For almost a full year, 18 Palestine Action activists – the Filton 18 – have been held in a British prison under so-called “anti-terrorism” legislation.
Yesterday, at their pre-trial hearing, hundreds of people descended upon Woolwich Crown Court, next to HMP Belmarsh, to protest this blatant injustice.
Comrades from the Woolwich Revolutionary Communist Party spoke to several attendees, all of whom immediately pointed out the government’s hypocrisy: these MPs and ministers say barely a word about the slaughter of the Gazans until it became too embarrassing not to, while the police drop like a tonne of bricks on any attempt to show solidarity with the Palestinian people.
One attendee, an older woman, even made a comparison between these cases today and the heavy-handed tactics of the British state during the Troubles. No doubt the many people following the persecution of Mo Chara and Kneecap might make the same comparison.
Terrorism?
These activists are alleged to have destroyed several weapons systems in the Elbit factory, an Israeli military manufacturer in Filton, a ‘crime’ so terrible that it warrants being locked up for a whole year. Some of these activists won’t even see a jury until 2026!
And they aren’t the only ones facing repression. Their parent organisation, Palestine Action, is set to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Starmer’s Labour.
So that’s that. You can drop bombs on civilians and shoot them with armed drones, no problem at all – but God forbid you spray-paint a plane, or destroy said drones before they reach the IDF!
It’s notable that in both of these cases, as well as others like them, Starmer and company have deployed anti-terrorism laws to try and crush activists.
These laws give the state a wide array of weapons. The police can hold you for far longer than the usual pre-charge detention time, and the defence is not given access to all the evidence shown to the judge when a decision is made to extend that detention.
The police often also seize any and all electronic devices the accused has as “evidence,” as happened to Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada.
These laws, brought in with the justification that they would “stop terrorism,” are now being turned on peaceful activists.
In short, the government is throwing the book at the Filton 18, Palestine Action, and others. They are smearing these people as “terrorists,” when everyone knows the real terrorists sit in the House of Commons.
By doing this, the judiciary is attempting to project an image of strength, but in reality they’re exposing the British state’s actual weakness.
Projecting strength, illustrating weakness
Why are they taking so long to bring these activists to trial? The reason is simple: the ruling class is afraid of the support the Filton 18 and others like them get from ordinary people.
In May of last year, two Palestine Action activists were acquitted by a jury in Leicester. Clearly the government does not trust the public to uphold justice!
The crimes of western imperialism in Gaza have inflamed huge sections of workers and young people in Britain, and they’ve not been shy in expressing that anger.
Many hundreds of thousands march each time a national demo is called, and many millions more are thoroughly disgusted by the brutal Israeli regime and “our own” British government which backs it to the hilt.
Cases like these won’t stop the movement from growing, nor young people across the country from drawing increasingly radical conclusions from the way the state treats them.
In fact, by acting in such a provocative, heavy-handed and blatantly hypocritical way, Starmer and his gang could not have made clearer whose side they’re on. That’s the side of the Zionist ruling class in Israel and Western imperialism which props it up.
But workers and youth in this country have their own side; the side of the Palestinians, and that of the world working class. They are refusing to back down in defence of that, and the day is coming when the British ruling class realises just how right they were to be afraid of them.
