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george monbiot
UK Cops 'Ashamed and Sick' of Enforcing Ban on Anti-Genocide Group Palestine Action
"Instead of catching real criminals and terrorists, we are arresting pensioners and disabled people calling for the saving of children's lives," said one Metropolitan Police officer.
Sep 04, 2025
A pair of British police officers on Thursday expressed feelings of shame and guilt over having to arrest peaceful protesters—many of them elderly—for showing solidarity with Palestine Action as seven more of the anti-genocide group's supporters were charged with terrorism offenses.
"Instead of catching real criminals and terrorists, we are arresting pensioners and disabled people calling for the saving of children's lives," one Metropolitan Police member, identified as "Officer A," told Novara Media's Harriet Williamson under condition of anonymity. "It makes me question why I'm even in this career anymore."
While Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said he is "proud" of how the department is handling the situation, Officer A said they felt "ashamed and sick" about having to arrest Palestine Action defenders—nearly half of whom are over age 60, with many older than 70 or even 80—under orders they did not believe in.
"I was told to help in the arrest of a disabled person for holding up the sign stating they opposed genocide and supported Palestine Action, which I did," they said. "I did it knowing it had nothing to do with upholding justice or our professional values, just to protect my job and livelihood."
"My father was an officer, and the reason I came into the police," Officer A continued. "I know he would be ashamed and turning in his grave if he saw what I did."
"I was at the protests and stood there with people shouting in my face calling me a pig and other names. I don't blame the public at all," Officer A confided. "In my silence, they didn't realize I agreed with everything they were saying but stating that openly would mean the end of my job."
The officer added that "my managers don't support what we have to do either, but they don't make the law and just have to follow what the ministers decide."
Another Met officer—identified as "Officer B"—told Williamson that "many officers are stuck between what everyone is witnessing in terms of genocide" and their orders to arrest supporters of Palestine Action.
"It causes a moral and ethical dilemma," said the officer, who is Muslim, as well as considerable "guilt for not being able to have a say on genocide."
More than 700 people have been arrested for showing support for Palestine Action ever since the group's recent ban under the Terrorism Act of 2000.
A spokesperson for the Police Federation of England and Wales told Novara Media that there aren't enough officers to police Palestine Action protests.
"Officers are emotionally and physically exhausted," the spokesperson said. "The demand is relentless. And it's not sustainable."
All told, at least 73 people have been charged with showing support for the banned group. They could face up to 14 years behind bars if fully convicted.
The Palestine Action ban resulted from Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper's introduction of parliamentary legislation after members of the direct action group broke into a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire and sprayed two planes with red paint.
Defend Our Juries—an advocacy group that staunchly supports Palestine Action—said it is expecting more than 1,000 demonstrators to turn out for a Saturday rally near Parliament at which participants are set to hold signs reading, "I Oppose Genocide" and "I Support Palestine Action," an action that could result in a record number of arrests.
🚨 BREAKING: September 6th Action to go ahead as 1,000+ pledge to hold signs in defiance of Labour’s authoritarian banJoin the 1000+ by signing up at wedonotcomply.orgThis announcement comes after counter-terrorism police arrested five spokespeople in dawn raids today.
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— Defend Our Juries (@defendourjuries.bsky.social) September 2, 2025 at 5:55 AM
On Thursday, seven members of Defend Our Juries who were recently arrested and charged with terrorism offenses for encouraging support for Palestine Action pleaded not guilty in Westminster Magistrates' Court in London.
Former government attorney Timothy Crosland, 55; gardener Dawn Manners, 61; David Nixon, 39; student Patrick Friend, 26; Gwen Harrison, 48; and Melanie Griffith, 62 allegedly arranged public protests and managed a series of 13 recent Zoom meetings in support of Palestine Action. Anthony Harvey, a 59-year-old man from the Oban area of Scotland, was also charged under the anti-terrorism law and released on bail after appearing in a Scottish court.
The seven activists were set to hold a Tuesday press conference to promote Saturday's demonstration; however, they were preemptively arrested. Journalist and author George Monbiot, who was also set to speak at Tuesday's event, called the arrests "classic police state stuff."
