Investigation · Surveillance State(s) and the Criminalization of Dissent

The UK Banned Palestine Action as a Terrorist Group After a Paint Attack on Two RAF Planes

In June 2025, two activists sprayed paint into the engines of two RAF aircraft. Three weeks later, the UK banned their entire protest network as a terrorist organization, legally grouped with al-Qaeda and Islamic State. A retired Bristol priest has been arrested at least four times since for holding a cardboard sign.

The Reverend Sue Parfitt, an 84-year-old retired Anglican priest and former nun, was first arrested at 83 on July 5, 2025, the day the ban took effect, for sitting in a camping chair with a sign reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” She has been re-arrested at least three more times since, most recently on July 5, 2026, the ban's one-year anniversary, under a more serious offense for orally inviting police officers to support the group. The UK's High Court found the ban unlawful in February 2026. The Court of Appeal reversed that ruling in June 2026. More than 3,000 people have been arrested.

The graded claims ↓Where the record stops

Primary sources include the proscription order itself, Declassified UK's Freedom of Information investigation, the Court of Appeal's final judgment, and Bristol 24/7's reporting on Sue Parfitt's arrests.

§1 · Summary Brief

What this page is about

In June 2025, activists from Palestine Action broke into RAF Brize Norton, the UK's largest air force base, rode electric scooters across the tarmac, and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager refuelling aircraft using modified fire extinguishers, additionally striking the planes with crowbars ( Guardian, Aviationist). No one was hurt and no flights were disrupted, but the incident embarrassed the government over base security. Three days later, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told Parliament she had decided to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000, citing the Brize Norton breach alongside a list of prior property-damage actions against defence contractors ( Cooper's written ministerial statement).

The House of Commons voted 385 to 26 on July 2, 2025 to approve the order; the Lords approved it the next day; and Palestine Action became a proscribed terrorist organisation, legally grouped with Hamas, al-Qaeda, and Islamic State, at one minute past midnight on July 5, 2025 ( BBC). The proscription made it a crime, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, to belong to or express support for Palestine Action. Hours after the ban took effect, campaign group Defend Our Juries staged the first of what became a sustained civil-disobedience campaign. Among those arrested at the very first protest was the Reverend Sue Parfitt, an 83-year-old retired Anglican priest and former nun from Henbury, Bristol, arrested while sitting in a camping chair ( Bristol 24/7). Twenty-seven to 29 people were arrested that day, and Parfitt has since been re-arrested at least three more times, most recently outside New Scotland Yard on July 5, 2026, the ban's one-year anniversary, when she was 84 and was arrested under the more serious Section 12(1A) offence for orally inviting police officers to support Palestine Action ( Guardian).

The legal fight over the ban itself has been volatile. Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori brought a judicial review; in February 2026 the High Court ruled the proscription decision unlawful and disproportionate, but kept the ban in force pending the government's appeal ( Al Jazeera). In June 2026 the Court of Appeal reversed that ruling and restored the proscription as lawful, leaving more than 3,000 arrests and over 700 charges live ( Guardian). Ammori has said she will appeal to the Supreme Court and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights ( New Arab).

Human-rights groups and UN officials have consistently argued the ban is a category error: proscription law was built for organisations that kill people, and Palestine Action's own record, however disruptive, is one of property damage against arms companies and military infrastructure, not violence against persons. Liberty, Amnesty International UK, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and five UN Special Rapporteurs have all said so on the record ( OHCHR). The pattern sits inside a longer British history of using security law against dissent, from the Special Demonstration Squad's covert infiltration of Palestine solidarity groups to the criminalisation of direct-action protest more broadly.

Every claim on this page is graded against the primary sources cited beside it: the statutory instrument itself, the Court of Appeal's final judgment, official ministerial statements, and contemporaneous reporting from the Guardian, BBC, Bristol 24/7, Al Jazeera, and Declassified UK's Freedom of Information investigation into the disputed damage figure. Where a number is contested, such as the cost of the Brize Norton damage, both figures are shown and graded accordingly.

What we are NOT saying

We are not saying Palestine Action's direct-action tactics, including the Brize Norton break-in and the Filton, Bristol raid, did not cause real property damage. They did. What is graded here is whether that record supports terrorism-level proscription, not whether the underlying property-damage conduct occurred.

We are not saying the Court of Appeal's June 2026 ruling is the final word. Huda Ammori has said she intends to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. That appeal is an open, unresolved thread as of this writing.

