Lift the Ban: reflections from cell number 6 at Kentish Town Police station

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Note: this is work in progress and I shall be coming back to edit it from time to time.

OK, I'm not writing this in the cell. It is four month later but these are thoughts that at least began in the cell on 9th August 2025.

  © Copyright Jim Osley and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

 

I was locked in the cell in Kentish Town Police station for a total of about 4 hours. (I'm not sure exactly how long I was in there. I was in a state of, not shock, but bewilderment for most of the day, and after my arrest they took my phone and my watch off me which was surprisingly disorientating). After 67 years of complete conformity with the law and coming from a 100% law-abiding family, it felt quite incredible when they locked the cell door.

Now here though is what I wasn't expecting: I felt an extraordinary sense of peace locked in the cell. Trying to understand this, I think that some sources of deep-seated anxiety had been cleared by what I had done and what had happened. This is how I explain it (at the moment, ie, provisionally)

1) I'd done something completely aligned with my religious faith. There's an almost paradoxical twist to this, because my religious beliefs have become increasingly less 'real', and yet more sincere, in the past year (while I've been editor of Sofia, the magazine of the Sea of Faith Network). It was like as if I was, for the first time in my life, sincerely serving God - but it was a God that I didn't believe existed and I was fine with that! There's a lot more that I want to say about this, the 'religious' angle, but that is for another, later, post. 

2) I'd done something brave, or at least 'authentic'. I've never thought of myself as brave person (a bit timid and maybe cowardly, if I'm honest) and was gobsmacked at what I'd done! 

3) I found that I wasn't afraid of what might be to come. In the short term I wasn't in any real danger. The police were treating me OK (they'd even given me what was really quite an acceptable vegan pasta dish to eat) and I knew that I would be released some time in the next few hours and that I could get home safely. But also longer term, I realised that if the worst case scenario came about and I ended-up (I end-up: this is still a possibility, albeit unlikely) spending some time in jail over the next few years, I was, sort of, OK with that because of #1 above. 

I found myself thinking about how much I've time got left. I'm 67 and my parents both remained healthy into their mid to late 80s so I'm reckoning on up to another 20 years, but I've lost a couple of friends of my own age just this year, so who knows? Would I resent having to spend some of my remaining precious years of life in jail? My answer was again a surprise to me because it was 'no', if it is for a good cause. I found myself thinking of my future years as 'capital' and I should chose how to spend it. I am going to die eventually, and I want to use my remaining life for something meaningful. Opposing genocide is meaningful.

Lift the Ban: do I support Palestine Action?

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Note: This is work in progress and I shall be coming back to edit it from time to time. 

I was arrested because I wrote 'I support Palestine Action' on a placard in Parliament Square. It was part of the Lift the Ban campaign organised by the organisation Defend our Juries aimed at getting the proscription of the group known as Palestine Action overturned. Part of the defence in court for those of us arrested is likely to be that writing 'I support Palestine Action' did not necessarily mean that we actually 'support' Palestine Action. We wrote those words in order to get the prosciption overturned, not to 'support' the group.

 So: do I support Palestine Action? As shall explain, the question really ought to be: what do I mean by saying I support Palestine Action?

I need to pause to emphasise at this point that what I'm writing here is entirely my personal position. I've not even discussed it with other defendents.

As suggested by the use of the inverted commas earlier, it comes down to what you mean by the word 'support'. What does it mean to support something or someone? This is not a trivial question, as David Renton argued in "What is the meaning of support?" in the London Review of Books (Renton 2025) earlier this year. In what follows I try to work-through what I meant when I wrote 'I support Palestine Action' - starting with an analogy from football.

All my friends know that I support the MK Dons. That is not problematic. Well, for some people it is a problem that I support this particular football team, but there is no confusion about what I mean when I say it. I'm a season ticket holder and attend as many matches as I can. I'm happy when they win and sad when they lose. So far so good, but now suppose in the neighbouring town of Northampton an extreme council comes to power which for some ideological reason outlaws the playing of team games, including football. Not only is Northampton Town Football Club prevented from playing or practicing, but anyone known to be fan of the club is at risk. Northampton Town Football Club Supporters Trust start a campaign to protect the club and call on the support of football fans everywhere to show solidarity. Under these circumstances I might travel to Northampton and display a banner saying 'I support Northampton Town' - and I would support Northampton Town for the purposes of the campaign. But noone would think this meant I was now a fan of Northampton Town instead of the MK Dons. If the ban is lifted by Northampton Council you won't find me on the terraces of Sixfields Stadium singing the praises of Northampton Town. When I said  'I support Northampton Town' I was saying that I support football in general and specifically I support the right of Northampton to have a football club.

