The British state has arrested hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters over the past month.
This comes after the Starmer government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation back in July. This outrageously placed the direct action group on the same list as Islamic fundamentalists like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
At a recent protest in support of the group, over 500 people were arrested in a single day. Virtually all of them were merely holding placards or wearing T-shirts stating their opposition to the genocide and their support for Palestine Action.
Many of those arrested were retired pensioners, who were purposefully seeking arrest to protect younger generations from prosecution.
Notably, compared to this obscene level of policing, violent far-right protesters – whom Starmer has actively been trying to appease – have been subject to much lighter policing. Arrests at recent reactionary demos, at most, have barely broken into double digits.
Public response
Much to the annoyance of the ruling class, the public response to the absurd categorisation of Palestine Action as ‘terrorists’ has been one of outrage and disgust.
This is despite the hysterical attempts by establishment stooges like home secretary Yvette Cooper to present Palestine Action as an explicitly violent and anti-Jewish group.
Most ordinary people simply do not associate the things Palestine Action are doing – throwing paint on some fighter jets and disrupting arms facilities – with actual terrorism.
And nor do they consider opposition to Israel’s genocide as ‘antisemitic’ – despite the government’s best efforts to frame it as such.
On top of this, the British public has been subjected to a grotesque spectacle, whereby an already demoralised and reviled police force is mobilised to arrest hundreds of pensioners, to raid the houses of pro-Palestine academics, and to shut down and arrest a bunch of students at Youth Demand meetings.
This has all been taking place while the Zionist regime brazenly targets hospitals, rescue workers, and starving families queuing for food – all, by the way, with the full backing of the British government.
This level of state repression is thoroughly discrediting the already-massively-unpopular Starmer government. But the longer it continues, the more it threatens to delegitimise the entire legal and judicial system.
The blatant cynicism of these arrests is plain for everyone to see. Most of those who have been arrested have been released immediately without charge. But if the state genuinely believed they were terrorist sympathisers, they wouldn’t be releasing them back into the public at the first opportunity!
The fact is that the ‘justice’ system is already grinding to a halt, and cannot handle hundreds of extra convictions. Prisons are overflowing. Court backlogs extend to over 12 months in some cases. And the police are increasingly overstretched, with no time to tackle genuine crimes.
The action organised for tomorrow by ‘Defend Our Juries’ aims to hit the British state precisely at this weak spot. Over a thousand protestors are being signed up, committing themselves to possible arrest, with the goal of paralysing the police and thereby making the government’s proscription of Palestine Action a dead letter.
The repression of the Palestine movement is therefore merely a futile display of ‘law and order’ by Starmer’s government, whose support in the polls is hitting rock bottom.
Preparing for class battles
For years, The Communist has pointed out that the British state – first under the Tories and now under Labour – has been ramping up its powers of repression.
The establishment and its mouthpieces say that this is in the interests of counter-terrorism, national security, and public wellbeing.
But everyone can see the real reason: these powers are being deployed against the organised working class, and against those who stand in solidarity with Palestine.
We are entering a period of intensified class struggle. The ruling class can sense this, and are preparing for the coming battles. This ramping-up of repression is the inevitable outcome of a social and political system in crisis.
Tony Blair’s former Home Secretary Jack Straw even admitted that the Terrorism Act 2000 was designed to be deliberately “broad”. By saying this, he is implying that it can be used for more than just fighting terrorism, should the ruling class require it.
In fact, the recent use of the Terrorism Act to include ‘economic damage’ is taken straight from the playbook that the British state used against the Provisional IRA, as it provides an even broader justification for state repression.
The British establishment simply cannot allow groups like Palestine Action undermining their authority and legitimacy, at a time when every pillar of this establishment is already intensely discredited, and millions of people are furious at the government.
When their interests are directly threatened, the capitalists will not hesitate to use every tool at their disposal to defend their property, privileges, and power.
But every time these repressive tools are used, they become more and more tarnished and blunted. The sham of liberal ‘democracy – and the so-called ‘rule of law’ – is being exposed in the eyes of millions.
Liberal hypocrisy
The whip of repression is fanning the flames of anger against the establishment – producing an explosive, uncertain situation for the ruling class.
With every fresh crackdown by the British state – alongside the visible injustice of poverty, austerity, and genocide – the anti-establishment sentiment grows. It is this general revulsion that is
threatening to propel someone like Nigel Farage, a reactionary demagogue, to power.
Ironically, despite their cries of ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘fascism’ against figures like Trump and Farage, it is the liberals and reformists themselves – the Labour Party in the UK, and (up until recently) Biden’s Democrats in the USA – that have mainly been attacking our democratic rights.
When Starmer’s government was first elected, The Communist said that it would be a government of crisis, in which the Labour leaders would be torn between mutually antagonistic forces.
Starmer has tried to throw scraps at workers who are suffering under austerity. But he has failed. He has tried to appease the big banks and corporations. He has failed. He has tried to maintain British imperialism’s position on the world stage. Once more, he has failed.
And now he is pathetically appealing to patriotism and the spirit of ‘law and order’, in order to prevent Farage from gaining ground at Labour’s expense. This latest farce over Palestine Action’s proscription is yet another one of these failures.
Chaos and instability
There will inevitably be a legal challenge by Palestine Action against their proscription and the mass arrests of their supporters.
If the strategy of the Defend Our Juries campaign is successful, meanwhile, this will only further highlight how shameful and impotent the ban on Palestine Action is.
Under immense pressure, the Labour leaders have already been forced into embarrassing U-turns on winter fuel payments and benefit cuts.
If the government is forced to back down and remove the proscription on Palestine Action, it will be another utterly humiliating defeat for Starmer.
This will accelerate Labour’s demise at the next election, which at this point is almost an inevitability.
Most polls predict that Farage will be Starmer’s successor in Number 10. But as much as Farage tries to present himself as the opposite of Starmer, he would ultimately suffer a similar fate should he come to power.
After all, behind Farage and Reform lie the same bankers and big-business owners that are currently represented by Starmer’s Labour and the Tories.
The programme of Reform, ultimately, would therefore be more of the same: austerity and cuts – and therefore repression.
This chaotic state of affairs is inescapable for any capitalist government in this period.
Within the confines of capitalism, Starmer and the establishment must carry out austerity and repression. The capitalist class demands that the working class pay for their crisis.
Every attempt at carrying out these attacks, however, will only result in ever more chaos and instability.
