Lift the Ban: Judicial Review of the Proscription of Palestine Action. Part 1, timeline and overview

Important Disclaimer! This is me, David Chapman, with no legal training, trying to make sense of what has gone on. I will come back to edit it as I understand things better. 

This is one of my Lift the Ban posts 

1 The Home Secretary proscribes Palestine Action 

23 June 2025. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, made a written ministerial statement in the House of Commons. She explained that she proposed to make an order adding Palestine Action to the list of proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000 (“the 2000 Act”). The draft order added PA, together with two other organisations—the Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement—to the list of proscribed organisations. It was affirmed by each House (the House of Commons on 2 July and the House of Lords on 3 July). 

2 Huda Ammori (PA) requests a Judicial Review

Huda Ammori (PA) requested a Judicial Review, submitting the papers on 27 June, including an application for interim relief to restrain the Secretary of State from making the proscription order or, if made before the hearing, to suspend its effect. 

3 Interim decisions

4 July 2025. Justice Chamberlain gave judgement on the request for the interim relief on 4 July (ref. [2025] EWHC 1708 (Admin)). Conclusion: the application for interim relief is refused. [Included in the judgement is a statement apparently indicating that Justice Chamberlain does not consider PA to be a terrorist organisation in the colloquial meaning of the word. But if this is a problem he notes that it has been for 25 years since it is to do with the definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act of 2000.)]

The judgement is immediately appealed by Ammori and a decision as to whether an appeal will be allowed is given that same day. Court of Appeal: Lady Chief Justice (The Lady Carr), Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis. Judgement: Permission to appeal is refused. (ref [2025] EWCA Civ 848)

4 Proscription takes effect

Since the interim relief was not allowed, the proscription comes into effect as of 5 July 2025 (I think - need to confirm that date.)  

5 Judicial Review allowed

30th July 2025: Justice Chamberlain gives judgement allowing a Judicial Review: "I grant permission to apply for judicial review on grounds 2 and 8, but refuse it on all the other grounds." (Ref. [2025] EWHC 2013 (Admin))

These are the eight grounds from Ammori:

• Ground 1 that the order is ultra vires and/or was made for an improper purpose
• Ground 2 that the proscription order is contrary to s. 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 because it is incompatible with the rights of the claimant and others under Article 10, 11 and 14 ECHR.
• Ground 3 that PA is not “concerned in terrorism”.
• Grounds 4 and 5 These grounds allege that the Secretary of State took into account irrelevant considerations, namely the views of the Israeli Government, Elbit Systems and pro-Israel lobby groups, while failing to take into account matters which told against proscription.
• Ground 6 that the Secretary of State failed to apply her published policy
• Ground 7 that the Secretary of State breached the public sector equality duty in s. 149 of the Equality Act 2010.
• Ground 8 that the decision was taken in breach of natural justice and/or in breach of Article 6 ECHR because PA was not consulted in advance.

6 Home secretary appeals (and not only loses but gives the Review more grounds!

17 October 2025 Judgement from Court of Appeal (Lady Chief Justice (The Lady Carr), Lord Justice Lewis and Lord Justice Edis) ref. [2025] EWCA Civ 1311

Conclusion:  We dismiss the appeal. Two further grounds added to those allowed by Justice Chamberlain:

• Ground 5 that the Secretary of State failed to have regard to relevant considerations
• Ground 6 that the Secretary of State failed to apply her published policy

So after the appeal, the Judicial Review will proceed, with four grounds:

• Ground 2 that the proscription order is contrary to s. 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 because it is incompatible with the rights of the claimant and others under Article 10, 11 and 14 ECHR.
• Ground 5 that the Secretary of State failed to have regard to relevant consideration
• Ground 6 that the Secretary of State failed to apply her published policy
• Ground 8 that the decision was taken in breach of natural justice and/or in breach of Article 6 ECHR because PA was not consulted in advance.

7 Decision of the Judicial Review

The Judicial Review was due to be heard by Justice Chamberlain, but just before it commenced he was removed and replaced by a panel of three: Dame Victoria Sharp DBE, President of the King’s Bench Division, Mr Justice Swift, and Mrs Justice Steyn DBE. It was generally believed at the time that this change was detrimental to the case for Ammori. I've no idea how the decision on who hears the case is made, or who has the authority to make it and make changes. 

The judgement was issue on 12 February 2026 (ref [2026] EWHC 292 (Admin)). To general surprise, the judgement was:

150 For the reasons given above, Grounds 5 and 8 of the claim fail and are dismissed, but the claimant succeeds on Grounds 6 and 2 of her claim. To this extent the claimant’s claim is allowed. Subject to any further representations on relief, we propose to make an order quashing the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action.

So the two that were allowed were:

• Ground 2 that the proscription order is contrary to s. 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 because it is incompatible with the rights of the claimant and others under Article 10, 11 and 14 ECHR.
• Ground 6 that the Secretary of State failed to apply her published policy

(It is perhaps worth noting that Ground 6 was only under consideration because the Home Secretary appealed the decision to allow the review!)

