In addition, the proscription of Palestine Action is being questioned by UK Constitutional Law experts:
https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2026/01/12/paul-oconnell-anticipatory-repression-and-the-proscription-of-palestine-action/
“The proscription of Palestine Action in July 2025 represents more than an aggressive application of counter-terrorism law. It reveals a broader, qualitative shift in the British state’s approach to political dissent—one best understood, I argue, through the concept of ‘anticipatory repression’.”
and
”The decision to proscribe Palestine Action has attracted widespread criticism. The Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, chaired by former Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan KC and including former Attorney General Dominic Grieve and Richard Barrett, former Global Counter-Terrorism Director of MI6, concluded that the terrorism definition is ‘too broad’ and that the property-damage threshold should apply only where conduct ‘creates a serious risk to life, national security, or public safety’. The report further noted that the ‘proscription of Palestine Action highlights several of the features of and concerns about the power to proscribe’. UN human rights experts have described the ban as a ‘disturbing misuse’ of terrorism powers against protest activity. Michael O’Flaherty, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to the Home Secretary expressing grave concerns about the use of anti-terrorism laws against peaceful protesters and the danger of imposing excessive limits on the rights to free speech and protest. When former Lord Chief Justices, senior intelligence officials, and critical legal scholars converge on the same concern, and international human rights bodies issue warnings, it is clear the state has crossed a fundamental line.”….
“This is anticipatory repression: the pre-emptive engineering of legal and institutional frameworks designed to prevent the crystallisation of future political challenges before they can meaningfully threaten the existing order. It is not simply reactive—responding to disorder after it occurs—but pre-emptive, targeting the foreseeable political consequences of protest rather than merely its immediate disruption. Anticipatory repression rests on a tacit recognition that the structural conditions generating protest will persist, and that those conditions cannot or will not be addressed at their roots. Rather than eliminating the causes of dissent, the state apparatus “tools up” in advance to manage its inevitability. The law becomes not a framework for adjudicating competing rights but an architecture for foreclosing political possibility.”
“The doctrine of proportionality, which was supposed to protect protest by requiring the state to justify restrictions, has been repurposed as a mechanism for legitimating repression. The courts ask whether Parliament has adequately balanced the competing interests, and the answer is almost invariably that it has. Parliament has spoken. The legislation is clear. The statutory maxima are high. The deterrent intent is manifest. Proportionality is satisfied not because the restrictions are minimal but because Parliament has expressly contemplated severe sanctions for disruptive protest. The doctrine that was meant to constrain legislative power becomes the vehicle for its endorsement.”
Coleridge called the peace produced by such measures ‘cadaverous tranquillity’: the stillness of the grave mistaken for social harmony. The metaphor is apt. The peace of contemporary repression is achieved by killing the political vitality of the population—not through the spectacular violence of authoritarian crackdowns, which might provoke resistance and international condemnation, but through the progressive narrowing of what is legally and politically possible until effective dissent simply ceases. We retain the right to protest, provided we do not use it to achieve anything. We retain the right to dissent, provided our dissent remains comfortably ineffectual. Indeed, this much was candidly conceded by the current Home Secretary, when, in the context of telling pro-Palestine protesters during a period of heightened security concerns that they could ‘get back to your protest later’, she argued that ‘just because you have the freedom to protest doesn’t mean you have to use it’.”
“Consequences and Contradictions
The immediate consequences illustrate this hollowing. Since the proscription came into effect on 5 July 2025, over 2,200 arrests have been made for alleged support of Palestine Action, with many individuals targeted for carrying placards, attending demonstrations, or making statements of solidarity. Because Palestine Action is now a proscribed organisation, holding a placard that is understood as expressing support for Palestine Action can be prosecuted under various offences in sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, including inviting or recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation (section 12, carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment) or displaying an article in circumstances arousing reasonable suspicion of membership or support (section 13, carrying a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment or a fine). The police have interpreted the prohibition broadly, arresting individuals not just for active participation in protests but for passive displays of solidarity. The effect has been a dramatic expansion of what counts as terrorism beyond anything previously contemplated in British law.”
“The human cost has been severe. UN human rights experts have warned that Palestine Action-linked detainees on hunger strike, held for extended periods on remand awaiting trial, face risks of organ failure and death. The Justice Secretary has refused to meet them or their lawyers, treating their hunger strikes as a matter for operational decision-making by prison authorities rather than a political or legal question requiring ministerial intervention. The normalisation of prolonged pre-trial detention for individuals accused of terrorism offences, even where the ‘terrorism’ consists of holding a placard or attending a demonstration, marks a significant departure from established norms.…
”What is clear is that these measures are not neutral updates to keep pace with new protest tactics. They constitute a systematic attempt to foreclose political possibility. Naming anticipatory repression for what it is—and contesting it on that terrain, not merely as disproportionate application of existing categories—is the task that the proscription of Palestine Action now places before us.”
Paul O’Connell, Reader in Law at SOAS, University of London.
(Suggested citation: P. O’Connell, ‘Anticipatory Repression and the Proscription of Palestine Action’, U.K. Const. L. Blog (12th January 2026) (available at https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/))