"We all have a stake in this because we're seeing a slippage from a nominally broadly democratic nation into one with very strong, authoritarian characteristics, and this is something I feel we all have a duty to resist," Monbiot told Middle East Eye on Wednesday.
The Defend Our Juries spokesperson asserted Thursday that "the mass defiance of the ban cannot be stopped and is growing all the time."
"It will only stop when the UK government abandons this grossly unjust proscription and ends its complicity in Israel's horrific atrocities," they added.
This isn't the first time that Met Police have reportedly voiced frustration at having to persecute Palestine Action supporters. According to Williamson, climate writer Donnachadh McCarthy "described multiple interactions" with officers "who said they were unhappy with the Palestine Action ban."
"One officer told me, 'This is not the work I came into the police to be doing. I would far prefer to be doing my proper job catching real thieves,'" McCarthy recalled, adding that his arresting officer "paused as he was about to close the [cell] door on me and said, 'This is mad. I can understand them arresting Hamas members, but for people holding a placard, this doesn't make any sense to me.'"
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'Appalling': US Funded Secret Industry Network Targeting Pesticide Critics
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," said writer Michael Pollan, one of those featured in the corporate files. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous."
Sep 27, 2024
New reporting published Friday exposes how U.S. taxpayer money was used to fund an elaborate effort by pesticide industry insiders to create detailed dossiers on public critics and environmentalist activists opposed to the widespread pollution created by agrochemical corporations.
The investigation was spearheaded by the nonprofit outlet Lighthouse Reports in collaboration with numerous outlets from around the globe, including The Guardian, Le Monde, The New Lede, ABC News, and the New Humanitarian. It details how outspoken critics of the pesticide paraquat—described as "among the most toxic agricultural chemicals ever produced"—were targeted by an "influence machine that works to suppress opposition to an $78 billion global industry."
While use of paraquat is banned in the European Union, it is still actively sold and applied on fields and farms in much of the world despite the documented harms it produces.
The year-long investigation, according to Lighthouse,
managed to penetrate a PR operation that casts those who raise the alarm, from pesticide critics to environmental scientists or sustainability campaigners, as an anti-science "protest industry," and used U.S. government money to do so.
The U.S.-based PR firm, v-Fluence, built profiles on hundreds of scientists, campaigners and writers, whilst coordinating with government officials, to counter global resistance to pesticides. These profiles are published on a private social network, which grants privileged entry to 1,000 people. The network's membership roster is a who's-who of the agrochemical industry and its friends, featuring executives from some of the world's largest pesticide companies alongside government officials from multiple countries.
These members can access profiles on more than 3,000 organisations and 500 people who have been critical of pesticides or Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). They come from all over the world and include scientists, U.N. human right experts, environmentalists, and journalists. Many of the profiles divulge personal details about the subjects, such as their home addresses and telephone numbers, and spotlight criticisms that disparage their work. Lawyers have told us this goes against data privacy laws in several countries.
The investigative team also released this video on Instagram detailing their findings:
Environmental writer and activist George Monbiot called the revelations "deeply shocking and appalling," and described the story as one which detailed how the U.S. government "funded attacks, denial, and outright lies to protect the pesticides industry from its critics."
The Guardian's reporting details how v-Influence—founded by former Monsanto executive Jay Byrne—received U.S. taxpayer dollars by subcontracting with another group that received a large USAID grant:
Public spending records show the USAID contracted with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a non-governmental organization that manages a government initiative to introduce GM crops in African and Asian nations.
In turn, IFPRI paid v-Fluence a little more than $400,000 from roughly 2013 through 2019 for services that included counteracting critics of "modern agriculture approaches"in Africa and Asia.
v-Fluence was to set up the "private social network portal" that would, among other things, provide "tactical support" for efforts to gain acceptance for the GM crops.
The reporting noted that prominent food writers, including Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman (both of whom have written critically of industrial agriculture), were among those listed in the private network to which industry heavyweights were given invite-only access.
"It's one thing to have an industry come after you after publishing a critical article. This happens all the time in journalism," Pollan told the Guardian. "But to have your own government pay for it is outrageous. These are my tax dollars at work."