We are not saying every one of the more than 3,000 people arrested since July 2025 held identical views or played identical roles. Sue Parfitt is one arrestee whose case is extensively documented on the public record; she stands here as the documented example, not as a stand-in verdict on every arrestee's intent.

§2 · Thesis

One paint attack on two planes reclassified a protest movement as a terrorist group.

The UK government used a single, non-lethal property-damage incident at RAF Brize Norton to justify placing an entire direct-action protest movement on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and Islamic State. It then used that proscription to prosecute an 83-year-old priest and thousands of others for holding cardboard signs.

This reveals a pattern. Counter-terrorism law is built and sold to the public as a tool against organisations that kill. Here it is repurposed as a tool against organisations that protest. No fatality, no injury to a bystander, and no lethal intent anywhere in Palestine Action's documented record changes that outcome.

§3 · Timeline

1968 to July 2026: from Special Branch surveillance to a priest’s fourth arrest.

1968
The Metropolitan Police Special Branch forms the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) after the March 1968 Grosvenor Square Vietnam War protest. The unit is later revealed to have infiltrated over 1,000 left-wing and social-justice groups, including Palestine solidarity campaigns. Wikipedia.
2004–2007
SDS officer HN18, cover name “Rob Harrison,” infiltrates the London chapter of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestine solidarity group, and deceives a female activist into an intimate relationship. Electronic Intifada.
2020
Palestine Action is founded as a direct-action network targeting UK-based operations of Elbit Systems, Israel's largest weapons manufacturer, and other defence firms supplying Israel. Wikipedia.
2022
Palestine Action causes over £1 million in damage during an attack on the Thales UK factory in Glasgow, one of the incidents later cited by the Home Office as grounds for proscription. GOV.UK.
August 6, 2024
Six Palestine Action activists drive a repurposed prison van into the perimeter fence of Elbit Systems UK's Filton, Bristol facility, causing over £1 million in damage with sledgehammers and crowbars. A police sergeant's spine is fractured during the confrontation. Ten additional activists are later arrested, and the total charged reaches 24, the “Filton 24.” Wikipedia.
November 21, 2024
Four UN Special Rapporteurs write to the UK government raising concerns about the treatment of the Filton activists under counter-terrorism detention powers. ianbrown.tech.
June 20, 2025
Two Palestine Action activists breach RAF Brize Norton on electric scooters and spray red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft using modified fire extinguishers, additionally striking them with crowbars. Damage estimates range from an initial £30 million reported by LBC to a later police-sourced £7 million figure the Ministry of Defence has been unable to substantiate under Freedom of Information requests. Guardian; Declassified UK.
June 23, 2025
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper tells Parliament in a written ministerial statement she has decided to proscribe Palestine Action under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000, citing Brize Norton and a “long history of unacceptable criminal damage.” The same day, seven human-rights and legal organisations, and separately Liberty and Amnesty International UK, publicly urge her not to. Parallel Parliament; ELSC.
July 2, 2025
The House of Commons votes 385 to 26 to approve the Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025, proscribing Palestine Action alongside the neo-Nazi Maniacs Murder Cult and the white-supremacist Russian Imperial Movement. BBC.
July 3, 2025
The House of Lords approves the order. Four activists are remanded in custody at Westminster Magistrates' Court over the Brize Norton break-in. Guardian.
July 5, 2025
The Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025 (SI 2025/803) comes into force at 00:01. Palestine Action becomes a proscribed terrorist organisation. Hours later, Defend Our Juries holds its first Parliament Square protest; 27 to 29 people are arrested, including the Reverend Sue Parfitt, then 83, arrested for holding a sign reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” ProtectUK; Bristol 24/7.
July 18, 2025
The four Brize Norton defendants appear at the Old Bailey; trial is set for January 2027 on charges of conspiracy to enter a restricted area for purposes prejudicial to UK safety and conspiracy to commit criminal damage. Reuters.
July 25, 2025
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calls the proscription a “disturbing” misuse of counter-terrorism legislation. OHCHR.
August 9, 2025
Metropolitan Police arrest 532 people in Parliament Square, most for holding signs supporting Palestine Action, the largest single-day mass arrest in London in over a decade. Guardian.
September 6, 2025
Sue Parfitt is arrested for a second time at a further Parliament Square protest, telling reporters “Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation. It caused much damage confined to the weapons that are being used on the Palestinians.” Independent.
November 12, 2025
Five UN Special Rapporteurs publicly declare the proscription “not justified.” Yahoo News.
November 26, 2025
Liberty and Amnesty International UK intervene in the High Court proscription challenge, arguing the ban is a disproportionate use of counter-terror powers. Liberty.
February 13, 2026
The High Court rules the Home Secretary's proscription decision unlawful and disproportionate but leaves the ban in force pending appeal, in the case brought by Huda Ammori. Al Jazeera.
May 2026
A jury at Woolwich Crown Court delivers mixed verdicts in the Filton 24 retrial: four activists are convicted of criminal damage, with one additionally convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent; others are acquitted of aggravated burglary. Wikipedia.
June 12, 2026
A judge at Woolwich Crown Court sentences the four convicted Filton activists with a terrorism connection attached, the first time in British legal history that protesters convicted of property damage have received a terrorism designation at sentencing. Mondoweiss.
June 15, 2026
The Court of Appeal, sitting as a panel of five judges, overturns the High Court's February ruling and finds the Palestine Action proscription lawful and proportionate. Huda Ammori vows to appeal to the Supreme Court and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights. Guardian; New Arab.
July 5, 2026
On the one-year anniversary of the ban, Sue Parfitt, now 84, and 13 others are arrested outside New Scotland Yard for inviting police officers to support Palestine Action, charged under the more serious Section 12(1A) offence rather than the Section 13 offence typically used against sign-holders. Guardian; AllDayNews.

