Protest is not terrorism

Delegates at the annual congress of the TUC, representing 5.6 million workers, voted unanimously to demand the repeal of the proscription of Palestine Action. Congress also condemned the “serious escalation in authoritarianism” embodied in the Labour government’s attack on protest rights through restrictions on the national marches for Palestine and “the home secretary’s abuse of anti-terrorism legislation to ban a non-violent, direct action group, persecute opponents of this move and target peaceful activists.” 

The call to “lift the ban” was an amendment to a motion proposed by the National Education Union (NEU) on Palestine. The NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said: “Britain is complicit – complicit in the bombing of homes, complicit in the slaughter of children, complicit in genocide.” Speaking in the debate, PCS president Martin Cavanagh told delegates: “The UK government’s proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 is not just a legal manoeuvre, comrades, it is a political attack with implications for our rights, our members and our democracy.”

He went on to say: “We believe this proscription represents a significant abuse of counter terrorist powers and a direct attack on our right to protest against the genocidal Israeli regime. Let’s be clear: protest is not and can never be classed as terrorism. Solidarity is not a crime, and silence in the face of injustice is not an option.”

UCU General Secretary Jo Grady said in the debate on the attack on protest rights: “Instead of reversing repressive Tory laws, this Labour government has embraced them – and in some cases gone further. This is a dangerous road to be going down; because when you criminalise dissent; when you hand sweeping powers to the police; when you silence critics in the name of public order, no-one is safe”

“And we know where this road leads. We have seen across the world how governments that curb the right to protest also come for trade unions. They come for our picket lines. They come for our right to strike. They come for the very freedoms our movement was built on. ‘With the far-right on the rise, we say this clearly: a Labour government should be defending basic human rights and democratic norms, not wrecking them.”

A statement from the UCU delegation, published below, condemned the mass arrests in London on 6 September. 

Statement from the UCU delegation to TUC on events of 6 September in Parliament Square

We condemn the mass arrests of nearly 900 people in Parliament Square during the “Lift the Ban” protest organised by Defend our Juries on Saturday 6 September and are deeply concerned by testimony from Amnesty International observers about police aggression towards participants “including supporters of the protest being shoved away and batons being pulled out on people”. Members of UCU, NEU and Unison attending the “Witness Circle” for the protest have also testified to the peaceful nature of the Lift the Ban event which consisted of people sitting on the ground holding cardboard signs. We completely concur with Amnesty’s statement that the policing of Lift the Ban events shows the government’s “complete disregard for our protest rights”. This is borne out by the unprecedented restrictions also placed by the Metropolitan Police on the national march for Palestine on Saturday where marchers were banned from using pots and pans to draw attention to starvation in Gaza, as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has revealed.

We note however that entirely different scenes unfolded in Edinburgh on Saturday 6 September. Several thousand people on a demonstration to defend protest rights supported by the STUC, Stop the War Scotland, Glasgow TUC and others joined the crowds witnessing a Lift the Ban protest there. No arrests took place at the scene and the police made no reports of disorder or abuse. The clear conclusion we draw is that the policy of mass arrests is a dangerous and exceptional threat to civil liberties.

Our protest rights are under attack regardless of whether we are taking part in mass marches, holding signs in defiance of proscription or undertaking direct action. This repression also threatens our rights as trade unionists to march and picket and we urge the union movement as a whole to respond to this challenge.

UCU delegation to TUC Congress