By David Osland

At some point in the mid-1980s, I rocked up at a National Organisation of Labour Students conference raffishly clad in a T-shirt celebrating Brigade Rosse, a Kensington Market knock-off version of a garment originally hand-stencilled by Joe Strummer of The Clash.

The ensemble was tastefully topped off with a fake leopardskin neckerchief, skin tight leather jeans and motorcycle boots, and I recall spending an inordinate amount of time backcombing my barnet to complete the look.

How stupid of me. Brigade Rosse were an Italian terror faction of the period, who murdered 50 people in Italy in the name of Marxism-Leninism. Sporting their logo on my chest was ostentatious posturing on the part of a youthful idiot.

On top of that, I must have looked a dick and the fashion police would have had me bang to rights. But at that time, my garb would have been of no concern to the actual Old Bill.

Forty years later, I wouldn’t be able to take that for granted. In Belfast yesterday, a 71-year-old woman was busted for wearing a Palestine Action T-shirt.

This, in a city which only weeks previously had seen Orange Lodge marchers traipse around brandishing the flag of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a paramilitary faction that killed hundreds of Catholics during the Troubles.

The cops were even more heavy-handed in London, where 476 were arrested for carrying placards demonstrating support for Palestine Action, with many taken into custody.

The group was earlier this year proscribed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper under the Terrorism Act 2000, a piece of legislation that dates back to the New Labour era.

Her decision came after Palestine Action activists broke into RAF Brize Norton earlier this year and daubed jet fighters with red paint. The aim was to symbolically highlight RAF reconnaissance flights over Gaza and the alleged subsequent provision of intelligence to the Israeli government.

The incident will have been costly, although the proclaimed price tag of millions of pounds looks heavily inflated. But the key point is that nobody was harmed in any way; what we witnessed seems more akin to what earlier generations would have regarded as non-violent direct action.

The matter could more appropriately have been handled by charging those involved with criminal damage. That is itself a serious offence, which can attract prison sentences of up to ten years.

But the logical if ludicrous corollary of Cooper’s designation is that any expression of support for Palestine Action now constitutes terrorism.

As a result, hundreds of people motivated by revulsion at Israeli brutality in Gaza could potentially end up behind bars for the crime of holding a placard.

Were that to happen, it would mark one of the worst incursions on civil liberties this country has seen in peacetime.

As Amnesty UK correctly pointed out on X: “The arrest of otherwise peaceful protesters is a violation of… international obligations to protect the rights of freedom of expression and assembly.”

Approval or disapproval of the actions of Palestine Action is beside the point here. The right to express disagreement with government policy has traditionally been extended across the political spectrum.

That is why Covid conspiracy loons are given permission to organise rallies in Trafalgar Square. That is why racists get to picket asylum seeker hotels. It is why overtly fascist parties are allowed to propagate their evil creed.

None of these arrested yesterday were engaged in anything that equates to terrorism in any plain English sense of the term. They were not concocting ricin in their kitchens. Nor were they churning out letter bombs in their spare bedrooms, or even collecting funds for those intending to do so.

Their treatment is entirely disproportionate to anything that happened in Parliament Square on Saturday. If they are ultimately charged, the hope must be that commonsense prevails among the juries that will hear their trials. But the likelihood is far greater that an example will be made of them.

Once waving a placard places Quaker pacifists in the same moral and legal category as those who blow up kids at an Ariana Grande gig, a precedent has been set that harms us all.

David Osland is a member of Hackney North & Stoke Newington CLP and a long-time left wing journalist and author. Follow him on Twitter at @David__Osland

Image: Protest outside Downing Street on July 25th 2025, c/o Labour Hub.