Lindsey German on the latest showdown between statal oppression and the anti-war movement

The defeat in the Hight Court for one of the most authoritarian governments of modern times was a welcome surprise for the Palestine movement and a victory in the battle to defend civil liberties. The decision against the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, which it said was disproportionate and unlawful, was a humiliating defeat for the Labour government. It looks completely foolish after the ruling and Yvette Cooper, the former Home Secretary who introduced the shameful proscription, is scraping the barrel to justify her decision. Her successor, Shabana Mahmood, has said she will ‘fight’ the lifting of the ban and is pressing ahead with an appeal.

The left Labour MP John McDonnell and other MPs have signed a letter demanding that the government drops its appeal. The whole attack on Palestine Action has been vindictive and petty, urged on by none other than Donald Trump, whose Scottish golf course was subject to a PA protest. It is shameful that a Labour government has done this, but in the process its authoritarian attacks on civil liberties and the right to protest have been exposed. This ruling follows on from the trial of 6 members of the Filton 24, where a jury failed to convict the accused. Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested for supporting Palestine Action, but on Friday the Metropolitan police refused to arrest anyone carrying supportive signs, merely making a note of them. Those arrested are now in legal limbo, but the ruling has made an ass of the law which charged them.

It is time for the government to accept that civil disobedience against a genocide is not a crime and to drop all charges. Yet Starmer and the police, egged on by pro-Israel groups, are continuing their assault on civil liberties. Two organisers of the national Palestine demos, Ben Jamal from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Chris Nineham from the Stop the War Coalition are in court next week in alleged breach of the Public Order Act because they wanted to organise a peaceful protest. The charges against them should be dropped immediately.

Instead, despite the scepticism and opposition of juries, protesters and the general public alike, the government is pressing on with further attacks on the right to protest. These have grown considerably in recent years, with ever more restrictions placed on those who peacefully protest. What’s going through parliament now gives the police even more powers, including being able to prevent demos because of their ‘cumulative’ impact. Given that every major campaign from the suffragettes to the anti-apartheid movement to the Palestine movement today has relied on repeated demonstrations to get their message across, this is a severe restriction on the right and the efficacy of protest. It is also extremely convenient for all those who oppose these movements.

There are also moves to ban certain slogans – most likely ‘Globalise the Intifada’ and ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free’ – slogans which have been taken up across the movement but are now under attack as ‘antisemitic’ – although that is clearly not their meaning or intention. These developments are on a par with similar restrictions on demos and repression internationally. The fascist Italian prime minster Giorgia Meloni called those demonstrating against Israel’s involvement in the Winter Olympics ‘enemies of Italy’. In Sydney, demos against the Israeli president and war criminal Isaac Herzog were brutally attacked by the police.

There are understandable fears that the ruling last week can be overturned by the higher courts and this is certainly possible, as it contained views that were not always favourable to the protesters. However, it also signals that there is unease even within the normally highly conservative judiciary, and this reflects the wide opposition to the proscription of Palestine Action and the vicious crackdown on those who peacefully showed their support for the organisation.

This authoritarian Labour government has promised a ‘reset’ after the crisis of last week which nearly brought Starmer down. The attempt to keep pursuing protestors will do nothing to assuage his unpopularity. The upcoming by-election in Gorton and Denton will be the next crisis point for him, and his eventual demise cannot be long in coming. We need to ensure that we keep up the pressure over both Palestine and the right to protest, and that Labour is forced to change tack.

Epstein’s ghost haunts the rich and powerful  

More heads are rolling over the Epstein files. Morgan Sachs lawyer Kathy Ruemmler has resigned following revelations of personal contact with the disgraced paedophile long after his first conviction and his gifts to her including a Hermes bag, Apple products and plane tickets. The head of Dubai-based state-backed logistics company DP World, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, has resigned too after sleazy exchanges about escort agencies and sexual experiences were discovered. Jes Staley, former head of Barclays, has been shown to have been a trustee of Epstein’s estate, paid $250,000 a year, until at least 2015, despite his denial of this in court last year.  

But with the disgrace of Peter Mandelson now complete, the future for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor looks ever dimmer. His use of his role as trade envoy to help Epstein is subject of further emails, as are claims that he shared insider information from deals in this role. The more-royalist-than-the-king Daily Mail is demanding police investigations, there are calls for him to go to the US to give evidence in hearings, and for him to do the same to the British parliament.

I think all of this is highly unlikely. The royal family is adept at protecting its wealth and power and its privacy. More likely it will force Andrew into some sort of exile, as they did with the Duke of Windsor. But the crisis is going very deep. The Epstein files show how a talentless and lazy man, already showered with unimaginable wealth from birth, believed he needed even more riches. It made me think of the song from Brecht and Weill’s opera Happy End called ‘Hosanna Rockefeller’, which includes these lines:

May God bless sex appeal when wealthy men get bored,
God keeps their faith and profits high,
and though the poor may starve and die,
make sure no earthly court will try the rich, o Lord!

‘God bless Big Oil and Coal and Steel,
send them to their just rewards.

Matthew Goodwin: a reality check

The Reform candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matthew Goodwin, had little to recommend him to begin with. But his argument that young women and girls need to look at ‘biological reality’ and have children much younger than most do at present, surely should merit flashing red lights. He said, ‘many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.’ Women’s average age for giving birth to first children is close to 31. For a range of reasons, this is a pattern in many developed countries, including Japan and Taiwan, as well as the US and western Europe. Essentially it has much to do with women working outside the home and the choices that they therefore make about motherhood.

Goodwin ought to find a catchy slogan to encapsulate his views – maybe Children, Church, Kitchen in an echo of Hitler’s advice to women to stay home and care for the family. There’s a kind of symmetry to his thinking. He wants to deport migrants, and fears that ‘Christian’ Europeans will be replaced by Muslims. The other side is women being coerced – or informed of the biological reality – into having more children and having them earlier.

This would require a huge rolling back of women’s rights. It would also add to levels of misogyny which are already prevalent on the far right. To enforce women’s behaviour over their fertility in this way, you also need to dehumanise them, to suggest that they are subservient to men, and to use the state to intervene in their lives. Yuck.

This week: I will be speaking at a Stop the War meeting in Crewe on Wednesday, and helping to prepare for the demo outside Ben and Chris’s hearing next Monday 23 February. I’m also reading Rosa Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike which is a discussion of the relation between economic and political struggles and so relevant today. On which note, I voted Michael Lavalette no.1 for the Your Party elections. Please do so if you can.