[arrowsmith]

Palestine Action broke into a British military base and sabotaged millions of pounds' worth of equipment. What did you expect the government to do exactly — shrug it off? What kind of message would that have sent?

The Terrorism Act 2000 gives "serious damage to property" as one definition of terrorism so I find it hard to argue that the government was doing anything more than neutrally applying the law here. Those protestors knew full well they were supporting a proscribed group and they were warned what the consequences would be. Protesting in support of Palestine remains entirely legal in the UK just as long as you don't use the name and branding of this one specific group.

I'll probably regret posting this but there are some extremely disingenuous half-truths in this thread and I think that readers should know the full context.

[impossiblefork]

Personally I expected prosecutions for sabotage rather than for terrorism.

The UK has very broad terrorism legislation, but conventionally terrorism is something directed at civilians, and it's not something we usually tar, for example, resistance groups with.

I think you even have to be able to kill people in internal political conflict without being called a terrorist. There are many circumstances during which such things are necessary.

[arrowsmith]

FWIW the specific activists who entered the base were charged with "conspiracy to commit criminal damage" and "conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK", not terrorism. [0]

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dp5158720o

[impossiblefork]

Yes, but then the organization was proscribed as a terrorist organization.

[arrowsmith]

There's no legal mechanism to ban/proscribe a group in the UK except under terrorism legislation: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/for-what-reasons-other-than...

If the government wants to shut this group down (which I think is a reasonable response to an attack on our military) then I'm not sure what other options were available to them. And like I said, what they did seems to meet the legal definition of terrorism (regardless of whether that definition is a good one.)

Of all the arguments we could be having about Palestine, I'm really not going to shed any tears for Palestine Action.

But I'm not here to get lost in the weeds, I just objected to the misleading half-truths that were being presented above. Most people reading this don't follow UK news closely and might come away with the impression that the government is banning pro-Palestine protest entirely, or is making it illegal to merely "hold placards". That's an outrageous distortion, and it hardly helps the pro-Palestine cause. I couldn't let it slide.

[impossiblefork]

Here in Sweden what organizations are engaged in terrorism is up the courts and the government has no right to intervene at all to proscribe a group, with EU and other political terrorism designations being irrelevant.

Furthermore, I think that there is a duty, if one suspects that a capability is or may be used to aid genocide, to destroy that capability. Hopefully Palestine Action are incorrect, and targeting assets that have not been used to aid genocide or otherwise make it easier, but if they are right and the UK have actually aided genocide, then they have done too little violence.