§4 · Key Personnel

The priest, the ministers, the judges, and the officer who infiltrated Palestine solidarity groups.

HN18 (“Rob Harrison”)

Special Demonstration Squad officer, 2004–2007

Infiltrated the London chapter of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestine solidarity group, deceiving a female activist into an intimate relationship. Confirmed by the Undercover Policing Inquiry's own disclosure of the cover name.

Reverend Sue Parfitt

Retired Anglican priest and former nun, Henbury, Bristol

84 years old as of July 2026. Ordained in 1994. Member of Christian Climate Action. Arrested at least four times for supporting Palestine Action between July 2025 and July 2026. Estimates she has been arrested around 30 times across her activist career.

Yvette Cooper

UK Home Secretary, then Foreign Secretary

Announced and confirmed the decision to proscribe Palestine Action in June 2025. Continued to defend the ban after the High Court found it unlawful in February 2026.

Dan Jarvis

Security Minister

Presented the proscription order to the House of Commons, telling MPs “people engaged in lawful protest do not cause millions of pounds of damage to national security infrastructure.”

Sir Keir Starmer

Prime Minister

Publicly condemned the Brize Norton break-in as “disgraceful.”

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

House of Lords

Moved a “regret” amendment stating the proscription “undermines civil liberties” and “constitutes a misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.”

Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn

Labour and independent MPs

Led parliamentary opposition to the proscription vote.

Volker Türk

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Called the proscription a “disturbing” misuse of counter-terrorism law.

Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani

Convicted Filton activists

Four Palestine Action activists convicted of criminal damage (Corner additionally of GBH without intent) over the August 2024 Filton, Bristol raid on Elbit Systems UK. Sentenced in June 2026 with a terrorism connection, receiving terms of four to eight years.

Huda Ammori

Palestine Action co-founder

Brought the judicial review against the Home Secretary's proscription decision, won at the High Court in February 2026, and lost on government appeal in June 2026. Has vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Mr Justice Johnson (Jeremy Johnson)

High Court judge

Ruled in February 2026 that the proscription decision was unlawful and disproportionate, and later, in the Filton case, found “an appearance” of a terrorism connection justifying the terrorism designation applied at the June 2026 sentencing.

Dame Sue Carr (Lady Chief Justice)

Court of Appeal

Presided over the panel that reversed the High Court and restored the proscription as lawful in June 2026.

Akiko Hart

Director, Liberty

Liberty intervened in the High Court case and publicly criticised the Court of Appeal's June 2026 reversal as risking a “chilling effect on protest and free speech.”

§5 · Graded Claims

Eight claims about the proscription and the arrests, each graded, each cited.

Special Demonstration Squad officer HN18 infiltrated the London ISM, a Palestine solidarity group, from 2004 to 2007.

