Whitewashing Women’s History, Criminalising Peaceful Protest

The retrospective sanitisation of the Suffragettes’ movement and tactics is a warping of history used as an attack on democracy today. Donna McLean kicks off her new column investigating this week’s attack on civil rights.

This week, the Court of Appeal in London upheld the proscription of protest group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. The proscription was initiated last year by the former home secretary Yvette Cooper, who decided to ban the group after some of its activists broke into RAF base Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and spray-painted two military planes red. The ban, brought into statute in July 2025, made it a terror offence to belong to or express support for Palestine Action, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

The human rights organisation Liberty supported a successful appeal of the ban in November last year, however the current Home Secretary then pursued further legal action in the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal found that Palestine Action “could not properly be portrayed as a non-violent organisation” or described as “an ordinary protest group engaged in activities falling within the well-established tradition of peaceful protest”, as it was engaged in causing serious damage to property. Liberty has since said that the judgment against Palestine Action fails to clarify which direct action targeting property would not be classed terrorism. 

In an absurd statement following the judgment, Lady Carr, Chief Justice of England and Wales, declared that “Palestine Action is not, as it claims, a direct-action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open.”

Turning to the history books rather than subscribing to the judge’s conveniently sanitised version of events, I read the list of suffragettes’ direct actions: bottles of acid poured into post-boxes; bombings of theatres, hotels and railway stations; arson attacks at Kew Gardens; assassination plots against the prime minister. Are they seriously trying to hoodwink us into believing that these militant women planned their actions out in the open, within earshot of any passing James, George or Joe? The Suffragettes were angry and they were deliberately violent.  At least four people died and multiple others were injured at the height of their activities between 1912 and 1914. The history of the Suffragettes is being deliberately whitewashed. 

The court of appeal ruled that Palestine Action was responsible for “three terrorist incidents which had resulted in serious damage to property”: (i) in 2022 at the premises of Thales SA in Glasgow, (ii) in June 2024 at the premises of Instro Precision in Kent, and (iii) in August 2024 at the premises of Elbit in Bristol. Three instances of damage to equipment employed in warfare are classed as terrorism rather than direct action, while Lady Carr merrily downplays the 300 or so actions carried out by the suffragettes as mere civil disobedience.

In the same week as the Palestine Action court ruling, rioters were burning people of colour out of their homes in Belfast. Neither the government or the PSNI have described these actions as terrorism or employed anti-terrorism legislation to manage this horrific situation, though violence of this nature is the very definition of terrorism: “the use or threat of actions designed to intimidate the public for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Actions include “serious violence against a person” and “serious damage to property”. In what world do the Belfast pogroms not match this description?

Instead, in the UK, the word terrorism is now primarily used to describe the activism of those who challenge Israel’s actions. Over 3000 people have been arrested for showing support to Palestine Action since its proscription. At Woolwich Crown Court last week, four Palestine Action activists who broke into a factory were sentenced as terrorists. They had not been charged, prosecuted or convicted as terrorists. The dubious Sentencing Act 2020 allowed the judge to sentence them for as terrorists, despite the fact they had not been charged or tried as such.

In a fair or logical world, labelling the Palestine Action protests as terrorism should be much tougher than using the term to describe the violence in Belfast. But no one involved in burning people out of their homes in Belfast has been charged with terrorist offences, despite the rioters in Belfast clearly intending to cause both physical harm and damage to properties. Paramilitary groups still operating in the north of Ireland sit on the government’s list of proscribed organisations, yet the PSNI downplays their role in the race riots. Ryan Henderson, PSNI assistant chief constable, said that police had no evidence that paramilitaries orchestrated the violence, despite the riots happening in areas where proscribed groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force, Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Freedom Fighters still hold power. The Children’s Commissioner for NI, Chris Quinn, who was on the ground during the riots, has even stated that children and young people were being bused in from outside the city [to participate in riots] to clear drug debts and loans for paramilitaries. Of the 35 people arrested to date, one in four have been children.

Local commentators say there are more loyalist paramilitaries now than in 1998 when the Good Friday agreement was signed. The main organisations have multiple factions. Some focus on the dark economies of drug dealing and organised crime, while others operate more visibly within the political sphere. There’s a crossover between the daytime and nighttime operators. These groups continue to endure despite the process of “transitioning” that was supposed to phase them out of existence following the Good Friday Agreement.

As a survivor of the Spycops scandal, I’ve seen up close and personal how the British state treats left-wing activists – as the enemy. I’ve also witnessed how right-wing violence is frequently underplayed and passed off as genuine concerns. We are already in a new phase of authoritarian politics, supported by a swathe of new legislation over the last six years, with even more to come in the shape of the National Security (State Threats) Bill. This bill gives the home secretary the power to designate any group working to advance a foreign state a threat. The legislation is so broad that it invites abuse. Anyone who has stood up to state abuse knows how this works. Surveillance, secret intelligence, judges who can hand down sentences that juries haven’t been informed of.