Despite the decision, the press-release associated with the judgement said:

The court has directed the parties to provide written submissions by 20 February 2026 on the terms of the order that should be made in the light of this judgment. [150] Palestine Action remains proscribed until further order of the court because the court has yet to hear argument on whether there should be a stay of any order setting aside the proscription Order pending the possibility of an appeal.

The proscription Order remains in force until further order of the court...

(TBH, I don't understand that because it references paragraph 150 which is the paragraph that I quote (in full) above. Maybe it is the "Subject to any further representations on relief".)

The judgement is 46 pages with 150 numbered paragraphs. I have read it all and, while I struggle to understand a lot of it, there are things that I want to address, which I will do in another post.

Lift the Ban: Gaslighting

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command". George Orwell, 1984 

The word of the decade surely has to be Gaslighting [1]. I thought this during the smears against Jeremy Corbyn, but it has been off-the-scale over Gaza.  (One of my Lift the Ban posts.)

I've been delaying writing this because there's so much I want to say, but it is so important, to my mind, that I'm going to get something down and published, even if I have come back change it. (I almost certainly will.)

Israel is committing ethnic cleansing and genocide [2]. For more than two years, it has been slaughtering Palestinian men, women and children in the most ruthless way imaginable ("shooting fish in a barrel"). It, Israel, has commited the most hideous of crimes. I'm not going to go through the details: they are readily available for anyone not wilfully turning away. Saying otherwise is a lie: gaslighting

Britain is complicit. Both main political parties and all the mainstream media is 'on the side of' Israel. The lives of Palestinians are worth infinitely less than the lives of Israelis. See Peter Oborne's book and my post Britain's Complicity in Genocide: Peter Oborne’s Litany. To pretend that Britain has made any effort to hold Israel to account is obviously not true: gaslighting. 

Palestine Action is a direct action protest group. They are not a terrorist organisation. Mr Justice Chamberlain has accepted that Palestine Action is not a terror organisation in the ‘colloquial’ meaning of the term (see David Renton, What is the Meaning of Support, London Review of Books, v47 n14/15 14 August 2024). How can anyone look from Palestine Action vandalising warplanes to the IDF killing 20,000 children in Gaza and Israel torturing prisoners and claim that the former is the one which is terrorism? Gaslighting.

Perhaps the most insideous gaslighting, though (because it enables everything else), is the claim that speaking out against the crimes of Israel is antisemitism. The large number of Jews who do just that - speak out against the crimes of Israel - somehow, incomprehensibly, counts for nothing. Gaslighting.

 Notes 

1 I'm sure everyone reading this knows the meaning of Gaslighting. If you don't, you can easily find it on the web but I also recommend watching the 1944 film that gave it it's name: Gaslight.  It has a specific meaning in relationships, describing a type of psychological abuse, but more generally it is the manipulation of someone into questioning their perception of reality.

2 In a recent podcast in which Chris Hedges talks with Norman Finkelstein there was what I think a key insight: genocide is not the goal of Israel: the goal is ethnic cleansing. Israel wants rid of all Palestinians, and genocide of one of the methods being used to achieve the goal. Israel is making Gaza uninhabitable so that the Palestinians have to leave, but if they stay and die, that is OK with Israel.

 

Britain's Complicity in Genocide: Peter Oborne’s Litany

‘A litany’ in the common meaning is ‘a sizeable series or set’ (Merriam Webster), but for me the specific religious usage is more meaningful. See The Litany from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/litany.

The CofE Litany headlines our sinfulness and need for forgiveness, starting thus: “O God the Father of heaven: have mercy upon us miserable sinners” and although I have profound problems with a lot of it, at the same time I love it! I love its structure and the way it is used (not that it is used very often these days, as far as I know), if not all of its content. There’s a lot more I’d like to say about this litany (I differ from many other liberal Christians in the importance I place on our sinfulness and need for forgiveness, for example), but that is for another time.

When I read the text below from Peter Oborne’s ‘Complicit’ (OR Books, New York and London, 2025, pp 258-261), it sounded to me very much like a religious litany. To my mind, that 'we' in the introductory paragraphs, meaning 'Britain', rightly indicates that I, as a Briton, can't escape at least some degree of responsibility.

See what you think.

---------------

The Role of Britain

We bear a heavy responsibility for the deaths in Gaza, third in line only behind Israel and its primary patron and collaborator the United States. We helped enable the daily slaughter, destruction, disease, starvation, and human misery. We could have stopped arms sales. We could have sanctioned Israel. We could have ended military support.

We could have come to the aid of the Palestinians. We could have supported a special war crimes tribunal, as we did in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. We could have submitted evidence at The Hague, as we did after the Bosnian Genocide. We could have deployed sanctions, as we did against Putin, and held Israel's leaders personally accountable for their atrocities. We could have sent British navy ships to Gaza to relieve the blockade. We could even have made the moral case for a no-fly zone over Gaza to protect its inhabitants, as we did to protect Kurds against Saddam Hussein

• Damn you Keir Starmer. Damn you Rishi Sunak. Damn you Lammy, Cameron, Cleverly. A second damn for Lammy for shaking Benjamin Netanyahu's bloodstained hand.

