The UK government’s proposal to ban the group Palestine Action has brought attention to one of the most significant state powers: the ability to designate an organization as terrorist under the Terrorism Act 2000. Activists from the group allegedly broke into the RAF base Brize Norton last week, damaging military aircraft and raising urgent questions about the limits of tolerated and legitimate political protest in modern Britain. Most scholars on this subject agree that proscription powers are uncomfortable in a modern liberal democracy. The freedom of association is a fundamental principle of liberalism and a valued human right, and interfering with that freedom can evoke the threat of illiberalism, or worse, authoritarianism. The executive’s use of proscription in the UK is often described as a ‘severe’ power for this reason, and ministers who ‘reluctantly’ exercise it may do so with a wary eye on the potential slippery slope.
Nonetheless, the prevailing political consensus in UK politics holds that proscription powers are an effective, albeit politically uncomfortable, means to curb organizations clearly bent on political violence. Banning powers in various legal forms have been broadly accommodated in the UK and other liberal democracies for centuries. Parliament notably introduced the Act of Proscription in 1746 to counter the growing threat of the Jacobite movement in the Scottish Highlands, while today’s Terrorism Act 2000 represents the most recent iteration of such powers. Since its enactment 25 years ago, the government has banned a total of 81 organizations, with a further 14 organizations listed under earlier legislation concerning the conflict in Northern Ireland.
If Palestine Action is indeed added to the list of Proscribed Organisations on 30th June, as seems likely, it will become the 82nd addition to a roster of organizations implicated in, at one extreme, horrific acts of mass violence, atrocities, and human rights abuses, and at the other, groups that have publicly supported such forms of violence. Al Qaeda was among the first organizations added in 2000, and others that have been included are Hamas—established in 1987 and fully proscribed in November 2021; Hizballah—founded in 1982 and proscribed in 2019; Palestinian Islamic Jihad—proscribed in 2001; and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)—formed in 1968 and proscribed in 2014.
Once the decision to proscribe Palestine Action is confirmed—and once the order is laid before Parliament, proscription decisions are nearly a foregone conclusion in the UK legislative process—it will become a criminal offense, among other things, to belong to the organization, invite support for it, express support for it, attend meetings on its behalf, and wear clothing or articles that support it. Committing these offenses could result in significant prison sentences of up to 15 years and fines of up to £5,000.
The Home Secretary’s statement—delivered on 23 June 2025—saw Yvette Cooper offer both familiar and new arguments for the case to proscribe Palestine Action. The moral condemnation of the group’s ‘disgraceful’ and ‘unacceptable’ actions was familiar, as was the Home Secretary’s emphasis on the organization’s presence across all 45 policing regions in the UK. Also familiar was the reference to international commitments and responsibilities, positioning proscription as part of a broader framework of responsible British engagement in the world. These references are crucial, partly because they help clarify the proportionality of proscription in this case, allowing the Home Secretary to consider factors such as an organization’s scale and the extent of its presence in the UK.
What is less familiar, and ultimately most contentious, is that the key determination in a proscription order is that the group is deemed to be ‘concerned in terrorism.’ In many cases, this provision has attracted little debate—few would contest the banning of ISIS or al Qaeda on these grounds. However, the description of Palestine Action’s involvement in terrorism—citing evidence of the group’s damage to property, including military aircraft—has faced significant public contestation.
To understand the government’s reasoning, we need only look at the Home Secretary’s order, which states that Palestine Action is to be added to the list due to its actions aimed at ‘progressing its political cause’ (Section 1 (c) under the Terrorism Act 2000) and ‘influencing the government’ (Section 1 (b)) through ‘serious damage to property’ (Section 2(b)), and creating a ‘serious risk to the health or safety of the public’ (Section 2 (c)) by instilling panic among staff who feared for their safety as pyrotechnics and smoke bombs were thrown.
We can reasonably conclude that the Home Secretary’s characterization of Palestine Action as a legitimate target for proscription is not intended to sway the parliamentarians who will debate the order next week. Proscription decisions have never faced formal political opposition, even when they involve a diverse range of organizations. In fact, the debate often resembles a sort of political ritual of familiar speech and action that leads toward its inevitable conclusion: the banning of additional organizations.
Instead, this positioning appears to be designed to challenge government critics—including high-profile novelists willing to risk right-wing outrage—for whom Palestine Action’s activities seem more aligned with political activism or criminal damage than terrorism. This is not an organization facing proscription for accusations of inflicting death or serious physical violence upon any individual.
One issue raised by these debates is that the legal definition of terrorism in the UK—like all definitions of terrorism—has sufficient elasticity to enable its application to a wide range of organizations. Additionally, the proscription process incorporates further discretion for the UK executive, prompting criticisms around consistency and the intrusion of unrelated concerns in applying this power to different groups and their members or supporters. For example, while a member of the band Kneecap has recently been charged for displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah—a proscribed organization—one can easily stroll through areas of Belfast and see houses adorned with flags, posters, and architecture honoring (or ‘commemorating’) the also proscribed Ulster Volunteer Force.
These questions of consistency reflect broader concerns that Palestine Action’s proscription exists within a larger context of exceptionalism, and/or the severe crackdown on Palestinian activism more generally. Factors contributing to such a trend may include the UK’s close political ties to the US and Israel, the racialized interpretation of critics of Israel, and empathy for legitimate fears among Jewish communities in the UK. While it is true that the UK’s list of proscribed organizations is more diverse than it once was—recent years have seen the addition of several far-right organizations—groups associated with political Islam or with conflicts and contexts involving Muslim-majority countries continue to be prominently represented on the list.
However, the broader question raised by Palestine Action’s proscription is: what does this mean for political rights and protections overall? Will this pave the way for further listings of protest organizations whose activities do not typically equate to the violence commonly associated with terrorism? These are legitimate concerns for three reasons. First, the UK’s proscription list tends to expand over time—only four groups have ever been removed after inclusion. Second, there is a tendency for politicians to use proscription decisions as an opportunity to advocate for further expansions of the list, questioning why other groups with seemingly similar motives and actions are not treated similarly. Third, and relatedly, the proscription order allows the government to consider any new activist group as merely an ‘alias’ for Palestine Action since the Terrorism Act (2000) enables such groups to be treated as the same, subjecting their members to the same criminal penalties:
The use of an alternative name which has not been formally recognised in an order does not prevent the police and Crown Prosecution Service from taking action against an individual for proscription offences (Home Office)
In this final capacity, the proscription of Palestine Action could ultimately serve as a means to stifle any organized political activism connected to Palestine in the UK, which could be the most severe and overlooked consequence of this proscription order.
These trends are not confined to one political party: similar dynamics have been evident over the past twenty-five years or so since the establishment of the UK’s proscription regime. They also prompt us to consider whether Palestine Action’s proscription should be viewed within a much larger history of banning resistance or oppositional organizations, as seen in the British state’s use of such powers to suppress anti-colonial movements in its overseas territories throughout the twentieth century.
