Lift the Ban: Released Under Investigation for a Section 12 Offence

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.

Yesterday (20 October 2026) I got yet another letter from the Met Police, this one telling me that I have been 'released under investigation' (RUI) following my fourth arrest (outside Westminster Magistrates Court on 30th July). This means I don't need to go down to Plumstead police station next week to answer my bail, but they are keen to warn me that I am still under investigation and, importantly, it confirms in writing that this one is for a Section 12 offence (of the Terrorism Act 2000). My other arrests and the two charges are Section 13. Although the difference in what you do to contravene S12 rather than S13 appears subtle, the consequences are very different. Maximum sentence of S13 is 6 months in jail. For S12 it is 14 years!

In summary now (See my Lift the Ban page for more about each of them):

• S13 arrest 9 Aug 2025: charged and entered my not-guilty plea
• S13 arrest 11th April 2026: charged
• S13 arrest 12th June: RUI
• S12 arrest 30th July: RUI
• S13 arrest 27th Sept: de-arrested but still under investigation
• I'm also under investigation for a possible S12 offence due to my little video.

If you'd told me just two years ago that this is how my retirement would unfold I would have thought your were fey. But then if you'd told me four years ago that Britain in 2026 would be complicit in genocide I wouldn't have believed that either.

Lift the Ban: charged for the second time

 

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.

Just before the six-month cut-off I've been charged for the second time that I was arrested (on 11th April).

Here's the letter:

The stuff about not attending these administrative hearings is hilarious. It has gradually evolved from 'you must attend' through 'you do not need to attend' (sometimes saying both in the same letter) to now, in bold red type: 'Do not attend'.  🤣

 

We have the legal right to attend, so you may be sure that most of us, perhaps 2000 of us, will do! 

 

Meanwhile, at the time of writing when Andy Burnham has become Labour Leader and therefore Prime Minister, there has been an attempt to recover some of the lost support over Palestine. The Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, has said things that have not been said before, about war crimes, about how Israel is deliberately making 'the two state solution' impossible by the actions in the West Bank. Strong words condemning Israel.  He and others in government have also said that the arrest of elderly peaceful protestors was never the intention. FWIW, I believe Miliband is genuine, but I'm not so sure about Andy Burnham. Remember that his accession to role of Labour Leader was in the end managed by the same people who gave us Sir Keir.

 

And meanwhile again, nothing has really changed. There's no suggestion that the government wants to reverse the proscription of Palestine Action, and the arrests of us peaceful protestors continues. The 'Filton 4' are still in jail serving terrorist sentences despite not even being charged with terrorism and the trials of other Palestine Action activists continue. 

 

Worse of all, the murder of innocent Palestinians continues daily in Gaza, but it is so normalised that it's not even reported, while settler violence in the West Bank continues unchecked. 

Fifth arrest (and de-arrest). 27 September 2026

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.

Another new experience from this one. I was manhandled by the police.

This was back to our original sign-holding, arranged to take place in Liverpool outside the Labour Party conference.

We wrote our placards and took our seats in silence, facing away from the conference centre, at 1pm. The police started arresting people quite soon after 1 but were being ridiculously slow. I think it was at a rate of about six an hour, despite the fact that there was a massive police presence. In London they always did lots of arrests in parallel: here it was one at a time. (Perhaps they only had one police station to take us to, so were only arresting people the rate they could process them at the station.) They had been trying to encourage us to give up our placards and give them our personal details in exchange for being allowed to leave. We were not willing to do that. 

However at about 6 pm the message was going around (in whispers) suggesting we all walk away together en masse at 6:30. We tried to do that and it took the police by surprise (I'd thought they might have realised what we were planning, but it seems not). They looked panicked, and tried (mostly successfully) to stop us by 'kettling'. 

S (who I'd travelled up with from MK) and I managed to break through their ranks but were caught by "outfielders". If we would give up our placards and give them our details they said they would let us go. That would have just been capitulating to what they had wanted us to do anyway, so we refused. There was a bit of a kerfuffle with them pushing us around, and us passing our placards between us, and by the end of that I had both placards and S managed to walk away. The police didn't pursue her, presumably since she didn't have a placard.

I still refused to give up my placards (I now had two 😀) so they arrested me which meant they could force me to hand them over. At that stage I had a decision to make: do I give them my details (they had said that if I did that they would be de-arrested me and I could go) or do I hold firm and not give them my details which would force them to take me to a police station for processing? I found this difficult and stressful because by now I really wanted to go home, but I also knew that Defend our Juries would want me to force them to take me to a police station.

I chose the former, giving them my details, justifying it to myself with the argument that I had not voluntarily given up my placard so it was not just capitulation to what they had wanted. They de-arrested me (see comment below) but said they had evidence of my contravening Section 13 of the Terrorism Act (photographs, video and TWO placards, of course) and would follow it up by post. My arresting officer even apologised for manhandling me, but claimed it was necessary.