• Damn you Mitchell and Falconer, the bag carriers.

• Damn you Lindsay Hoyle, Commons Speaker who wrecked a ceasefire motion and got Starmer off the hook.

• Damn the Foreign Office officials who put their pensions before Palestinian lives.

• Shame on the British military which trained, advised, and supported the genocidal Israeli army. Damn you Admiral Sir Tony Radakin. As chief of the defence staff you had the power to stop this. You have brought Britain's armed forces into disrepute.

• Damn the arms manufacturers who have profited from supplying the Israeli military. Damn you BAE Systems, profiteers from death.

• Damn the special relationship. It's led Britain into a cesspit.

• Damn the politicians and journalists who never reported on or cared about the deaths of Palestinian journalists targeted and killed by Israel.

• Damn the blood-soaked British newspaper industry. Damn you Murdoch. Damn you Rebekah Brooks. Damn you Victoria Newton, editor of The Sun. Damn you Tony Gallagher. You are The Times editor who awarded space to Yoav Gallant, wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes including the use of starvation as a weapon of war and crimes against humanity. Damn you Professor Niall Ferguson for co-writing that article. [1]

• Damn you Chris Evans, editor of the Daily Telegraph, for turning your newspaper into one of Israel's propaganda tools. Damn you Zanny Minton Beddoes of The Economist. You allowed your renowned journal to denounce the International Court of Justice genocide judgment as a ‘show trail’ [2]. You knew that Israel was turning Gaza into a 'hellscape' yet still demanded: 'fight on' [3].

• Damn you Daily Mail editor Ted Verity and your offshore proprietor Lord Rothermere. Damn you Michael Gove. Damn The Spectator.

• Damn the ignorant, lavishly paid, cruel, canting newspaper columnists and studio hosts. Damn the know-nothing reporters who peddled lies and twisted the facts. Damn the reporters who were too afraid to search out the truth.

• Damn those who passed by on the other side. Damn the Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to meet a Bethlehem pastor [4]

• Damn the moral cowards at the top of the BBC: Samir Shah, Robbie Gibb, Tim Davie, Richard Burgess. Damn you for failing to understand the meaning of the great institution you have disgraced, or why it mattered so much.

• Damn the atrocity deniers. Damn those who treated Palestinians as less than human. Damn those who viewed Palestinians as statistics. Damn the ideologists. Damn the 'clash of civilisation' barbarians. Damn the Great Replacement conspiracists. Damn the neoconservatives – never embarrassed, humbled, or sated.

• Damn the extreme right for your bigotry and racism. Damn you Nigel Farage. Damn you Tommy Robinson. Damn you Douglas Murray.

• Damn you Priti Patel. Damn you Kemi Badenoch.

• Damn the self-appointed guardians of public discourse who smeared those who marched for peace as terror supporters. Damn Suella Braverman. Damn Yvette Cooper.

• Damn the supporters of Israel who turned the charge of antisemitism, one of the great evils of human history, into a cheap propaganda weapon to cover for Israeli crimes.

• Damn the lobbyists. Damn you Conservative Friends of Israel. Damn you Labour Friends of Israel – with a second damn for your disreputable jolly to Tel Aviv at the height of the slaughter. [5]

• Damn those who didn't care. Damn those who did care but were afraid to act. Damn those who intimidated them into inertia. Damn the cowards and the careerists.

• Damn those who put power before morality. Damn the pragmatists. Damn those who had their doubts but didn't voice them.

• Damn those who didn't know. Damn those who didn't want to know. Damn those who didn't understand. Damn those who didn't want to understand.

• Damn all who were complicit in this brazen, public, and protracted crime against humanity.

I expect you all think you will get away with it. You have in the past. But the world may be starting to change.

 

Notes and references.

1 Niall Ferguson and Yoav Gallant, ‘Israel Has Done Most of the Job – now Trump Can Finish It’. The Times (20 June 2025)

2 Editorial, ‘Charging Isreal with Genocide Makes a Mockery of the ICJ’, The Economist (18 January 2024)

3 Editorial, ‘Why Israel Must Fight On’, The Economist (2 November 2023)

4 On the grounds that he had shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn MP. The archbishop, to his credit, later apologised to Pastor Munther Isaac. Patrick Wintour, 'Pastor Says Welby Would Not Meet Him If He Spoke at Palestine Rally with Corbyn, The Guardian (21 February 2024).

5 'LFI Delegation Visits Israel and Palestine as Conflict Reaches 600 Days’, lfi.org.uk (30 May 2025). See also: Hamish Morrison, 'Labour Politicians Fail to Declare All-Expenses-Paid Trip to Israel’, The National (14 July 2025).

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 defendants.

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

 

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.