Scandal as UK police threaten Palestinian protesters

It began as a piece of performative stupidity by the home secretary Yvette Cooper — the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, akin to al-Qaeda or ISIS.

Now, on the streets of Britain, those tasked with enforcing her performative stupidity are, predictably, performing with great stupidity.

A video sent to me today – in turns disturbing and comic – shows two armed policemen approach a man protesting at a roundabout in Canterbury.

He has a homemade sign attached to a lamppost which reads “Israel is committing genocide”, another placard saying “Freedom for Gaza” and he’s carrying a Palestinian flag.

The conversation proceeds thus:
Armed officer 1: “Do you support any proscribed group?”
Protester: “I do not support any proscribed group.”
Armed officer 1: “The way you’re behaving at the moment gives me suspicion and grounds to believe you could be.”
Armed officer 2: “Mentioning Freedom for Gaza, Israel, genocide and all that… if you don’t provide us with your name and address, it makes it a necessity for us to arrest you for offences against the Terrorism Act.”
Protester: “This is ridiculous. You’ll end up arresting half the country.”
Armed officer 2: “If it was just the flag, we’d probably say be careful what you do.”
Armed officer 1: “What you’re doing is giving us suspicion… that you support a Palestinian group.”

It’s not clear if the protestor was arrested. What is clear is that these two policemen are utterly clueless and threatening one of our cherished civil liberties: the right to peaceful protest. There is a straight line from Yvette Cooper’s absurd burst of Reform-style machismo and these two armed officers out on the streets of Kent believing it’s their duty to stop people protesting against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza.

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Meanwhile, in Gaza…

Matt Kelly

This incident is not in isolation. Another video I’ve seen, taken in London’s Piccadilly Circus, similarly involves threats of arrest under suspicion of supporting Palestine Action.

With as much evidence as these two Canterbury cops had, I’d suggest it’s clear they’ve been briefed to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters — accusing them of allegiance to Palestine Action as a way of terrorising them into silence.

I wonder, will they be knocking on my door next, given The New World has just published a magazine with Alastair Campbell declaring from the front cover that “Yes, it’s a genocide”? Or maybe my own article from two weeks ago, headlined “Meanwhile in Gaza” will be grounds to suspect I am a terrorist.

At the time the legislation passed, I wrote that even wearing a T-shirt with the words Palestine Action on it could potentially be worth a six-month prison sentence.

As I wrote that — to make the point about how dumb the entire proscription of PA is, especially since there are plenty of laws against criminal damage that could be deployed for damaging air force bases and the like — I considered it obviously far-fetched.

But it’s happening on our streets today.

The Home Office and Yvette Cooper have a lot of questions to answer. I have reasonable grounds to suspect they are guilty of seeking to silence legitimate protest — a clear offence under the Fuckwittery Act 2025.