LONDON: Protesters supporting the group Palestine Action, which is banned in the UK, will withhold personal details from police officers, The Guardian reported on Friday.
Defend Our Juries, the group organizing demonstrations in support of Palestine Action in the UK, on Friday said the move will be part of a broader strategy to disrupt police stations and make it “practically impossible” to arrest everyone at the protests.
Showing support for a proscribed group in the UK is a criminal offense and can carry a prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Palestine Action was banned earlier this year under terrorism laws following several incidents, including one where activists broke into a Royal Air Force base and sprayed red paint on military planes.
Earlier this month, 532 people were arrested in Parliament Square for showing support for the group, with 212 refusing to give their details to police.
Defend Our Juries said a protest in London on Sept. 6 will go ahead if it can find 1,000 people to attend. It added that 2,500 people have expressed interest.
Those who sign up will be asked to sign a pledge saying: “I am committed to attending the mass-participation sign-holding action on 6 September 2025,” and “I understand that joining this action comes with risk of arrest and other legal consequences.”
They will also be asked not to comply with the “charade” of street bail, which requires them to give their details to the police, and instead insist on being “taken to a police station, which ensures the provision of immediate legal advice,” hindering the ability of officers to arrest people quickly.
Tim Crosland, a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, said: “The police were only able to arrest as many people as they did (in Parliament Square) because of their trick of using ‘street bail’ on a mass scale, meaning people arrested of terrorism offences were denied the free legal advice they are entitled to when taken to a police station.
“If 1,000 people sign the pledge to take part on 6 September, ensuring we have the critical mass we need for the action, and hundreds of them insist on their right to receive immediate free legal advice at a police station, the charade will be exposed.
“It will be practically impossible for the police to arrest 1,000 people taking part. Any law that is so obviously wrong that it meets mass public opposition quickly becomes unenforceable, as it was with the poll tax in 1990, and the government will have to scrap it.”
It comes after a man said he was dragged from his bed in the town of Hinckley and arrested on suspicion of supporting Palestine Action after posting about the group on social media.
Matt Cobb, 52, said he was handcuffed and taken to a police station on Wednesday despite having never attended a protest.
He was held for six hours and questioned over posts he made on Facebook, before being released under investigation.
“This is a matter of human rights — not just the right to free speech but the rights of Palestinians as they are being murdered,” Cobb told The Independent.
“For the government to respond to this protest by banning the group that’s protesting is a terrifying development.
“If they are going to proscribe non-violent people for protesting against mass murder, they are tyrants.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper continues to insist the ban on Palestine Action is necessary, saying she has seen evidence of “ideas for further attacks” and the group is “not a non-violent organisation.”
But the ban is unpopular with supporters of the Labour government, with a Survation poll on Monday finding 70 percent of members oppose it.
Crosland said: “The government’s monumental waste of policing resources to criminalise cardboard sign-holding against genocide has already been widely condemned by politicians and public figures across the political spectrum.
“Now the Labour Party has turned against the ban, with more than 70 percent of its members opposed to it, and MPs are claiming to have been tricked by Cooper.”
