Palestine Action will shortly count as terrorism

In a statement to the House of Commons, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said that the group had a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage”, and that the government would not tolerate those who put the UK’s defence enterprise at risk.

That was a reference to an incident which involved the group breaking into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, spray-painting two military planes red – an incident that Cooper called “disgraceful”.

The proscription of the group is a significant escalation and has kicked off a major debate about civil liberties – if approved, it will be the first time a direct action group of this sort would be proscribed alongside organisations like ISIS and al-Qaeda.

The group, which targets Israeli weapons facilities through property damage and disruption rather than violence against people, would see not only membership but any expression of support – from social media posts to wearing logos – become punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

For critics, the expansion of what constitutes “terrorism” threatens to chill all forms of dissent, setting a dangerous precedent where civil disobedience that embarrasses the government or challenges its foreign policy can be redefined as extremism. At the very least, it is likely to chill pro-Palestinian activism.

The implications extend far beyond Palestine Action itself, potentially affecting the entire landscape of activism – including on university campuses, which have long served as a home for civil disobedience movements from anti-apartheid to climate action.

If property damage and disruption now meet the threshold for terrorism, then the tactics historically employed by student activists and protest groups could face similar criminalisation.

As critics note, the government already has ample laws to prosecute criminal damage – resorting to terrorism legislation can be seen as designed not to protect public safety but to silence dissent at a time when the government’s stance on Gaza remains deeply unpopular.

It also risks transforming the boundary between legitimate protest and extremism into whatever ministers find politically convenient.

Are you one of them

For students, the decision creates immediate potential uncertainty about the status of existing Palestine solidarity societies and the boundaries of legitimate campus activism. Most SUs host Palestine solidarity groups or groups that hold a pro-Palestinian position that could face heightened scrutiny.

The risk is that some will conflate all pro-Palestinian student activism with support for a proscribed organisation, using Palestine Action’s property damage at Cambridge and Oxford as justification for sweeping restrictions.

The distinction between student-led encampments or occupations and Palestine Action’s direct action tactics could be deliberately blurred, potentially criminalising traditional forms of student protest that have defined campus politics for a long time.

But it’s the interaction between the Prevent duty and freedom of speech – with specific reference to the guidance published by the Office for Students last week – that I also want to briefly focus on here.

The proscription creates one set of challenges that, while deeply concerning, are at least legally clear. Once proscribed, membership of or support for Palestine Action becomes a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Universities will need to ensure neither they nor their SU host events supporting the group, that their facilities aren’t used to promote it, and that students understand wearing its symbols or sharing its content could lead to prosecution.

While distinguishing between support for Palestine Action specifically and broader Palestinian solidarity could prove difficult in practice – and risks chilling all pro-Palestinian activism – the legal position is straightforward. Supporting a proscribed organisation is criminal and therefore not “within the law” that universities must protect.

But the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 goes beyond proscription offences. Through the Prevent duty, it requires universities to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” – a much broader obligation that includes tackling what the guidance calls “permissive environments” for radicalisation.

As I noted on the site this morning, OfS’ (potentially legally flawed) guidance follows a three-stage linear process that treats restrictions on speech as an absolute last resort. Universities must first exhaust all reasonably practicable steps to facilitate speech, and can only restrict it if there’s a clear breach of law.

The guidance basically stops universities from jumping ahead to consider whether speech might create harmful environments or undermine other values unless they’ve first demonstrated that no practical steps could enable it. Creating a “permissive environment” is not, in itself, a legal breach that would justify restriction under the OfS framework.

But the Prevent statutory guidance pulls in precisely the opposite direction. It explicitly requires universities to tackle “permissive environments,” encouraging action to limit exposure to radicalising ideologies even where criminality is not yet clear.

Universities are expected to withhold platforms for content that might encourage support for terrorism and challenge broadly harmful ideas – including those that fall well short of criminal incitement. The guidance warns against allowing spaces where extremist narratives can take root, regardless of whether any laws are being broken.

In many ways you end up with an ouroboros where each framework points to the other for resolution without providing it. OfS’ guidance acknowledges universities must consider their Prevent duties when determining what’s “reasonably practicable,” but maintains that restrictions require a legal basis.

Meanwhile, Prevent guidance insists that any actions to reduce permissive spaces must be “proportionate, lawful and appropriate” and have “particular regard” to freedom of speech duties. Neither actually explains how to reconcile the contradictory demands or when one duty should take precedence over the other.

Let’s imagine a student society wants to host a debate on the effectiveness of different forms of resistance to occupation, or show a film about the history of direct action movements. This isn’t supporting Palestine Action – it’s legitimate discourse.

To read the Prevent guidance you’d be forgiven for assuming that such discussions might create a permissive environment for radicalisation. Under OfS guidance, restricting them without exhausting all practicable alternatives would seem to breach freedom of speech duties.

And as I noted on the site today, neither guidance appears to properly integrate the European Convention on Human Rights Article 10 framework, which could be the mechanism for reconciling these competing duties.

Without a change to the guidance, universities could fear that restricting harmful, radicalising, or degrading speech could result in OfS enforcement. But if they fail to restrict it, they risk breaching Prevent – or even the Human Rights Act if the speech violates Article 8 dignity or facilitates discrimination.

Before proscription, universities could treat Palestine Action activities as political expression, discussions about their tactics fell within academic freedom, and student societies could debate direct action as a legitimate protest method.

After proscription, any expression of support becomes criminal with penalties of up to 14 years imprisonment, academic discussions must be carefully managed to avoid any perception of support, and universities must somehow distinguish between lawful Palestinian solidarity and illegal support for a proscribed group.

The distinction may prove almost impossible to draw in practice. As critics have warned, when the government “can define non-violent acts it disapproves of as terrorism, the boundary between civil disobedience and extremism becomes whatever a minister says it is.”

The chilling effect on legitimate Palestinian advocacy seems inevitable. Liberty’s Director Akiko Hart expressed concern about “the thousands of people who campaign for Palestine, and their ability to express themselves and take part in protests,” noting that proscription would mean “showing support for them in any way – for example, sharing a post on social media or wearing a logo – could carry a prison sentence.”

For universities, this creates an almost impossible balancing act. Following OfS guidance to facilitate speech risks breaching Prevent duties, and following Prevent risks regulatory sanction for restricting lawful speech. Both approaches risk legal challenge under the Human Rights Act. The solution isn’t more guidance pointing at other guidance, but a unified approach centred on the European Convention that all should follow.

The practical result will be overcautious self-censorship that extends beyond the already-broad impact of proscription itself. When universities (and by proxy their SUs) can’t reconcile their duty to prevent permissive environments with their duty to facilitate all lawful speech, when “permissive environment” remains undefined yet significant, and when regulators offer contradictory instructions with no resolution mechanism, the safest option becomes silence. Freedom – supposedly protected by both frameworks – becomes the casualty of irreconcilable demands.

Oh – and when a significant number of final year undergrads tick “not at all” to “do you feel free” on the NSS free speech question next year, let’s remember that it’s much less likely to be because someone in the EDI unit signed up for Athena Swan or whatever, and much more likely to be because of government actions like the one announced today.