I have since heard that some of those who didn't escape the kettle - the vast majority of the 100 - were there being arrested until long after midnight.

There were reasons I wanted to get away when I did. If I didn't get the 20:43 train from Lime Street I wouldn't be able to get another train until 9:43 the following morning, and there was a lot to do back home. But all the same, I feel a bit of a failure not to have held out, and have massive respect for the heroes who were there in the cold and dark into the early hours of the morning.

I don't really know what de-arresting is (I've not yet made any effort to find out). In practice, the arrest/de-arrest seems to have just been a wheeze to force me to give up my placard, without the need to take me to a police station. Does the de-arrest have the effect of wiping away the arrest? Or is the arrest still on my record? At some other protests, the police have set-up a tent on location where they can process people and then issue them with 'street bail'. Most recently, most people who have been arrested and given bail (either on the street or at a police station) have subsequently been 'released under investigation' RUI. That has now happened to my second and third arrests (I've been charged following my first arrest and the bail from my fourth arrest is still in place). On de-arresting me, the police said they would continue investigate my deemed contravention of Section 13, so that sounds very much the same a RUI and the arrest/de-arrest sequence seems as though it should have pretty much the same consequence as street bail. Anyway... they said they would be writing to me, so maybe I'll find out in due course. At the moment, the whole lot it is just a load of paperwork for me.

Reflections 

It is really important that I come back to why I'm doing this, and that it is not about me. Any discomfort to me is trivial compared the sacrifices of the (mostly young) people fighting the Elbit Beast, and in turn they say that even their sacrifices are trivial compared to what has been done, and continues to be done, to the Palestinians. Remember: more than 70,000 killed, of which more than 20,000 are children and more than 1000 are babies. Everyone of us at the protest would say the same, and indeed, several protestors were interviewed at the time and said just that.

If I'd had any doubts about going ahead with this action (and I am always trying to rethink things, to make sure I know what I'm doing) they were more than overcome by watching Channel 4 Dispatches: Britain’s Gaza Secrets Exposed last week. Britain has been selling arms to Israel, long after we knew they were in violation of international humanitarian law (IHL) in the most heinous way imaginable.

And one final, maybe controversial, reflection. I have been impressed (-ish, sort of) by the diversity of the police in London. The police in Liverpool did not look diverse. I don't remember seeing any of them who were not white. (I'll delete this comment if someone shows me that I just didn't see them!). And, this made me uncomfortable. The fact is that I find an all-white squad more intimidating than a diverse squad. That's just how I feel.

Lift the Ban: Who will slay the Elbit beast?

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.

Because this (getting arrested) is such a departure from what I've done before, I'm constantly questioning myself. The answer so far has always been: yes, absolutely you should be doing this. I convince myself, but I also want to convince other people. That is more difficult, because there is so much I need to say and I can hear their refutations in my head. I've got answers to them, but to write it up would take ages. And there's all the back story, because, despite what I've been saying about how I've changed, it didn't come from nowhere. Bizarre though it may seem, I believe it started for me with my introduction to the Fairtrade movement in about 1980 (when I bought shares in Traidcraft). But that's for another time.

Most recently, any doubts I had were squashed by listening to the recording of a session at Greenbelt: Who will slay the Elbit beast?  

The session was Joey Hinchcliffe and Joey's mother, Clare, reading some of their poetry and recounting their experiences. Joey is one of the 'Filton 6': six young people who broke into the Elbit Systems factory in Bristol and damaged drones which they knew were destined to slaughter innocent people in Gaza. Joey was charged, went to trial and was eventually found not guilty - but only after spending 18 months in jail on remand. Four of the six were found guilty, sentenced as terrorists (despite not having been charged with terrorism) and are now serving an unreasonably long time in jail. They are, quite rightly, appealing their terrorist sentences.

There is SO much more to say about this!  But that's not what I want to do with this post. 

This post is for Clare's poem. So here it is. (It is even better if you listen to Clare reading it at Greenbelt.) 

Who will slay the Elbit beast?

Where did it come from, this vile thing?

It must have crawled out of

the north Atlantic depths

while we were all asleep

and now it's here

growing viler and more bloated by the year

and while it's too disgusting to describe

I can tell you there's an orifice beneath its tail 

that pumps out bombs and drones and piles of stinking cash

for anyone who can stand the smell

Its face is too hideous to see

- think of something like a baby's brain 

hanging from its bombed out skull -

but we don't have to look at it

it's screened off behind 

the shiny websites, offices and names

Lockheed Martin, Rafael,

British Aerospace 

and Elbit Systems, pride of Israel

offering 'solutions', 'security' and of course 'defence'

and other polished forms 

of deadly excrement

It's groomed and fed

by the billionaires it's made

and the politicians it controls

it has many, many mouths

and as each one shrieks for more

ministers disembowel their budgets

and feed it with our money

that was intended for the poor

When they meet behind closed doors

world leaders aren't discussing security or peace

they're only middle ranking sales reps

doing deals for the beast

What does this creature want from us?