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UK Climate Campaigners Get 'Utterly Disproportionate' Sentences
"Rulings like today's set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest," a U.N. official said.
Jul 18, 2024
In a decision that one United Nations official called "beyond comprehension," a U.K. judge on Thursday sentenced five Just Stop Oil activists to a combined 21 years in prison over a Zoom call in which they discussed plans to disrupt London's orbital M25 highway.
The sentences are believed to be the longest on record for nonviolent protest in U.K. history, The Guardian reported.
"The sentences handed to the five Just Stop Oil campaigners are utterly disproportionate," environmentalist and author George Monbiot wrote on social media. "Four and five years in prison for peaceful protest? This is what you might expect in Russia or Egypt, not in a supposed democracy."
"Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?"
The five activists—Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, and Cressida Gethin—were found guilty last week of conspiring to cause a public nuisance due to a four-day direct action protest on the M25 that Just Stop Oil ultimately held in November 2022. All of the defendants participated in a Zoom call in which they planned to recruit volunteers for the protest, which was intended to pressure the U.K. government to end oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, a policy that the incoming Labour government has now adopted. The Zoom call had been infiltrated by a Sun journalist, who shared its contents with the Metropolitan Police.
On Thursday, Judge Christopher Hehir sentenced Hallam to five years in prison and Shaw, Lancaster, De Abreu, and Gethin to four each.
The sentences sparked outrage from humans rights advocates and environmental campaigners.
Michel Forst, U.N. special rapporteur on environmental defenders who also observed part of the trial, said the sentencing "marks a dark day for peaceful environmental protest, the protection of environmental defenders, and indeed anyone concerned with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms in the United Kingdom."
Forst added: "Rulings like today's set a very dangerous precedent, not just for environmental protest but any form of peaceful protest that may, at one point or another, not align with the interests of the government of the day."
Former Green Party leader and Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the sentences "obscene."
"Why are we punishing the people trying to prevent disaster while allowing the oil company giants causing it to reap super profits?" she asked on social media.
Current Deputy Leader of the Green Party Zack Polanski said: "'Conspiracy to commit a public nuisance' is a deeply authoritarian description that should send shivers down the spine of all of us who want to live in a free society. Even worse when the real crime is consecutive governments who have played down the climate emergency."
Campaigners and experts also criticized the trial itself, in which Hehir did not allow the defendants to present evidence about the climate crisis to explain their actions.
"Defendants should be allowed to explain why they have decided to use nonconventional but yet peaceful forms of action, like civil disobedience, when they engage in environmental protest," Forst
told The Guardian after attending part of the trial.
Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London—who Hehir did not allow the defendants to call as a witness—called the trial and verdict a "farce."
"They mark a low point in British justice, and they were an assault on free speech," McGuire in a statement said Thursday. "The judge's characterization of climate breakdown as a matter of opinion and belief is completely nonsensical and demonstrates extraordinary ignorance. Similarly to suggest that the climate emergency is irrelevant in relation to whether the defendants had a reasonable case for action is crass stupidity."
The verdict and sentencing also come amid an increasing crackdown on climate protest, both globally and in the U.K. The previous longest known civil disobedience sentences in the country were also for Just Stop Oil activists.
"The U.K. is a nightmare for climate activists from this point of view, in the sense that the sentences imposed in other countries are neither that harsh, nor that widespread," Forst said July 12.
Greenpeace U.K.'s program director Amy Cameron said on Thursday: "These sentences are not a one-off anomaly but the culmination of years of repressive legislation, overblown government rhetoric, and a concerted assault on the right of juries to deliberate according to their conscience. It's part of the mess the Labour government has inherited from its predecessor, and they must fix it by giving back to people the right to protest that's been slowly being taken away from them."
Forst also called on the new government to reverse course.
"Given the gravity of the situation, I urge the new United Kingdom government, with absolute urgency and without undo delay, to take all necessary steps to ensure that Mr. Shaw's sentence is reduced in line with the United Kingdom's obligations under the Aarhus Convention," Forst wrote on Thursday.
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