"Palestine Action activists hit police officer with sledgehammer, court told" - man hits woman with sledgehammer and fractures her spine.

[CassOle]

'Attack happened after armed gang in jumpsuits broke into Bristol defence factory intent on causing damage, jury hears.

Palestine Action activists hit a female police officer with a sledgehammer after bulldozing their way into a defence factory, a court has heard.

The gang, wearing jumpsuits and armed with whips, fireworks, an axe and a paintball gun, allegedly rammed an old prison van through the gate at Elbit Systems UK, Bristol, in August last year.

Woolwich Crown Court heard on Tuesday that Sgt Kate Evans suffered a fracture to her lumbar spine after she was beaten with a sledgehammer while she lay on the ground. Samuel Corner, 23, denies causing grievous bodily harm with intent.'

Continues here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/18/palestine-action-activists-hit-police-sledgehammer-court/

“The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.”

Arendt

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/07/11/hannah-arendt-reflections-violence/

https://archive.ph/aO4Qs

It does and imho just stop oil should be proscribed too, along with trans bash back and antifa.
Violence is never the answer, when you resort to violence you are admitting that you have no valid argument
Edited autocorrect which changed the meaning of my post

You sound like a complete parody.

Did you read the dossier on BBC bias?
If you didn't, you should.
And THEN perhaps come back and comment.

I think that weapons do absolutely comit crimes, and I personally am totally into and abide by the non violent direct action playbook. I will stand with banners protesting and go on marches, and take part in trying to halt the very lucrative arms trade that exports violence around the world.

I am not and have never excused violence on any side. So you can stop putting words into my mouth.

Peaceful protest is an absolute minimum benchmark of a functional democratic society

Protest by it's very nature is disruption. No rights were won by people with the power conceding them nicely, they were all won by wrestling rights out of the greedy hands of people wishing to continue explicitly exploiting the less protected.

Proscribing PA was a deliberately political decision and many people who've Sat with placards do not agree.

The courts have the powers to hold the defendants to account, without political interface yiu would hope.

The proscription was political.... otherwise what about the intimidating tactics of the far right in Manchester at the weekend? No one is calling for them to be proscribed, are they, yet they attacked marchers and three people were taken to hospital

We do not live in a country where the political classes are acting in our interests.

We need to be able to call out and protest that behaviour

Those weapons and surveillance will be deployed ( are already being deployed) here .

On a number of threads this poster has been so unhinged that I find it hard to believe that they are not either seeking to discredit the left or a troll. On even the most left wing discussion forums it's hard to find someone with all the views they've expressed, except when they're trying to provoke a reaction.

@JazzyContemporaneousNotes
and what about the proxy war being waged in Ukraine?
Are you saying that the West is wrong to be assisting a sovereign nation invaded by the bully-boys next door?

I'd agree.
Possibly we should start reporting her posts so MNHQ can see a pattern.

Though the left are well able to discredit themselves - Palestine Action, for example.

Just shows you what sort of cunts are attracted to this group.

'Peaceful protest is an absolute minimum benchmark of a functional democratic society'

You cannot suggest that attacking women with sledgehammers is peaceful protest.

Nor that supporting attacking women with sledgehammers is peaceful protest.

Interesting, I hadn't heard that. It's Russian modus operandi , using "disposable agents" to do their work for them. Although military bases would be next level for those.
https://thedefensepost.com/2025/09/03/germany-russia-disposable-agent-recruitment/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/may/04/these-people-are-disposable-how-russia-is-using-online-recruits-for-a-campaign-of-sabotage-in-europe

This is a feminist board. Can you not?

You do realise how unhinged you sound right.
People commit crimes with weapons the weapons are inanimate objects and as such can't commit a crime.
And yes you are excusing terrorism and violence even in your posts denighing doing so.
You can claim that it was just a political decision to proscribe PA all you want but the fact is their behaviour fits the legal definition of terrorism ergo they are terrorists its that simple. If you don't want to be called and treated like a terrorist dont behave like one.

It’s pretty much the same people.

The co-founder of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard, was previously arrested for Extinction Rebellion action where he stood on top of a light docklands railway train with others, preventing people from getting to work by public transport

He’s also currently going through the courts for supporting Hamas.

I mean I suppose it is a political decision - governments make political decisions not to allow terrorism quite repeatedly.

I think some defenders of PA are making the mistake - possibly deliberately - of conflating 'supporting PA' with 'supporting the Palestinians'.

There is no block on demonstrating peacefully to support the Palestinian people; -hundreds of thousands of people have done that repeatedly over the past couple of years.

There has been no restriction on their freedom to protest - quite the opposite, when you think of the impact of repeated large demonstrations in city centres.

Whether or not it was right to proscribe the PA, the fact remains that the pro-Palestinian movement in general has been exercising its right to peaceful protest undisturbed.

Frankly, I think most people who are engaged in extremist politics of this type are unconsciously using the political arena as an external stage to process, or avoid processing, their own internal emotional distress and unresolved personal issues....often with parents or other authority fugures.

How can a seemingly well adjusted people feel it is acceptable to use such violence and channel so much personal hatred towards anyone who stands in their way, or rebuffs their black and white world view?

Quite!

I always feel that way when i encounter Left wing activists and others with rigid Left wing views who themselves are spitting so much venom and put so much energy into hatred. If that is how they go about their politics then it doesn't hold up much hope for the sort of society they would create if given free reign.

I'm picking on the Left wing here, not because I think the Right wing is any better, but because there tends to be this general assumption that the Left wing and Left wing activism is rooted in human kindness and moral virtue.

Of course organised crime groups and mafias employ terror as a tool of domination and control. They rule through fear.

Any political activist groups that uses violence and destruction in an attempt to force others to alter their practices and so achieve its ends falls into the definition of terrorism.

The proscription was political.... otherwise what about the intimidating tactics of the far right in Manchester at the weekend? No one is calling for them to be proscribed, are they, yet they attacked marchers and three people were taken to hospital

Which organised group was this? What other action have they taken? Some far right groups have already been proscribed, e.g. National Action.

That Richard Barnard individual is just an “any cause” activist who gets a kick out of leading a rent-a-mob. He is despicable.

Well of course the proscription of an organisation seeking to influence political decisions by violent/forceful means is ‘political’. In the case of PA I’m not sure if any of our political parties would have done otherwise.

I think it's often a slow-boiling thing.

People are (understandably) horrified by the deaths of so many Palestinian people, and horrified by violence.

They support peaceful protest.

They then assume any group who professes to be doing the same (protesting the deaths of Palestinians) is necessarily motivated by the same beliefs and intentions they share.

When the facts come out, like they did yesterday, they then struggle with cognitive dissonance and find it hard to grasp things like - a man repeatedly sledgehammering a woman from behind to break her spine is heinous fucking violence, whatever the context.

So then we have minimisation, rationalisation, denial, whataboutery, adhoms, self justification fallacy, tribalism, etc.

Before they got banned I looked on their website and part of it was about their training camp for members (not just a couple of hours indoctrination) but days or weeks, that really made me think, a 'proper' training camp for peaceful protests, I think not. No details of the curriculum given!

The mistaken assumption is the assumption that anyone protesting the deaths of Palestinians is righteous.

The reports from the trial describe a highly organised group and what appears to be planned violence.

The fact that there were only a few people seriously injured is probably more down to the lack of intelligence and ability of the alleged terrorists than anything else.