I'm an SNP MP. Here's why we abstained on proscribing Palestine Action

This week the Government presented MPs with a take-it or leave-it, indivisible package which lumped Palestine Action into the mix with two other groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement.

The Maniacs Murder Cult is an extremely violent white supremacist, neo-Nazi organisation, whose leader is accused of plotting to have people dressed as Santa Claus, hand out sweets laced with poison to Jewish and other racial minority children at Jewish schools in Brooklyn.

The Russian Imperial Movement is also a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, ultranationalist group which recruited and trained thousands of volunteers to fight for Russia in Ukraine. It is known to be active in Europe and in North America.

READ MORE: The 26 MPs who voted against proscribing Palestine Action – see the list

The third group on the Government’s list for proscription was Palestine Action. A group engaged in high-profile, direct action to protest against the genocide being committed in Gaza. A genocide in which the UK Government, which continues to authorise arms sales to Israel, is complicit.

Despite being asked, the UK Government, in a disgraceful, cynical, manipulation of parliamentary procedure, refused to separate these groups and allow MPs to make individual decisions on whether each of them met the threshold for proscription – forcing us into a take everything or take nothing vote.

Their cynical decision to lump all three groups together in the way that they did should lead many to conclude that this was a grubby political tactic to proscribe a group that the Government simply don’t like, rather than what the Government claims was an issue of vital national security.

But of course, if this really was about national security, why did the UK Government not proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? In opposition, the Labour Party rightly campaigned for the IRGC to be proscribed, but despite the opportunity now, they have decided to proscribe a group which opposes war and terror, rather than one which perpetuates it.

But there is a much wider issue at play here, and that is the serious long-term consequences that this illiberal, profoundly undemocratic and entirely disproportionate decision will have on our fundamental right to protest, and our ability to organise, assemble, and campaign.

And the Labour Party’s erosion of our civil liberties - which I’m certain stems from a decision to ape the populist right rather than confront them head-on - has resulted in them becoming increasingly authoritarian.

But by shutting down protest and dissent, the Labour Party are ignoring history, and a long tradition of direct action being taken by protest movements across the UK.

For decades – from the Suffragettes to the women of Greenham Common, to the anti-apartheid movement, to Greenpeace, even to the Quakers protesting outside the gates of Faslane – committed individuals have broken the law because of strong moral or religious beliefs, in an attempt to highlight their cause in the hope of changing government policy.

READ MORE: 20 to protest Palestine Action ban at Gandhi Statue on July 5

And throughout those decades, those involved in direct action have done so in the full understanding that there will be consequences for their actions, and that, if they have broken the law, they will be held to account by the courts.

The UK already has in place robust domestic legislation which can adequately deal with any criminality which may arise because of direct action by a protest group, so there was absolutely no need for the UK Labour government create this very dangerous precedent by proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

But what it does do is expose the lengths that the Labour Party will go to in order to silence their critics and protect an Israeli government that continues its collective punishment of the Palestinian people.

I am convinced however that this decision will have long-term consequences, particularly as substantial parts of the UK continue to flirt with the populist far-right. Significantly lowering the bar as to what is and is not terrorism at this time will be seized upon, when and if the far-right gets into power at Westminster.

Quite simply, this decision has opened the gate for the populist far-right to take a sledgehammer to our civil liberties and our right to protest.

And we should be in no doubt that that will happen. One only needs to look back to 1999 and the debate which surrounded the introduction of the Terrorism Act. We should all be concerned as to just how far we have travelled in a relatively short space of time.

During that debate, the case of the Greenpeace activists who breached the security fence at both Aldermaston and Sellafield in 1995 was raised. They broke through the fence to block the production of arms and weapons-grade plutonium and even dumped six tonnes of cement into a waste outlet pipe.

The then minister of state for the Home Office, Charles Clarke, made it clear that, “if [direct action] groups do not engage in serious violence […] the new definition cannot catch them”.

The then Labour home secretary Jack Straw (below) went further, specifically confirming to MPs that the definition of terrorism in the new act would exclude direct action groups such as Greenpeace.

The activities of Greenpeace in 1995 far surpass anything Palestine Action have done to date, yet they are now set to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation.

So be in no doubt, we are on a slippery slope. This week it is Palestine Action, next week, will it be Just Stop Oil, or Greenpeace? And how long will it be, I wonder, until a future UK government deems the activities of The Quakers to be a threat to national security?

This is a bad law. One which was formulated in anger, driven by revenge and bulldozed through the House of Commons in the most cynical fashion, by a government whose moral compass is becoming a far-distant memory.

On Wednesday, lumping Palestine Action in with neo-Nazis, the UK Labour Government ensured that opposition would be muted, simply because the vast majority of MPs would not run the risk of being labelled as neo-Nazi, white-supremacist sympathisers by voting against. That is why so many of us did not take part in the vote.

But their appalling cynicism delivered them only a pyrrhic victory, as it served only to confirm this UK Labour Government’s complicity in a genocide, and a bill which will be paid by our children and our grandchildren as their basic freedoms and civil liberties are taken away.

That appalling cynicism from the UK Government was also designed to distract from the true terror that is being committed against the still starving population of Gaza. Our obligation to the people of Palestine is to ensure they don’t succeed.