FACT

Confirmed by the Undercover Policing Inquiry's own disclosure of the cover name 'Rob Harrison' and subsequent hearing testimony, including that HN18 deceived a female activist into an intimate relationship.

Palestine Action activists caused a disputed amount of damage, reported between £7 million and £30 million, to two RAF Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton on June 20, 2025.

PROBABLY TRUE

The £7m figure is widely reported by police sources and cited by Cooper, but a Ministry of Defence Freedom of Information response obtained by Declassified UK confirms the MoD cannot substantiate any damage figure and that the £7m number actually originated with AirTanker Ltd, a private leasing company, not an MoD assessment. Earlier reporting claimed figures as high as £30 million.

The House of Commons voted 385 to 26 on July 2, 2025 to proscribe Palestine Action alongside the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement.

FACT

Confirmed by the official statutory instrument and multiple independent outlets reporting the identical tally.

Reverend Sue Parfitt, then 83, was arrested on July 5, 2025 for holding a sign supporting Palestine Action, and has since been arrested at least three more times as of July 2026.

FACT

Confirmed contemporaneously by multiple outlets present at each protest, and by Parfitt's own on-record statements.

The High Court ruled the proscription unlawful and disproportionate in February 2026; the Court of Appeal reversed that ruling and found it lawful in June 2026.

FACT

Both rulings are documented in official judiciary publications.

Four Filton activists convicted of criminal damage were sentenced in June 2026 with a terrorism connection, the first such designation in British legal history for a property-damage conviction.

FACT

Confirmed by court reporting and the presiding judge's own reasoning that the offence carried 'the appearance' of a terrorism connection.

Five UN Special Rapporteurs and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have stated the proscription is a disproportionate misuse of counter-terrorism law.

FACT

This grades the claim that these officials made these statements; their underlying legal conclusion is itself contested and disputed by UK courts at different stages.

Palestine Action's proscription is the first time a UK domestic direct-action protest group has been banned under the Terrorism Act 2000's 'serious damage to property' limb, rather than for a record of lethal violence.

PROBABLY TRUE

Multiple legal commentators and human-rights groups describe this as unprecedented, and the Court of Appeal's own judgment acknowledges the novelty of applying the property-damage limb this way, but 'first ever' claims carry some risk of unstated historical exceptions this brief did not exhaustively rule out.

§6 · Record vs Narrative

The £7 million damage figure, the “national security” framing, and the untested law used to arrest sign-holders.

Narrative: the government says the Brize Norton action caused roughly £7 million in damage to national security infrastructure, justifying urgent proscription. Record: a Freedom of Information response from the Ministry of Defence, obtained by Declassified UK four months after the event, states the department “does not hold” a total cost figure and cannot substantiate the widely reported £7m number, which appears to have originated with a private aircraft-leasing company rather than the MoD ( Declassified UK). One of the two damaged aircraft was back in service within 11 days.

Narrative: ministers and police describe the Brize Norton action as endangering national security and putting the UK's defence posture at risk. Record: Downing Street stated at the time that the incident “had not blocked any planned aircraft movements or stopped any operations,” and RAF engineers said they did not expect the incident to affect operations ( Guardian; Aviationist).

Narrative: Cooper and the Home Office frame Palestine Action as unlike a “normal protest group,” pointing to violence against people responding at the scene of some actions. Record: the High Court's own February 2026 ruling accepted that Palestine Action “is an organisation concerned with terrorism” under the statute's technical definition while simultaneously finding the proscription decision itself unlawful and disproportionate. Even the court that struck the ban down did not dispute the underlying property-damage record, only whether banning the whole organisation was a proportionate response ( Spectator).

Narrative: police and the Home Office frame Section 12(1A) arrests of sign-holders like Parfitt as enforcement of a clear, previously-tested law. Record: Section 12(1A) was only added to the Terrorism Act 2000 by the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, and its constitutionality under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights was not settled by the UK Supreme Court until February 2026, seven months after the mass arrests of sign-holders began ( Administrative Court blog).

Narrative: the government insists the proscription “does not affect lawful protest groups and other organisations campaigning on issues around Palestine or the Middle East,” per Cooper's original statement. Record: more than 3,000 people, many of them explicitly not members of Palestine Action and engaged only in holding signs of opinion, have been arrested since July 2025, and the Metropolitan Police confirmed 700-plus formal charges. The scale suggests the law's practical reach extends well beyond Palestine Action's own membership ( Guardian).

