Simon Parkes

Context matters when you analyse what people say. Of course it’s convenient to take comments out of context so that you can use them to attack the person rather than deal with the issues - “oh she’s stupid that’s why she doesn’t agree with us”. The problem with this approach is that it reveals an ignorance of the legal process as well as a weakness in your argument. You don’t want to admit that PA is, in fact, a terrorist organisation (as defined in legislation) but you can’t actually say it isn’t by reference to statute. So you’re stuck trying to claim the Judge described the Suffragettes as peaceful protestors when she did nothing of the sort. Hey ho.

@LHP_CEO @harriepw transcript of the video. that is what she said. that is what everyone's talking about. the argument is specious (deliberately so, rather than out of ignorance, in my opinion).

TODAY: The Court of Appeal will decide whether the UK government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group was lawful. Follow along here… 👀

And there you have it - the antisemitic left has come out to play. In one accidental slip we see Jews being conflated with Israel in one post revealing this is really about the hatred of Jews. You’re supposed to use Zionists in your posts to mask your antisemitism - that way you can pretend it’s not about Jews per se but about Israel and its Zionist supporters in the West.

Google: FYI: Approximately up to 7.5 million Jews live in America. 2.4% of US population. (342 million people total in America.) The U.S. Jewish population is highly concentrated. Over 60% of American Jews live in just six states: New York, California, Florida, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. @AmericaFirstCon on X: “Israel controls 97 percent of US Senators and 76 percent of US House members. Pat Buchanan was right! Congress is Israeli-occupied territory.”

When peaceful protest is labelled as “terrorism”, genocide becomes unstoppable; this is the ruling the the UK Court of Appeal has chosen theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/j…

At the time that is true but that distinction has blurred over time and we now (perhaps incorrectly) tend refer to the entire movement as the suffragette movement. It was never one movement and was actually a collection of local and national groupings with very different strategies and approaches. The comparison made by Counsel for Ms Ammori was clearly not designed to draw a parallel between Emmeline Pankhursts group, which self-identified at terrorists and Palestine Action, which he was arguing was not a terrorist organisation.

@LHP_CEO @Jonathan_K_Cook At that time there was a distinction between suffragists and suffragettes Millicent Fawcett was a suffragist

In upholding the proscription of Palestine Action, Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr showed she was historically illiterate. Contrary to her claims, the Sufragettes were neither a peaceful civil disobedience group nor did they operate "transparently in the open". Their hundreds of bombing and arson attacks are known to have injured at least two dozen people, many of them postal workers, left with severe burns. Their bomb and arson squads organised this violence through underground cells. Leaders were kept in a network of safe houses to avoid discovery by police. And leader Emmeline Pankhurst used body doubles and assumed names to evade police capture. There's even a 2015 Hollywood movie, Sufragette, showing all this. This sudden level of ignorance by our political and judicial class is entirely manufactured. The Sufragette movement was far, far more violent and clandestine than anything Palestine Action has been doing. That's not an argument against the Suffragettes. It's argument exposing the utter hypocrisy of the politicians, judges and media peddling lies to justify crushing an organisation trying to expose UK government complicity in Israel's genocide.

You have not read the court transcripts, or the argument made by Ms Ammori’s barrister. Had you done so you would understand the context of the Judge’s remarks. The opening sentence quite clear references that claim by her barrister - that is the argument being advanced in support of PA. The Judge has to deal with that in response. She then goes on to articulate why PA has characteristics of a terrorist group as defined in the relevant legislation but also as Lord Hoffmann set out in earlier (binding) case law. That’s how the law works. It is worth reading the entirety of the judgment and then the linked cases.

@LHP_CEO @harriepw 1/ What she said: “Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence, amounting to terrorism. It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes, operating transparently in the open.

I’m guessing those who work, perfectly legally, for organisations Palestine Action might suspect of working for, or with, Israel, or they otherwise deem complicit, feel a little safer? For me, I feel no different. It was possible to oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza before the proscription and it is still possible to oppose it. I can’t see much has changed for the vast majority of the country, or even most people who want an end to the suffering in Gaza.

Following the confirmation of the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, the question that any of us of any background can ask ourselves, is do we now feel more safe or less safe?

It is but it is not illegal to say you support Palestine, or that you believe Israel is committing genocide. If you believe making your point about Palestine Action is more important than supporting Palestine then, yes, you have a problem but, if you simply want to show your support for Palestinians and campaign against Israel’s actions, you really don’t have a problem at all as that is not only lawful but is continuing.

It's illegal to say I support Palestine Action and I support Palestine Action with all my heart with a jail sentence of up to 14 years, as I informed viewers

If you are referring to the Filton 4, they were dealt with using ordinary criminal law. They were convicted of ordinary offences, criminal damage and, in one case, GBH without intent. You can’t get much more ordinary than that. On sentencing the judge found there was an aggravating factor of terrorist connection, which increased their sentences but there was nothing especially odd about the charges they faced.

"Where someone has committed criminal damage, that can be dealt with using ordinary criminal law - Rather than using broad and poorly defined anti terrorism powers."

We tend to use suffragettes more broadly today than at the time rather than distinguishing between Suffragettes and Suffragists. Most Suffragists/Suffragettes did not support the bombing and arson campaign. Emmeline Pankhurst was effectively forced out of the larger movement because of her support for violent direct action. So it rather depends on how you choose to define members of the various women’s suffrage groups when thinking about their similarities, or differences to PA.

