[ben_w]

Dunno for sure, but I'd suggest that mentioning Israel when it's the UK doing it, it might possibly look a bit like shoe-horning in a capital-A-Agenda.

The UK doesn't really have much of a good history on the topic of listening to political dissent from within. The Sex Pistols comes to mind, and the Winter of Discontent, and the anti-Iraq-war march, and the Troubles, and police kettling a few decades back, and a bike safety protest a friend attended where a lot of people who couldn't hear a police order got arrested for not following that order, and there's a former partner of mine could give you a whole bunch of stories about protests you've probably never even heard of.

IMO, the UK's led by aristocrats who only mostly deign to play the game of democracy, but the leadership doesn't really seem to think naturally in those terms and is a lot more comfortable at white tie events.

[pbiggar]

Because there are huge protests in the UK at the moment for Palestine, which led them to "proscribe" the group Palestine Action. Then everyone (correctly) freaked out about civil liberties, and you can now see videos of grannies being arrested by the UK police for having an "i support Palestine Action" sign multiple times a week.

[LorenPechtel]

The thing is such groups are foreign manipulation.

[willahmad]

but isn't it literally connected to foreign entities, with high probability to Israel-Palestine conflict, no?

[ben_w]

I don't think so, I never got the impression that Israel is all that big a deal in the UK in either direction.

If they are, they're a lot more subtle about it than they are with regard to USA politics.

[tremon]

The fact that peaceful protesters against the Gaza genocide got labeled as terrorists should be sufficient evidence that the UK government still very much shares their bed with Israel.

[ben_w]

Palestine Action were proscribed for a level of violence ("property damage" against the RAF, vandalised aircraft, which makes it sound worse than it is because it was spray paint in the engines) that had previously been considered acceptable.

But "peaceful"? A protest on 6 August 2024 resulted in a charge of grievous bodily harm after an activist allegedly struck a police officer with a sledgehammer, and a protest on 16 March 2025 resulted in three activists being charged with one count each of assault by beating.

I get why they're doing this, but if I'm going to call the Jan 6 thing in Washington DC "attempted coup" (which I do), I have to also say this is not "peaceful".

[pbiggar]

If the UK shut down everything that was related to occasional violence, there wouldn't be a pub left in England.

[ben_w]

Striking a police officer with a sledgehammer?

Don't get me wrong, I have been surprised by witnessing a thrown punch even in a very nerdy upper-middle-to-just-posh Cambridge pub (seen exactly once over the course of about 9 years), but even that wasn't at the level alleged (IDK if found guilty) in the referenced case.

[_DeadFred_]

Wasn't that after that specific protest group broke into a military base and damaged military aircraft? Pretty sure that gets your group labeled no matter what 'banner' you do that sort of damage under.