§7 · Why It Matters Now

A retired priest is the public face of counter-terrorism law turned on domestic protest.

The Sue Parfitt case matters because it makes visible, in a single recognisable person, what proscription law does once it is turned on domestic protest rather than armed groups. A repeatedly-arrested 84-year-old retired priest, arrested for a cardboard sign and later for inviting a police officer to agree with her, has become the public face of a legal machinery originally built to disrupt groups planning mass-casualty violence.

This hub exists to document exactly this kind of institutional overreach, and the Palestine Action proscription is a textbook case: a real, ongoing pattern of the British state widening surveillance and counter-terrorism authority to cover political speech and property-damage protest, with the courts themselves split down the middle on whether that widening is lawful.

The case also connects to a thread this hub already tracks. It sits downstream of the same Metropolitan Police Special Branch and Special Demonstration Squad apparatus that spent decades infiltrating Palestine solidarity campaigns under cover names, the same institutional lineage documented in this hub's investigation into SDS, MI5, and BOSS. The current criminalisation of open, public support for Palestine Action is that same institutional posture, applied through a different legal mechanism, sixty years later.

The Surveillance State(s) hub →SDS, MI5, and BOSS: the historical precedent →

§8 · FAQ

Questions worth taking seriously

Did anyone get hurt or die in any Palestine Action action, including Brize Norton?

No fatalities or serious injuries to members of the public have been documented. One police sergeant sustained a fractured spine during the August 2024 Filton, Bristol confrontation, the most serious injury on the public record tied to a Palestine Action action.

Is holding a sign that says "I support Palestine Action" actually illegal?

Yes, under Section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000 as amended in 2019, expressing an opinion or belief supportive of a proscribed organisation is a criminal offence if the person is reckless as to whether it might encourage others to support the organisation. The UK Supreme Court upheld this provision's compatibility with free-expression rights in February 2026.

Is the ban still in effect, or did the courts strike it down?

It is still in effect. The High Court found the proscription decision unlawful in February 2026 but left the ban operative pending appeal. The Court of Appeal reversed that finding in June 2026 and restored the proscription as lawful. Huda Ammori has said she will seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court.

How does banning Palestine Action compare to banning groups like al-Qaeda or Hamas?

Nearly every other organisation on the Terrorism Act 2000's Schedule 2 list has a documented record of, or stated intent toward, lethal violence against people. Palestine Action's proscription is widely described by legal commentators, UN officials, and rights groups as the first UK application of the statute's “serious damage to property” limb against a group whose primary tactic is property damage rather than violence against persons.

What does this have to do with undercover police spying on Palestine solidarity groups decades ago?

The Special Demonstration Squad's infiltration of the International Solidarity Movement's London chapter from 2004 to 2007, now documented through the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry, shows the British security state treating Palestine solidarity activism as a subject of covert intelligence-gathering long before the 2025 proscription. The current criminalisation of open, public support for Palestine Action is the same institutional posture applied through a different legal mechanism. See this hub's companion investigation, SDS, MI5, and BOSS, for the full history of that infiltration.

§9 · Standing Invitation

If you are named on this page

If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.

This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.

§10 · Sources

The Sue Parfitt / Palestine Action research brief and the primary sources it cites.

Every claim on this page grades to one of FACT · PROBABLY TRUE · SOME SMOKE · PURE SPECULATION · FALSE / MISLEADING. The grade badge hedges. The prose does not. Nothing false is asserted here as accepted claim.

Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025, SI 2025/803 — legislation.gov.uk

Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025 — draft instrument text

Terrorism Act 2000, Section 12 — legislation.gov.uk

Yvette Cooper's written ministerial statement, June 23, 2025 — Parallel Parliament / Hansard

GOV.UK: Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations, Palestine Action entry

House of Lords vote record, July 3, 2025 — UK Parliament

Final open judgment, Ammori v SSHD, Court of Appeal, June 15, 2026 — Courts and Tribunals Judiciary

Press Summary, Ammori v SSHD — Courts and Tribunals Judiciary

OHCHR press release: UK Palestine Action ban “disturbing” misuse of counter-terrorism legislation, July 25, 2025

UN Special Rapporteurs' Note Verbale, Nov 11, 2025 — OHCHR

Amnesty International UK: Banning Palestine Action “a disturbing legal overreach,” July 2, 2025

Liberty: Liberty tells court Palestine Action proscription was disproportionate, Nov 26, 2025