(SeaPRwire) – By: Gavin Thorne
The British government used counterterrorism powers to ban a group that spray-painted aircraft at an air force base. The same group repeatedly damaged weapons-linked facilities. Not a single person was harmed. The legal framework that produced Palestine Action’s proscription in July 2025 was designed for al-Qaeda, not paint and padlocks. Now a bestselling novelist’s entire UK catalogue is off the shelves because she said she’d donate her royalties to them. This is not security policy. This is political theater dressed in the language of law. Every arrest at every demonstration since the ban confirms it.
Palestine Action was founded in 2020 in the UK and described itself as a “direct action movement.” Its members repeatedly targeted facilities linked to Elbit Systems, the Israeli weapons manufacturer with UK operations. In June 2025, members broke into R.A.F. Brize Norton, the UK’s largest air force base, and spray painted two aircraft. The group’s website stated that disrupting one site interrupts the whole supply chain. Elbit Systems UK denied supplying the Israeli military. The British government designated the group as terrorist in July 2025. It was the UK’s first proscription primarily based on property damage rather than violence against people.
More than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza. The attack that sparked it, October 7, 2023, killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel. An additional 251 were taken hostage. IDF data from May 2025 suggested a Palestinian civilian death rate of 83%. Rooney pledged to donate royalties from books including ‘Intermezzo’ and ‘Normal People’ to Palestine Action. Her publisher Faber determined that passing UK earnings to her could constitute a criminal offense. Faber pulled the entire run of her work from the UK in any format. Rooney called the proscription “a truly extreme assault on ordinary rights and freedoms.”
In February, the High Court ruled the proscription unlawful and disproportionate. By June, the Court of Appeal had overturned that ruling. A Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for early next month. More than 3,000 people have been arrested since the ban. Many held signs reading “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” The government maintains the ban does not prevent lawful pro-Palestinian protests, but the arrest numbers tell a different story. Ian Byrne, a British MP, warned of “draconian consequences” before the ban took effect. Now he calls the outcome “an utterly disgraceful attack on freedom of expression.” He called it an injustice against one of the finest writers of her generation.
Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, spoke to The Guardian. She called Rooney’s inability to publish “a new low in the escalating assault on free speech.” Rooney said she intended to publish her position in a UK newspaper but noted that would now be illegal. Faber’s statement was blunt: selling a writer’s work while being unable to pass on earnings is “an unconscionable situation.” The group’s leaders said they do not advocate violence against people. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said members demonstrated “a willingness to use violence.” The gap between those two assessments reveals how much room the proscription leaves for interpretation.
The next author, artist, or academic who pledges financial support to a proscribed group will learn exactly what “lawful protest” means before their next print run ships, and no matter what the Supreme Court rules on the ban’s legality, the chilling effect is already embedded in British publishing law and will self-censor every contract, every op-ed, and every public statement that crosses the line between dissent and designated terrorism before it ever reaches a reader across the English Channel, because once a publisher walks, no legal argument puts them back.
Author bio: Gavin Thorne, investigative journalist based in Washington, D.C., covering special interests, legislative affairs, and the evolving boundaries between state power and civil liberties across the Atlantic.