From Palestine Action to policing bill, the UK government is killing free speech
A protester in a wheelchair is escorted away by police officers after taking part in a demonstration in support of Defend Our Juries and their campaign against the ban on Palestine Action, in Leeds on 18 November 2025
Lord Strasburger writes in Middle East Eye on 14 April 2026:
Our right to peaceful protest is under relentless attack. The freedom to come together and express our opinions has been gradually strangled by a succession of new laws and regulations introduced by this government and the last one. Police in Britain now have huge discretion to restrict demonstrations or even ban them altogether.
As a Liberal Democrat, I believe that the right to protest is a fundamental cornerstone of any healthy democracy. It is a powerful tool for holding governments to account and challenging injustice and oppression both at home and abroad.
The Crime and Policing Bill, which has almost completed its passage through parliament, gives police even more sweeping powers to constrain and ban public demonstrations. It is the latest in a series of laws that expand the state’s authority over when, where and even whether citizens are allowed to protest.
And as if that was not bad enough, last year the Labour government misused the Terrorism Act to stop protests drawing attention to the plight of the people of Gaza.
The absurd decision in June 2025 to proscribe the direct-action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation meant that anybody displaying support for it was committing a terrorist offence, making them liable to immediate arrest and severe penalties.
That did not deter thousands of overwhelmingly peaceful protesters who were outraged by this blatant politicisation of anti-terrorism legislation. The result was that 2,700 of them, with an average age of 57, were arrested.
Among them were priests, civil servants, retired army officers and pensioners, arrested for merely holding a placard or wearing clothing in support of Palestine Action. So far, about 700 have been charged.
Dangerous threshold
The order to proscribe Palestine Action was approved by parliament only after the government used procedural trickery to force it through. The proscription order was subsequently found to be unlawful by the High Court because it was disproportionate to the threat. As a result, the prosecution of the 700 protesters who were charged has been put on hold.
The government is appealing, but even if successful, they must be regretting the pure folly of applying anti-terrorism law to thousands of respectable elderly citizens whose only crime was to show how upset they are by the carnage in Gaza.