A world of endless war, austerity and death

ruled by a handful of the super rich?

Do this chosen few not realise

that when the ship goes down

the beast will feast on their flesh too?

Who will slay this monster?

The long arc of the universe 

bends in unexpected ways

bringing justice

not through politicians judges or police

but through our children

armed with not much more 

than courage and outrageous love

who go into the monster's lairs

poke it with their sticks

pull its tail and crack its teeth

They get rounded up, arrested and detained

but more of them return in waves

it doesn't matter that this monster 

meets weekly with police

or that puppets in their wigs and gowns

call them 'terrorists' and send them down

the authorities cannot compete 

with those who don't fear prison

if a child's life is saved

And each time it's poked 

the monster roars and rises up

so at last its belly

swollen with the blood of innocents

becomes exposed to public view

and ends all talk of ‘self defence’

One day in the future

when its rotted corpse 

has long been thrown back in the sea 

they will know it was our children

they will say it was our children

they will sing about our children

who've slain the Elbit beast

Clare Hinchcliffe

 

Lift the Ban: Visit from the police

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.

Some other people who had made escalation videos had full-scale dawn raids. I was one of those who just had a friendly visit.

I knew that I was at risk of home raid or a visit because of the experience of other people who had made the videos, but when the doorbell went at about 10:30 on the morning of Saturday 29th August 2026, it still took me by surprise when my wife called to me to say it was the police. I'd started to think it wouldn't happen.

We have had visits from the police before, but in the past they were always there to help me (like when my son had had his bike stolen from him by a couple of people stopping him on the Redway), or, most recently, when they were asking us whether we could help them with information concerning a crime in the neighbourhood. (It was, terribly, a 'domestic' murder a few doors down the street. We couldn't help, but would most definitely would have done so if we could.) So this was the first time they were after me!

It was another of these surreal experiences. They asked if they could come in but I asked them if they had a search warrant and when they said they didn't and that they didn't have an arrest warrant either, I politely refused them entrance. (Actually I think I just stood at the door and didn't invite them in. They made no further effort to get me to allow them in). They went on to explain that they were not here to arrest me, just to inform me that I might be getting a summons through the post because there had been a video posted in which they believed I was violating Section 12 of the Terrorism Act. They had a piece of paper with a screen shot from the video, and were clearly comparing the face in that with me. They also read out the spiel about 'you don't need to say anything but anything you do say etc etc.', which slightly confused me because I thought police only read out your 'rights' like that when they arrest you. 

They then asked me if I could show them anything which proved that this was my home address. That was a bit weird, as I pointed out, since they had come to my door and found me there. They said that nevertheless it might be that I don't live here, and was only here temporarily. That made no sense at all since presumably the only reason they came here was because they had already found that this was my home address. Even so, they claimed that it was in my interests to prove my address because if a summons was sent to the wrong address and I didn't go to court having not received the summons, I could be in trouble. The fact that I have already had documents through the post relating to my ongoing Section 13 charge didn't seem make any difference! I really don't know why they wanted this, but when I said I'd rather not give them anything, again they didn't argue and our meeting ended cordially.

What was this all about? I think they were doing two things: confirming the names and addresses of all of the people who had made the videos, and, while they were about it, seeing if they could gather any information (something they might see in my house) which could be used in a prosecution. My guess is that they won't be proceeding with charges now, while the legality of the proscription of Palestine Action is still going through the appeal processes, but they are gathering material now in case they want to use it later. And, as I understand it (I may be wrong!), there is no limit on when they can prosecute for a Section 12 terrorism charge (unlike the 6 month limit for a Section 13 charge).

So, there we go, another new experience in my retirement! 

Lift the Ban: Fourth arrest, 30th July 2026 "Graduation Day"

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: in case you are wondering why this post is date before 30th July, that was when I first put wrote a post saying that I was going to take part. I've edited today, 2 August, with an account of what happened.

DoJ billed this as 'Graduation Day'. This is what they said;

On July 30th, 152 people were arrested at what should have been a “Graduation Day” celebration outside Westminster Magistrates Court.

More than 1,500 people had received letters stating that a hearing relating to their prosecution would take place on July 30th at the court. Their names were listed for court hearings on the day.

Instead of being permitted into the court for their listed hearings, 152 people were arrested, mostly under the Terrorism Act, while peacefully attending an event outside the court. Some were arrested just for speaking to the crowd, others for trying to put up a small platform for performers and speakers to stand on, some were even arrested for clapping!

