PHIL MAXWELL

If you demonstrate in London against the genocide in Gaza you’re likely to see a huge police sign that says “It is an offence to support a proscribed organisation”. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Clearly this right no longer applies in the UK since the ‘Proscription’ of Palestine Action. This is blatant repression by the British state.

The most recent national demonstration on August 6th was one of the largest this year and it shows that the public are not intimidated by Starmer’s threats.

There is a genocide happening in plain site in Gaza and Kier Starmer talks about the occupation of Gaza as being “wrong” and yet the government continues to supply arms and surveillance intelligence to Israel. Action was needed 2 years ago and now the minimum Starmer can do to prevent the extermination of 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza is to have a complete arms and military embargo on the apartheid state. All diplomatic ties shouls be ended and sanctions introduced immediately.

The UK government is complicit in the genocide and the arrest of 523 people outside parliament for carrying signs supporting Palestine Action is a sign of desperate measures to suppress free speech. The use of non violent direct action to prevent the production of arms manufactured for use against Palestinians is not terrorism.

Former Blair government minister Peter Hain has warned that the Palestine Action ban “will end in tears for the government”. Shami Chakrabarti told The Independent that the “proscription of Palestine Action is in danger of becoming a mistake of poll tax proportions.” That was a reference to Margaret Thatcher’s unpopular policy that was defeated by a mass movement – which also brought her down. Appropriately I’ve included in the poster police officers I photographed at the massive anti poll tax protest in Trafalgar Square in March 1990.

“When the rich make war, it’s the poor that die.” – Jean-Paul Sartre.

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