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Today, July 2, is a truly bleak day for fundamental human rights in the UK, as MPs have voted, by 385 votes to 26, to uphold legislation introduced on Monday by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, to proscribe Palestine Action, a direct action group, as a terrorist organization, along with two international neo-Nazi groups, the Maniacs Murder Cult (MMC) and the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM). Under the legislation, it is now a criminal offence, punishable by up to 14 years in prison, for anyone to become a member of, or even to support the direct action of Palestine Action.

This article, for example, may get the police knocking on my door, but I’m not going to be deterred, because this is very clearly a cynical and illegitimate piece of legislation that, horrifically, is designed primarily to allow Israeli arms companies — and allied British interests — to continue supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Dan Jarvis, the Home Office minister tasked with explaining the move, declared, in a presentation dripping with startling hyperbole, that, “By implementing this measure, we will remove Palestine Action’s veil of legitimacy, tackle its financial support and degrade its efforts to recruit and radicalize people into committing terrorist activity in its name.”

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Congratulations to MPs, who, yesterday evening (December 13), voted by 309 votes to 305 to give themselves a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal that Theresa May and her small clique of dangerous and deluded Brexit fantasists were planning to pass without including MPs at all.

In the end, the Labour leadership persuaded all but two of its MPs (Frank Field and Kate Hoey) to vote for the amendment, in a move that was obviously difficult for those from constituencies that voted Leave. The amendment was tabled by former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, and its supporters in the Labour Party, and all the smaller parties except the DUP, were joined by eleven Tory rebels — as well as Dominic Grieve, Heidi Allen, Ken Clarke, Jonathan Djanogly, Stephen Hammond, Sir Oliver Heald, Nicky Morgan, Robert Neill, Antointette Sandbach, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston. Hammond, a vice chairman of the party, was almost immediately sacked, and the Daily Mail proceeded to damn the rebels on its front page, causing Keir Starmer to comment, in a tweet, “When judges uphold the law, they are branded enemies of the people. When MPs uphold democracy, they are branded traitors. Never has it been more important to reassert our values.”

In a day of passionate debating in Parliament, which often saw the Tory right attacking their colleagues, as tends to be the way with Brexiteers, who are prone to threats and hysteria, Dominic Grieve gave a passionate half-hour speech regarding his amendment. He “warned that the bill as it stood would unleash ‘a form of constitutional chaos’”, as the Guardian described it. He “said he had sought to engage with ministers to find a compromise, but without success: ‘The blunt reality is, and I’m sorry to have to say this to the house, I’ve been left in the lurch, as a backbench member trying to improve this legislation.'” Labour’s Yvette Cooper said, “This is an important moment. The House of Commons has tonight voted against the government’s attempt to concentrate power and against letting a small group of ministers take crucial decisions on the details of Brexit without Parliament having a meaningful vote.” Read the rest of this entry »

See my photos on Flickr here – and, to show solidarity, join the more than 1.3m people who have signed the petition to the UN endorsing the UN Refugee Agency’s belief that all refugees deserve to live in safety.

Yesterday (September 17), a “Refugees Welcome Here” march and rally took place in London, following up on a massive march in support of refugees that took place in March, which I photographed and wrote about here. Organised by Solidarity with Refugees, the event (on Facebook here) had the support of dozens of organisations, including Action Aid, Amnesty International UK, Freedom From Torture, Friends of the Earth, Help Refugees UK (the main provider of support in Calais), Hope Not Hate, Oxfam and Stand Up to Racism.

There were many thousands of people on the march, which was colourful, noisy and positive, with numerous passionate and poignant handwritten placards and banners, as well as placards produced by some of the many organisations supporting the march.

However, it was impossible not to be disappointed that there were not many more people marching, as the largest humanitarian crisis in the lifetimes of anyone born after the Second World War continues. The statistics are sobering and horrific. As the Observer reported today, in an article entitled, “Why won’t the world tackle the refugee crisis?”: Read the rest of this entry »