And so, and so much more deadly seriously, it is with my support of Palestine Action. I am not a member of Palestine Action (if they even have membership as such) and have never taken part in any of their direct action. I don't have any plans to do so even if they are de-proscribed. But I don't believe it is a terrorist organisation (see below). I believe that its proscription is a significant, a dangerous, over-reach of terrorist legislation. I believe that direct action is a legitimate form of protest. If there is criminal damage as a result of direct action then it should prosecuted as such - those taking part in direct action are aware of that and should be (I assume are) prepared to take the consequences. But they should not be treated as terrorists. That is what I support about Palestine Action. 

But there's more to take from the football analogy. I chose football (rather than, say, cricket) for the analogy because I am a football fan and I can empathize with the Northampton Town fans. It is about the cause as well as the method. So it is not just the general principle that direct action should be legitimate form of protest, I also, very strongly, support the cause for which Palestine Action are taking direct action. Like them, I believe that Britain, my country, is complicit in war crimes. As I said when I entered my plea:

[I believe that] my country has been complicit in war crimes, including the slaughter of more than 20 thousand children, some of them buried alive in the rubble. And not only that, the government is trying to suppress opposition to the genocide. I cannot stay silent. I need to act according to my conscience, and so I plead not guilty.

I believe that the proscription of Palestine Action is not being done to prevent terrorism - I don't believe the direct actions of the group is terrorism - I believe it is a political act to suppress opposition. 

Next question: how do I know that PA are not using terrorism, and if they were, would I still have taken part in the action and written those words? Starting with the second question with a simple answer: no, if I believed PA was a terrorist organisation I would not done what I did. A simple answer, but even that needs to be qualified by questioning what you mean by terrorism. Mr Justice Chamberlain accepted in the injunction proceedings that Palestine Action is not a terror organisation in the ‘colloquial’ meaning of the term (Renton 2025) and it is that colloquial meaning of the term that I have in mind. Or, indeed, the Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th Edition, 1982) definition of terrorist: One who favours or uses terror-inspiring methods of governing or of coercing government or community. If I believed Palestine Action were using terrorism in that sense, I would not have writtten what I did, even allowing for the nuanced understanding of the meaning of 'support' discussed above. Terrorism in that sense is absolutely what the government of Israel is doing in both Gaza and the West Bank, but is not what Palestine Action are doing.

Why do I think I can say that Palestine Action are not using terrorism in that sense? Because of what Mr Justice Chamberlain has said, for one thing, but also from what I have read of their actions elsewhere. Before they were proscribed there was video available online showing some of their direct action: it did not look like terrorism to me.

Renton 2025 What is the meaning of support? London Review of Books, Vol. 47 No. 14/15
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Lift the Ban: plea hearing

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Note: I shall be coming back to edit this from time to time. 

My first hearing, the plea hearing when I entered my Not Guilty plea, was at Westminster Magistrate's Court on 24th November.  There is a degree of 'batch processing' going on because of the huge numbers of defendants that the courts will have to get through. Although they've so far only charged a relatively small proportion of those arrested they are claiming that everyone will eventually be charged, and as I write this there have been more than 2000 arrests so even accounting for the many re-arrests they are going to charging more than 1000. The court therefore had a group of five defendants in the dock at one time, and on 24th November there were five sessions, so 25 people in the day. This was the first time I'd ever been inside a law court of any sort, but my wife, Joy, used to be a children's social worker and had been to family courts in connection with Adoption Orders, so was able to tell be a bit about what to expect (although the cases that Joy was involved in, and her role in it, was very different). But also the support both from the DoJ people and my fellow defendents was excellent. A few defendents were entitled to legal aid and they are represented by lawyers from HJA Solicitors, who are working with DoJ. The rest of us, including me, are for the moment 'self-representing'. 

Once again, I found everyone friendly enough! Before I went into court I was given my 'Evidence Bundle' (that really is what they call it!) by the prosecution, which contained the basic facts of what they held against me. The main thing in it was the statement by my arresting officer. I was keen to see this, because when I'd been telling people how friendly my young arresting officer had been and that I'd had some conversations with him, I was warned that that may have been a mistake: even if he was friendly he might come under pressure from his superiors/colleague to malign me. I had also heard of many cases in which the bundle was full of basic errors - like containing a photograph of the wrong person! None of that was the case for me. My judgement of my arresting officer was right and his account was accurate and fair, and there was a photo of me with my sign (which you can see in the first of these accounts).

