they too could have been suppressed under this Proscription. They used violence against property in a strategic manner to demand voting rights for women as part of civil disobedience protests when their peaceful protests seemed futile.
They intended to highlight the injustice of denying women the vote and to provoke a reaction that kept the issue in the public eye. Like Nelson Mandela, they were vilified at the time, including in strident denunciations by members of both Houses of Parliament.
Suffragettes attacked shop windows, government buildings, and political party offices, sometimes using hammers, stones, or iron bars.
They also set fire to unoccupied buildings such as churches, railway stations, sports pavilions, and empty country houses, intending to cause material loss without causing injury.
Suffragettes cut telegraph and telephone wires to disrupt government and commercial operations.
They even hid small homemade bombs inside mailboxes and attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s uncompleted house.
Frankly Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison. And those alleged to have done this are being prosecuted for criminal damage – as indeed they should expect to be.
There are plenty of criminal offences which such activity could attract rather than treating young people as terrorists because they feel frustrated about the failure to stop mass killings and bombings of Palestinians in Gaza.
By the way, someone should also be disciplined for permitting such an easy breach of security at a key military airfield. What if the Palestine Action protesters had been real terrorists?
Please remember also that suffragettes were arrested and subjected to harsh terms of imprisonment, including force-feeding when they went on hunger-strikes.
Now look at real terrorists: Al Qaeda and Islamic State.
Al Qaeda members suicide-attacked New York’s Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, killing 2,753 people.
Islamic State deliberately targeted civilians in public spaces to instil fear, spread panic, gain media attention, and punish any groups or governments opposing them.
ISIS became notorious for filmed beheadings and executions. They engaged in widespread sexual slavery, particularly of Yazidi women.
In 2015 Islamic State members killed 130 people in Paris.
In 2016, their suicide bombers struck Brussels airport and the metro system, killing 32. Also, in 2016, they attacked Istanbul airport killing 45. In Easter 2019, Islamic State terrorists bombed churches and hotels, killing over 250 people in Sri Lanka.
Real terrorism, real terrorists again.
Nazi-like US racists and, here in the UK, the IRA, also committed terrible atrocities, targeting or killing innocent civilians, properly and rightly labelled ‘terrorists’.
Our Labour government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or Al Qaeda, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong.
Frankly I am deeply ashamed.
Labour Peer Peter Hain is a former Cabinet Minister and anti-apartheid leader: his memoir, A Pretoria Boy: South Africa’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’ was published in 2022
