Cliff Notes – Starmer is navigating freedom of Speech and expression
- Harriet Harman emphasised the need for the government to clarify the reasons behind Palestine Action’s designation as a terrorist group amidst rising protests.
- She highlighted the dual responsibility of the government: protecting the Jewish community while ensuring the right to free speech and peaceful protest.
- Harman underscored the need for police to effectively manage protests, preventing incitement of violence and ensuring public safety without unjustly targeting peaceful demonstrators.
Palestine Action ban must be explained, Labour peer tells Starmer
Ministers must do “much more” to explain why Palestine Action is a proscribed terrorist group, Harriet Harman has said.
Speaking to the Sky News Electoral Dysfunction podcast, the Labour peer said the government looked like it was just “arresting octogenarian vicars who are worried about the awful situation in Gaza”.
Baroness Harman, who was a Labour MP from 1982 to 2024, said the government had a “number of incredibly important duties” with regard to the war in Gaza – including protecting the Jewish community while also permitting free speech.
She said that as well as ensuring the safety of Jewish venues, such as schools and synagogues, the government also needed to “try and create an atmosphere where the Jewish people should not feel that they are under threat and be asking themselves whether this is the right country for them to live in and be bringing up their families”.
Baroness Harman went on: “They also have to support and uphold the right to free speech and the right of protest. And people have felt so horrified.
“We all have about the devastating loss of life and suffering in Gaza. And so it’s right that people are allowed to protest.”
A number of protests in support of Palestine Action have been organised in recent months following the group’s proscription under anti-terrorism laws in July, after members targeted RAF Brize Norton and damaged two military aircraft.
Last week, there were calls for the demonstrations to be halted following the attack on Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, in which two people were killed – but a number took place across the country, including in London.
The Labour peer said the organisers of such protests had a responsibility not to allow people to support a “terrorist organisation” but that the government also needed to do “much, more more” to explain why Palestine Action had been proscribed.
“At the moment, it just looks like the police are arresting octogenarian vicars who are worried about the awful situation in Gaza,” Baroness Harman said.
“So they’ve got to actually be much clearer in why Palestine Action is a terrorist group and that they’re justified in prescribing them and making them illegal.
“But also the police have got to police those marches in stopping them being about the spouting of hatred and inciting violence, with people talking about globalising the intifada, which basically means killing all Jewish people.
“And the police do actually have very wide-ranging powers, not just to arrest people, but to actually ban marches.“