Clive Stafford Smith: In support of Palestine Action’s right to protest

Some in law enforcement may think that the headline to this article is a criminal offence, which only goes to show how far the current government is leading us in the wrong direction when it comes to human rights. I have spent several decades now protecting the rights of those deemed the “worst of the worst” terrorists in the world – including the detainees in Guantánamo Bay. There was a time when the Bush Administration told me that to do so would be “material support for terrorism”, worth up to 20 years in prison under US law. Fortunately, my colleagues and I did not bow to their threats: I have thus far personally advocated for 87 of the prisoners, which presumably means I could have got over a thousand years in prison – if they ran each sentence consecutively. Yet all 87 of my clients have been set free, because we forced the US to accept they were not dangerous terrorists at all. Most of them had been sold to the US for bounties by a corrupt Pakistani government.

It is a privilege to do this work, it’s the task of any lawyer with a soul. Yet the current government, led by erstwhile human rights lawyer Sir Keir Starmer, has taken the Bush folly one step further. At least – had they actually been members of al-Qaida – my Guantánamo clients might have merited the “terrorist” label. Yet to date the “Palestine Action Terrorists” have been such people as Laura Murton, threatened with arrest by armed police because she was holding a Palestinian flag and signs saying “Free Gaza” and “Israel is committing genocide”.

In response to this particular incident, Mr Justice Chamberlain said this week, “This is obviously an officer that doesn’t understand the law at all.” Yet I do wonder whether the good judge – who I know as Martin Chamberlain KC, the human rights lawyer – will remember the role of the judiciary when it comes to enforcing the rights of the downtrodden.

Even if you take Palestine Action’s most extreme actions, they look rather pale in comparison with a true terrorist group. Spray painting a bomber at RAF Brize Norton is hardly equivalent to blowing up the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11.

Let me spell it out: human rights are primarily the domain of the weak when they are under assault by the powerful – the strong really don’t have much need for rights, as they can purchase what they need elsewhere. I have spent the last 42 years trying to look out for the weak, because my mother taught me that my job was to search for the people being hated the most, and get between them and those doing the hatred.

Hamas committed a criminal act in October 2023, just as al-Qaida did in September 2001. I know that, if only because I am half Jewish myself. But the people of Gaza did not kill anyone, and it is the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal, not the Palestinian children who were bombed in the past few days.

To give him his due, on 2 July 2025, Foreign Secretary David Lammy took the rare step of failing to cast a vote at all when it came to the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. While, equally, he failed to vote against it, he was perhaps remembering that he has been an activist himself. When Donald Trump came to the UK in 2018, he explained in Time magazine why he was “one of tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee.”

My old colleague in various cases, Richard Hermer KC, now Attorney General, once put it well: “The human rights community has been vilified for standing up for what they believe in. You may not like what we do, you may disagree with what we do, but we want to hear from you, we want to engage in dialogue.” What he did not suggest is that the government should tar a human rights activist as a terrorist.

Of the three erstwhile champions of human rights, it is perhaps Keir who has strayed most since he was knighted. In the Fairford Five case, in 2003, his client had intended greater damage than Palestine Action did at RAF Brize Norton: Josh Richards was apparently planning to burn the wheels of American bombers slated to fly from an RAF base to Iraq. Keir argued while his client’s acts were illegal, they were morally justified, and the jury rightly – in my view, and presumably his – refused to convict.

Hypocrisy is sometimes spelled with a capital H. Hypocrisy breeds hatred, as it did when the US set up a law-free prison in Guantánamo Bay, purportedly established to protect Democracy and the rule of law. If you are a Labour government, committed to the Human Rights Act, you cannot expect to win votes away from Reform UK or even Suella Braverman by playing the hate card yourself. The Act is designed to protect people – including the children of Palestine – from vilification and even murder. I’d like my colleagues to remember why they became politicians and judges in the first place. As human rights advocates, we should be proud to stand up for those who most need us. It’s our job.