I was one of those, listed for a court hearing (arising from my arrest on 9th August 2025 and subsequent charge under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act (TA 2000)), and then arrested on the day. They said they were arresting me under Section 12 of TA 2000, because I said something like:

"I am a member and a supporter of Palestine Action and I encourage everyone to do the same because saving lives is not terrorism"

I say 'something like' because that is what I intended to say but the day was a bit chaotic and I was nervous, so I may not have said exactly that. Also, when they didn't seem to be arresting me, I got up and said it again, facing straight at the police to make sure they heard me, and I don't know whether I said exactly the same things both times! If they decide to charge me they will need evidence, so presumably they've got video footing of the event and may have a recording of me speaking. Or else this Blog post might be used as evidence, but since I'm saying that I don't know exactly what I said - really don't! - it would be pretty weak evidence.  I understand that they may also raid my home for evidence, but if they do, I hate to disappoint them but I don't think they will find anything incriminating!

The routine is getting familiar now, and I was taken in a Pixie (police van) to Plumstead police station (which is where I was taken last time too). It took over 90 minutes to get from outside Westminster Magistrates Court to Plumstead police station, and then we sat in the Pixie for a couple of hours in the police station car park, waiting in the queue for processing. When I finally got in, it was all very calm and un-threatening. Once again there was no sense that any of the police that I had dealings with thought for one moment that I was criminal. TBH, I'm finding it quite interesting meeting all these young (very young compared to me) police men and women. I'm not going to say anything in more detail because I don't want to get them into trouble. And, I need to say again, the experience may be very different for someone who is not a white, British man like me. (Although this time I wasn't wearing my Christ the Cornerstone t-shirt because we'd been asked to wear something red. I wore my Jeremy Corbyn t-shirt which I thought might not have been universally popular, but no one said anything about it.)

But the police were not ALL like that. One constable who seemed to be directing proceeding outside Westminster Magistrates Court for part of the time suddenly started to get angry, and his face turned positively venomous. He pointed to one us and shouted that he was was tripping people up. It didn't look like that to me and TBH it looked very personal on the part of the police constable.

Section 12 of TA 2000 is a more serious offence than Section 13, with a maximum penalty of 14 years in jail. I'm working on the assumption that it will not come to that! DoJ and their lawyers are pretty confident that it won't, for someone like me (middle class white man), but I have to be prepared for that as a possible outcome. To put it dramatically, I have to be prepared for the eventual outcome (starting quite some way in the future, since there are still appeals pending on the proscription of Palestine Action and that, combined with the chaos in the courts as noted in the DoJ quote above, means that any conviction is still a long was off), for the eventual outcome of me spending the last years of my life in jail.

So you will appreciate that I am constantly wondering whether I am right to be doing this. Not only, though, in terms of whether I am right to be risking own liberty, but also more importantly whether the cause I am supporting is just. The news from Gaza and the West Bank, and the treatment of the Palestine Action activists*, indicates very clearly that it is.

*Most recently reports that those found guilty of smashing windows and spraying red paint on Barclays Bank are likely to receive a 'terrorism' sentence, as happened to the Filton four. 

 

Lift the Ban: Escalation video

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.

WARNING [from DoJ] - Replicating this video comes with significant risk of arrest under the UK Terrorism Act. Before doing so, you should read our Action Briefing Document IN FULL at www.defendourjuries.net/savinglives. An arrest under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act could mean house raids, tech stolen by police, and potentially up to fourteen years in prison. 

Here is the video I made for the Defend our Juries escalation of the Lift the Ban campaign on the DoJ BlueSky channel.

It is an escalation, because by calling on other people to support Palestine Action it challenges Section 12 of the Terrorism Act (2000) which is a more serious offence than Section 13 which we have been challenging to date.

Transcript:

“One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this.”

Hello my name is David and I’m a retired University Academic who used to teach the theory and methods of information technology and telecommunications

The other thing I’d like you to know about me is how incredibly law-abiding I was for the first 67 years of my life.

I once got a speeding fine because I didn’t notice the speed limit on a road in Bletchley, but that was about the limit of my law-breaking

So when I was arrested on the 9th August last year and locked in a police cell in Kentish Town it was surreal, and not a little frightening

So what changed?

What changed is that my government has been complicit in genocide.

Complicit in war crimes, in ethnic cleansing and in genocide

Those words that I read at the beginning of the video are on the cover of a book by the American journalist Omar Al Akkad and I’d like to read you something more from that book.

Quoting Palestinian Poet Rasha Abdulhadi he says:

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

Palestine Action has been throwing sand into the gears of genocide and THAT is why I support them, and that is why I ask you to support them too.

Saving lives is not terrorism. I support Palestine Action and I urge you to do so too.