A GROUP of 26 MPs and peers have written to the government condemning its plan to appeal against last Friday’s High Court ruling that the government’s ban on Palestine Action was illegal.
Backbench MPs and Labour peers in the House of Lords urged Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to withdraw her assertion that she would fight the ruling.
They accused her of using language that was not ‘becoming your vital office of state and Labour values’.
Independent MP Diane Abbott is also among the signatories of the letter, as are several Labour MPs who have previously rebelled against the government, including Rachael Maskell and Neil Duncan-Jordan, according to a copy shared by Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell on social media site X.
The letter said: ‘We urge you to respect this decision, thus sending a signal that this Labour government will promote the rule of law, even when this feels inconvenient or embarrassing in the context of past mistakes.’
It warned: ‘We would add that the proscription has proved extremely counterproductive to public order, community cohesion and trust in the government.
‘We urge you not to seek permission to appeal but instead to let the authorities differentiate between pursuing substantive serious offences and guilt by mere association.’
Following last Friday’s High Court ruling, Mahmood swore to ‘fight this judgment in the Court of Appeal’ in a post on X.
Although the ban remains in place after the decision, the Metropolitan Police has indicated that officers are unlikely to arrest people for showing support for Palestine Action until the legal situation is clarified.
In a 46-page ruling on Friday, Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Mr Justice Swift and Mrs Justice Steyn, said: ‘We are satisfied that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action was disproportionate.
‘At its core, Palestine Action is an organisation that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality. A very small number of its actions have amounted to terrorist action.’
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said it was a ‘monumental victory for both our freedoms here in Britain and in the struggle for freedom for the Palestinian people’.
She said the Home Office’s decision to proscribe the group would ‘forever be remembered as one of the most extreme attacks on free speech in recent British history’.
She added it would be a ‘draconian overreach’ to arrest more people on Friday and in the coming weeks for defying the ban, which has been ruled unlawful.