The difference between Palestine Action the suffragettes is that the Suffragettes made and used bombs. Palestine Action sought to disable arms factories producing weapons used by Israel in its genocide of Gaza. Curiously, the suffragettes described THEMSELVES as terrorists. Pankhurst stated that the suffragettes committed violent acts because they wanted to "terrorise the British public"

@SaulStaniforth Policing has never relied on the consent of offenders - it would be bizarre if it did and unlikely to be very effective.

"Protesters are shouting at officers as they remove people, carrying them from the crowd, they are shouting at them, 'shame on you'" We're told we have policing by consent. The reality has always been that the police are an arm of the state.

I can’t understand how intelligent people seem to live in a parallel universe where sentencing hasn’t always involved mitigating and aggravating factors. As a principle it is as old as the legal system itself and it is almost self-evidently necessary. Nobody would seriously want to see the same sentence handed down to a desperate first-time shoplifter, stealing food to feed their family, as to a habitual thief, stealing to make themselves richer. They have committed the same offence but one has substantial mitigation, the other substantial aggravation. Parliament has decided that a connection to terrorism should be an aggravating factor. It is not normal to introduce aggravating factors before the Jury. Cases must be tried on their merits. Again, nobody would sensibly argue that a defendant’s long history of similar offences should be put before the Jury as to do so would be to risk a miscarriage of justice.

The law should be fair and easy for jurors to understand. Want to sentence someone as a terrorist, then charge them with terrorism. How is that controversial?

You are failing to distinguish between different suffragette organisations. Millicent Fawcett, whose statue appears in Parliament Square, expressly rejected violence as a means of achieving women’s suffrage. When we are talking about violent action, we are really talking about the breakaway faction led by Emmeline Pankhurst but even that group fractured with one of her daughters eschewing violence and the other supporting it.

@nw_nicholas There were 48 instances of bombs being set by suffragettes in the 2½ years up to WW1. Police officers were injured at their protests. They made proscribed "terrorists" Palestine Action look lame in comparison. Suffragette Bombs, 1912 – 1914: standingwellback.com/suffragette-bo…

The Appeal Court used the Suffragettes as an example of non-violent direct action. The Suffragettes:

No, the Court of Appeal did not cite the suffragettes as an example of non-violent direct action. The Counsel for Ms Ammori claimed PA was similar in nature to the suffragettes - the court disagreed that PA’s actions followed in a line of non-violent direct action - the argument advanced by Ms Ammori. The Court did not claim the suffragettes were an example of non-violent direct action - that was Ms Ammori and her barrister.

A misreading of the law. Parliament did not pass primary legislation banning Palestine Action. Had it done so the question could not have arisen as judges cannot overturn primary legislation. But Parliament proscribed Palestine Action using secondary legislation. That does give the Courts a role in determining whether that (secondary) legislation is consistent with the Primary Legislation from which it draws its authority. I shouldn’t really have to explain this to an MP but there we are. If you don’t like it, pass primary legislation to change the law.

It's great that the ban on Palestine Action has been upheld, but this question should never have been decided by judges in the first place. Parliament makes the law. It voted to ban Palestine Action. It's for the British people to hold Parliament accountable, not judges.

@AdnanHussainMP You don’t actually know that because you don’t know exactly what was destroyed, or to which customer it was being sent. Moreover, as you know, genocide is determined by the ICJ, which has not made any such ruling despite various attempts to misrepresent its earlier findings.

The property in question being weapons of genocide.

You are a Labour MP. Your Party has a big majority in the House of Commons. You cannot rely on the Courts to do the job that Parliament should be doing. Parliament passed the legislation that Courts must work with, Parliament is where the Executive, which proscribed PA, is held to account. It is Parliament that is responsible for this and you should do your job in Parliament and not try to pass the buck to the judiciary.

A very dark day for justice. Upholding the proscription of Palestine Action is a dangerous abuse of counter-terrorism powers. When protest is treated as terrorism, dissent is criminalised and the foundations of our democracy are weakened. theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/j…

Only she didn’t say that did she? As you must know if you have followed the case, which I know you have, it was Counsel for Ms Ammori who compared PA to the Suffragettes. What Lady Chief Justice Carr actually said was this “It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open.” In other words she was saying the courts disagreed with that argument. To then claim she was somehow arguing the Suffragettes were paragons of peace and harmony is disingenuous. She was simply dealing with Counsel’s argument.

The Lady Chief Justice said proscription of Palestine Action “struck a fair balance” and that PA is not a peaceful civil disobedience group like the Suffragettes

Does anybody actually read anything these days or do they just get their news from here? Lady Chief Justice Carr did not say the Suffragettes were peaceful, she was responding directly to the argument made by Counsel for Ms Ammori that Palestine Action were like the Suffragettes. Her full text is: “It is not, as it claims, a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes operating transparently in the open.” bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Suffragettes were not peaceful

Again, that isn’t true. During sentencing the Defence absolutely has the right to argue for the defendant when it comes to aggravating and mitigating circumstances. In this case the Defence argued that having 8 days to prepare that argument was inadequate - clearly the Judge disagreed. I expect that will form part of any appeal.

It's pretty damned obvious that it's not possible for a defendant to mount any form of adequate legal defence against offences they are not charged with. Please RT this until this injustice is corrected. Thank you.

Judges have to apply the laws passed by Parliament. If they are brought into disrepute it is because of the actions of Parliament and it is for Parliamentarians to resolve it. In the meantime, all MPs should be supporting the judiciary in upholding the laws passed by Parliament, even if they disagree with those laws. More than anyone, MPs must stand for the rule of law, if they don’t, why shouldn’t anyone else?

Parliament should reverse the decision to proscribe Palestine Action urgently before we see large numbers of elderly people in particular being dragged before our courts. Classifying protest through direct action as terrorism brings Parliament & our judicial system into disrepute