We’ve all seen the pictures of the thousands of arrests of peaceful protesters for supporting Palestine Action: an 83-year-old retired priest; a 94-year-old Jewish former human rights lawyer; a blind man who uses a wheelchair. As a result of this absurdity, terrorism arrests went up over 1500% in a year.

Because the people in question were holding signs, usually saying “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, these arrests have been made under Section 13(1)(b) of the Terrorism Act 2000, which says that

(1) A person in a public place commits an offence if he—
(a) wears an item of clothing, or
(b) wears, carries or displays an article,
in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.

Palestine Action, you may recall, was proscribed through the cynical mechanism of bringing forward a three-for-the-price-of-one order that sandwiched Palestine Action between two groups called Maniacs Murder Cult and The Russian Imperial Movement and daring MPs to vote against it.

Sally Rooney is a popular author; one of her books was recently adapted into a BBC TV series. She is Irish and lives in Ireland, which for over a century has been outside the scope of Westminster legislation. Rooney has expressed support for Palestine Action and in 2025 pledged to donate proceeds from her sales to the organisation. If she were in the UK, this could be an offence under Section 15(3) of the same act, in which

(3) A person commits an offence if he—
(a) provides money or other property, and
(b) knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.

Does the donation become “for the purposes of terrorism” simply because the government has defined Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation? You wouldn’t want to test it. Rooney has not travelled to the UK since.

She can no longer receive royalties from book sales in the United Kingdom, and has thus, as of last week, withdrawn her books from sale here. (It’s not a ban: you can still import them, but they will have been published abroad, and royalties will be paid outside this country.)

In this context, journalist and writer Sarah Helm posted on Elon Musk’s X, the Everything App on 15 October,

God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action. Sounds like Adam would have all our books swept off the shelves in a jiffy.

The next day, the Metropolitan Police said that they had been “made aware” of the post and that it was “in the process of being assessed to determine whether any further police investigation may be required”.

But by Saturday, it had been “assessed by specialist officers and it was determined that it did not meet the criminal threshold”. “No further police action will be taken”, they said.

One important additional detail here is that Helm is married to Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister’s National Security Adviser. This is embarrassing, drawing attention to the contradictions and absurdity of the prohibition. It has also drawn accusations of unequal treatment before the law: one law for those connected to government, another for the rest of us.

But what is the charge? She wasn’t wearing an item of clothing or holding an article that would indicate support, as prohibited by Section 13. She wasn’t doing anything with money that would be an offence under Section 15. The closest offence would appear to be that described in Section 12(1A), in which

(1A) A person commits an offence if the person—
(a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and
(b) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.

Unless your support is written on a placard or a T-shirt, it’s not sufficient simply to express it; it must also recklessly encourage support. At least, that’s my reading of the law, but I’m not a lawyer. Don’t blame me if you get arrested anyway!

It doesn’t have to be favouritism. It could just be an ill-considered proscription and a badly-drafted law. But it does make the whole thing look even more ridiculous and unsupportable than it already did.