Recently, the protest group Palestine Action was proscribed by the Labour government under counter terror legislation putting the group in the same category as Al Quaida, ISIS and National Action.

This is stunning attack on the right to protest and will have wider implications for the palestine solidarity movement, and other movements that sometimes break the law in pursuing their political goals – which we should remember has a long history in UK protest movements.

On the surface this seems to be outside the remit of this podcast, so why are we covering this? For one thing the British state has used the proscription of far right and fascist groups to give a veneer of acceptability this action. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, proscribed two far right groups alongside Palestine Action.

But also there is a more fundamental issue here. We cannot divorce the actions and policies of far right governments from those of their liberal democratic counter parts. The British state continues to send fighter jet parts to the Israeli regime, which is committing a genocide. It is also running surveillance missions over Gaza from its base in Cyprus. In addition, Labour has chased Reform in its policy and rhetoric towards migrants. It was only a few months ago that Starmer echoed Enoch Powell in his island of strangers speech.

Far right governments usually use existing laws and powers to push an authoritarian agenda. You can see this particularly in the United States of America, where Trump cites hundreds year old insurrection laws and alien enemies acts in order to further his mass deportation campaign. It is not hard to see a far right government in this country to use the proscription of PA to go after climate justice or civil rights movements.

With that being said, today I'm talking to Iida Kayhko about proscription, counter terror and more, on with the show!

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Iida's article in Race and Class: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03063968251323166