To Lord Hermer, Sir Keir Starmer’s controversial Attorney General. It transpires that the British barrister will be given the final say on whether hundreds of protestors arrested for supporting Palestine Action at the weekend will be prosecuted – with the Tories piling pressure on the government to ‘enforce the law’. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick fumed: ‘If lawbreakers supporting a proscribed terrorist group aren’t prosecuted, it will be the clearest example yet of two-tier justice under Two-Tier Keir. Lord Hermer needs to enforce the law, not pander to activists he’s sympathetic to.’ Ouch!
A demonstration on Saturday saw the Metropolitan Police arrest a staggering 532 people in Westminster, after hundreds appeared in Parliament Square carrying placards that read: ‘I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.’ It follows Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s decision to proscribe the organisation – a move which UN human rights chief Volker Türk warned ‘misuses’ counter-terrorism legislation – after members of the activist group broke into RAF Brize Norton and graffitied two military planes. The Met Police have said that the majority of those arrested were over 50 years old, with the average age being 54. In fact, there were more than 100 people removed by police who were aged over 70. Crikey!
The British justice system is already struggling with backlogs, but the Conservatives are turning up the heat on Hermer over the arrests – and are using the incident to question the lawyer’s stance on Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Another Tory MP, Ben Obese-Jecty, raged to the Daily Mail:
If Lord Hermer doesn’t charge every single Palestine Action supporter then he has to be sacked by Keir Starmer for undermining him. This is now the acid test of where the Attorney General’s loyalties lie and there can be no excuses.
Under UK law, anyone found guilty of supporting a proscribed organisation could face up to 14 years in prison – and a possible fine of £5,000. More than that, those who have been arrested could be denied entry to the US – or prevented from working in education. Labour’s Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has pledged to stop Britain’s prison system from being ‘permanently on the brink of collapse’ – but locking up hundreds of activists could put a spanner in those works. What will the Attorney General decide to do? Stay tuned…
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