Palestine Action, the direct-action protest group, was granted permission on July 30 to appeal its terrorist designation at the United Kingdom Supreme Court. The government controversially issued this designation in 2025, and although the group successfully appealed the designation in the High Court, that ruling was reversed by the Court of Appeal in June.
Since the group was designated as terrorist, more than 3,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested for showing support for it.
Treating a protest group as terrorists takes a leaf from the playbook of authoritarian rulers around the world. It violates the protesters’ rights and needs to end. If protesters commit crimes such as criminal damage they should be prosecuted as such. But this is not the only draconian assault on protest rights that Andy Burnham, the UK’s new prime minister, has inherited.
The previous Conservative government introduced a series of laws creating new protest related offenses and dramatically increased the prison sentences possible for peaceful protest activities. Then Labour—under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer—continued the crackdown with this year’s Crime and Policing Act, creating yet more protest related crimes and giving the police new powers to curtail demonstrations.
Increasingly broad police powers and vague legal concepts make it harder for people to know what protest activities are lawful, and what may lead to arrest or prosecution.
Gina Romero, the United Nations special rapporteur on protest rights, described the Crime and Policing Act as “fundamentally incompatible with international human rights obligations.” The result of all these measures is that thousands of people have been arrested and prosecuted for actions that previously were not crimes, or carried far less severe penalties.
Burnham, who succeeded Starmer in July, will have to grapple with this legacy. The government should simplify the confusing patchwork of recent legislation so that it restores legal certainty, repeals draconian provisions, and ensures that the right to peaceful protest is properly protected. And the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, should reverse her predecessor’s badly mistaken designation of Palestine Action as a “terrorist” group.