When it came to my turn to enter my plea, the judge wanted me simply to say 'guilty' or 'not guilty' but, like many of my fellow defendents, this was when I made a statement:

I am 67 years old and have never been arrested before. But my country has been complicit in war crimes, including the slaughter of more than 20 thousand children, some of them buried alive in the rubble. And not only that, the government is trying to suppress opposition to the genocide. I cannot stay silent. I need to act according to my conscience, and so I plead not guilty.

 My trial date is 1st July.

Lift the Ban: charged

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Note: I shall be coming back to edit this from time to time. 

After release from Kentish Town police station at 12:30am on Sunday 10th August there was a nice welcoming committee from DoJ outside, but all I wanted to do was get home, so I got the tube to Euston where I (eventually) got a bus-replacement service to Milton Keynes and cycled home from the station at about 3am. I was down to do a reading at the 10am service at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone that morning so after a few hours sleep I cycled up to the church where the minister welcomed me and told the congregation, with broad approval, what I had done the day before. I think it is significant that there is general surprise (amazement) that I would do such a thing, but I've not yet met anyone in the congregation that disapproves (if they do, they've not told me). 

My bail had just one condition: "Not to attend or participate in planned or unplanned demonstration in support of Palestine Action", and I was to return to Kentish Town police station to report back on bail on 21/10/2025. My wife and I had a holiday booked for the whole of October (a five-week Interrailing trip around Europe), so I emailed the Met police to see if my bail return date could be delayed until we got back. They politely refused, so we built into our trip a day return for me from Lille to London (fortunately my bail appoinment was for 2pm so the timing was OK to do it on a day return).

There was nothing in my bail conditions that stopped me from traveling abroad, but I was worried in case I missed any important communication from the police, so I emailed them and told them what I was doing, and that I wouldn't be picking up post but I could be contacted by email. They were fine with that, and once again it was somewhat surreal, as emails came to me signed:

Best regards. 
Alistair (not his real name*) 

Constable |  Investigations | Pod 1 - Team 2
Metropolitan Police | SO15 Counter Terrorism Command 

(*Name changed because it seemed like the right thing to do.) 

How kind to send his best regards! And in one email when I'd asked him to send me a pdf of the charge papers, even:

If there's anything else I can help with, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
Best regards
Alistair

This 'respectful' response all the way along suggests to me that the people I am dealing with in the Met police (including the "Counter Terrorism Command"), the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) and the courts do not consider me a criminal. Maybe I'm being unfair to have expected otherwise: maybe they treat all suspects like this, since everyone is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Anyway, I am grateful for it: thank you not-his-real-name Alistair.

I especially wanted to know if and when I was charged, because I'd heard that when people had been charged they would have a court appearance in November and their bail return was cancelled - so I wouldn't have needed to do the day trip back to London.

In the event I was charged and my bail appointment cancelled. I was one of the 'privileged' first 20 (out of more than 500) arrested on 9th August to be charged, but I first heard about it from a press release by the Met Police on 1st October. It was weird to see myself ("[CXXXIV] David Chapman (27.04.1958), of Milton Keynes") publically threatened by the Met police like this. But the whole saga has been one new and weird experience after another and that is why I'm writing it up here.

It was clear, by the threatening tone of the press release (detailing the awful consequences of being convicted of a terrorist charge) that the intention was to try to discourage people from taking part in the next Lift the Ban action that DoJ had arranged for a few days later. We were being made an example of! 

Since I'm retired, quite a lot of this has little significance to me, and anyway my calculation is that all of these consequences are completely trivial compared to what is happening to the Palestinians. And as an intimidation tactic there is no evidence that it is working. Plenty more people keep volunteering to take part.

The Met had charged me by post but I'd not been home to get the letter. TBH, I wondered whether this way of serving the charge was allowed since they knew I was not at home, but people in the know tell me there is no point arguing about that.

So I cancelled my return trip to London (losing £50 in the process) and started planning (with the help of the brilliant people of DoJ) for my plea hearing on 24th November at Westminster Magistrate's Court.

Lift the Ban: arrest and bail

This is one of a series of posts about my experience of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) 'Lift the Ban' campaign. See my Lift the Ban page for more.

Note: I shall be coming back to edit this from time to time. 

It is difficult to convey quite how law-abiding and obedient I have been in my life. I once got a fine for inadvertently doing 36 mph in a 30 mile zone in Bletchley but that's about it. And yet earlier this year (2025), at the age of 67, I was arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act.

