Burnham defends the ban on Palestine Action (patience for actresses and writers)

Kate Evans is a sergeant with the Avon and Somerset Police in England. On 6 August 2025, Evans was on duty when a man struck her on the back with a sledgehammer. Her spine was broken. The attacker, Samuel Corner, is a member of the ‘activist’ group Palestine Action. At the time, Palestine Action was advertising training sessions in which potential activists were invited to ‘train with a hammer’, rather than merely waving Palestinian flags. 

The Palestine Action training sessions took place a few days after the news broke of the death of Ann Widdecombe, a former MP, following an attack carried out with a hammer.

Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham leads the most anti-Israeli British government in the history of the United Kingdom – at least according to Israel. Last month, he imposed sanctions on Israeli products from the settlements. But when it comes to Palestine Action, Burnham defends its designation as a terrorist organisation alongside Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the Irish Republican Army. Prime Minister Burnham has defended the “rigorous, evidence-based process” that led to the banning of the protest group Palestine Action, following calls to review that decision in the wake of the case involving Sally Rooney, the author of Normal People, who will no longer be able to sell her books in the UK due to her support for the group, which has also been described as “non-violent” by actresses such as Tilda Swinton. The ban on Palestine Action makes membership of or support for this group, which is dedicated to direct action, a criminal offence punishable by up to fourteen years’ imprisonment.

Rooney can no longer sell her novels in the UK, not because she is a pro-Palestinian martyr (even the new Nobel Prize winner for literature, Anne Carson, has come out in defence of Palestine Action) or a victim of censorship. The Irish writer has announced that she will donate her earnings from the BBC’s television adaptations of her novels to Palestine Action. “If that makes me a supporter of terrorism under British law, well, so be it,” Rooney wrote.

Its publisher, less inclined towards fiscal martyrdom, does not want to end up in court on charges of ‘financing terrorism’. So no more ‘Normal People’ in bookshops. New York magazine reports the following: ‘Sally Rooney cannot publish in the UK because of her support for Palestine’. Then there is The Telegraph’s version, which adheres to very specific standards: “Sally Rooney’s books pulled from the shelves due to her support for Palestine Action”. There is a certain difference.

In the world of letters, it is not a crime to support Gaza; it is a crime to send money to terrorists. A year ago, London’s Jewish community awoke to the sight of shattered glass. In the dead of night, masked men had daubed the walls of a Jewish shop with blood-red paint to remind residents of the bloodlust of their homeland: Israel. Even the mezuzah – the small scroll of parchment that Jews affix to their doorposts as a reminder of their faith – had been stained red. Palestine Action was responsible. Their ‘underground manual’ contains the names and private addresses of company directors and property owners.

Five members of Palestine Action attacked the Glasgow facility of the French defence group Thales, causing damage amounting to over one million pounds. Activists from Palestine Action stormed the Bristol headquarters of the Israeli defence technology firm Elbit Systems. Two police officers were struck and an employee sustained head injuries. One of the officers was taken to hospital, whilst colleagues seized axes and other weapons. The raid on the RAF base at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire marked the point of no return for the Starmer and Burnham governments.

The day after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel – in which more Jewish civilians died in a single day than at any other time since the Holocaust – the founder of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard, addressed supporters in Manchester. Barnard, a former Extinction Rebellion activist, invoked the name given by Hamas to their massacre: the Al-Aqsa Flood. The anti-Semitic carnage inspired him to envisage a wider wave of destruction, as he told his audience: “We must turn that flood into a tsunami across the whole world.” A democracy must defend itself against those who seek to use liberal society against itself.