I'm one of the more than 1000 people arrested as part of the Defend our Juries (DoJ) Lift the Ban campaign. I'm using this blog to report my experiences of the campaign and to explore my both my understanding of what it is all about and how it affects me. I will update this page as I add more posts about it. As things stand, I've entered my Not Guilty plea and my case is scheduled for 1st July 2026 at Stratford Magistrates Court.
As a starting point, my motivation, you can see where I am coming from in a piece that I wrote for Sofia magazine The Notion that the Polite, Western Liberal Ever Stood for Anything At All. In it, I discuss two books: One day, everyone will have always been against this by Omar El Akkad and Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza, Munther Isaac. Basically, I think they have got it right!
Lift the Ban: arrest and bail - an account of my arrest on 9th August 2025, how I was taken to Kentish Town Police Station and released on bail
Lift the Ban: charged while out on bail I was charged by post.
Lift the Ban: plea hearing my experience of the plea hearing in Westminster Magistrates Court
Lift the Ban: do I support Palestine Action? A fundamental question.
Lift the Ban: reflections from holding cell number 6 at Kentish Town Police station. Some thoughts, not written while I was in the cell, but later reflections on what I'm been thinking about in the cell.
Disclaimer/admission: I am conscious of a possible case of self-aggrandizement in what I'm doing here. Especially, I am aware that although this seems a pretty big deal to me - getting arrested - compared to what other people do willingly or have no choice but to suffer it is nothing. That is seems big to me is a consequence of my (white, western, middle-class, male) privilege. Well, that's the reality and perhaps something I need to grapple with further.
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