British PM’s office says it is a crime to fund a proscribed group after award-winning author promises to back the pro-Palestine group.
The government of the United Kingdom has warned Irish novelist Sally Rooney against funding Palestine Action after she pledged support to the campaign group banned by the Labour-led government as a “terrorist” group last month.
The prime minister’s office said on Monday that “support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act” and warned against backing such organisations.
“There is a difference between showing support for a proscribed organisation, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and legitimate protest in support of a cause,” a spokesperson was quoted by PA Media.
In an opinion piece in the Irish Times on Saturday, Rooney, the author of best-selling novels such as Normal People and Conversations with Friends, criticised the government’s move to ban the pro-Palestinian group.
“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation,” she wrote in the article.
Palestine Action was banned after its activists broke into a military base in central England in June and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest against the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.
What’s Palestine Action?
Since its founding in 2020, Palestine Action has disrupted the arms industry in the UK with “direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
Israel has been accused of widespread abuses in its 22 months of war on Gaza. The International Court of Justice in January 2024 said Israeli actions in Gaza were plausibly genocide. Since then, multiple rights organisations have called Israel’s war a genocide. In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.
Rooney said she chose the Dublin-based newspaper to publicise her intention rather than a UK one as doing so “would now be illegal” in Britain after the government banned Palestine Action.
“The UK’s state broadcaster … regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can,” she wrote.
Hundreds arrested
More than 700 supporters of Palestine Action have been arrested in the UK, mostly at demonstrations, since the group was outlawed under the Terrorism Act 2000.
“I feel obliged to state once more that like the hundreds of protesters arrested last weekend, I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it,” Rooney said.
The spokesperson from the prime minister’s office said Palestine Action was proscribed “based on security advice following serious attacks the group has committed, following an assessment made by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre”.
The government ban on Palestine Action came into force on July 5, days after it took responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England that caused an estimated 7 million pounds ($9.3m) of damage to two aircraft.
The group said its activists were responding to Britain’s indirect military support for Israel during the war in Gaza.
Being a member of Palestine Action or supporting the group is now a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. It places the campaign group on the same legal footing as ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.
More than 500 people were arrested at a protest in London’s Parliament Square on August 9 for displaying placards backing the group. The number is thought to be the highest ever recorded number of detentions at a single protest in the capital.
At least 60 of them are due to face prosecution, police said.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has defended the proscription of the group, stating: “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority.”
“The assessments are very clear – this is not a nonviolent organisation,” she said.
In her article, Rooney accused the UK government of “willingly stripping its own citizens of basic rights and freedoms, including the right to express and read dissenting opinions, in order to protect its relationship with Israel”.