On 9th August I joined the more than 500 protestors in Parliament Square and as Big Ben struck 1pm I wrote on a blank placard the words "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. We sat in silence (most of us) holding our placards and facing away from the Palace of Westminster to symbolically turn our backs on Parliament. For a while nothing happened and then small groups from the vast hordes of police surrounding the square moved in and took out some individuals. I was bizarrely reminded of a wildlife documentary as predators move in on flocks or herds of prey and select their victim. The arrests then picked-up pace. Some protestors resisted by ‘going floppy’ so they required several police officers to carry them, but many of us, myself included, allowed ourselves to be led away by a single officer. I was taken to one of the many police vans surrounding the square and thence to a nearby temporary 'triage' point set up by the Met Police in order to try to process us as quickly as possible. As recommended by the organisers of the protest (DoJ) I refused to give my details and, because I've never been arrested before they didn't have a record of who I was, they had to take me to a police station. Unfortunately the station I was taken to (Kentish Town) was having problems with their computer system so we queued outside for more than three hours (having already spent a couple of hours queuing for the triage) and I didn't get locked up in a police cell until about 8 pm. I was eventually released on bail at 12:30am the following morning.

The experience was surreal at times. Even while treating me as a criminal the police were respectful (maybe my ‘Church of Christ the Cornerstone’ t-shirt helped). The young constable who arrested me seemed quite nervous and I wondered if I was the first person he had ever arrested. He'd written the words he had to say to me ("you do not need to say anything but anything you do say..." - familiar to me only from watching police dramas on the TV) on the palm of his hand. The advice from DoJ was not to say anything after being arrested so we didn’t talk much, but because of all the delays we were together for about six hours in all and I found it impossible not to try some conversation with him. I maybe said more than was advisable but he was friendly and even kept me up to date with the MK Dons score (I'm a season ticket holder). When we finally parted ways at 8pm we shook hands and he said that he hoped never to see me again – for the best of reasons. In Kentish Town police station the officer taking my fingerprints struggled to get the machine to work and I sympathised as he complained about the poor equipment at that station. He assured me that it wasn’t like that in his own police station. After he’d taken my fingerprints as best he could, a DNA sample and several photos, he thought I could be released. But on learning that they were not ready to do that yet he said he’d take me back to my ‘room’ as though I was in a hotel – but he still locked the door of Police Holding Cell Number 6 behind me. But I was a long, long, way outside of my comfort zone, spent much of the time bewildered and occasionally it was undeniably frightening. When first locked in the cell, more than six hours after being arrested, I’d had no way of knowing the time (they'd taken my watch and phone off me), I’d not yet been allowed my one phone call so neither my wife nor any of my friends knew where I was (but would have realised I must have been arrested), I was hungry, having had nothing to eat for 12 hours (because the cafe at Westminster Hall doesn’t accept cash, but that’s another story) and I didn’t even have anything to read because they wouldn’t let me have my copy of the London Review of Books back until they’d taken the staples out of it. I did a bit of thinking. I've been doing a lot of that while this has been going on and I'll tell you about it in due course!

I was arrested under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act which has a maximum penalty of 6 months in jail. So why did I do it? Specifically, it is because I do not think that what Palestine Action does is terrorism and they should never have been proscribed. I agree with their aims - to stop Britain's complicity in war crimes and genocide - even if I would be unlikely to use their methods. As I see it, they are damaging property (and they should be charged for criminal damage) in order to draw attention to the fact that Britain is complicit in the genocide being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. 

In his book, One day, everyone will have always been against this [1], El Akkad quotes a Palestinian poet Rash Abdulhadi:  

Wherever you are, whatever sand you can throw on the gears of genocide, do it now. If it's a handful, throw it. If its a fingernail, scrape it out and throw. Get in the way however you can.

I would like to think that the symbolic (and real) act of my getting arrested indirectly throws a few grains of sand into the machinery of genocide. I would like to think that, but even if in reality it won't have any effect I don't regret it one little bit. I'll write about that another time.

And, it is also about a broader issue to do with what has been happening in the UK in recent years because it was known at the time that the terrorism act was defining terrorism far too broadly, and could be misused. A step toward totalitarianism.

1 See my review of the book in Sofia 

Christ in the Rubble

Just a little post to say that IMHO, the idea of Christ being born in the rubble of Gaza is the most authentic manifestation of Christianity that I can imagine.

For more about where I'm coming from, see my review of 'Christ in the Rubble' by Pastor Munther Isaac in Sofia Magazine.

 

Helicopter hovering overhead.

I'm in my back garden and there's a helicopter hovering overhead. I admire the technology, but find myself trying to imagine what it must be like to be in Gaza knowing that technology overhead could mean death at any moment. I try to imagine that, but, tbh, I can't, because for me it *doesn't* mean that. Limits to human empathy. That's why we need God. We need (even if we have to make him/her/it up) a God who is there with them. Christ in the rubble.