The Proscription of Palestine Action: The Spectacle of Absurdity
Palestine Action are a group who define themselves as “a direct action movement committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime. Using disruptive tactics, Palestine Action targets corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex and seeks to make it impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians”.
These images were made during two separate protests held outside the United Kingdom’s (UK) Houses of Parliament, in London 2025. Members of the public took to Parliament Square with signs stating; “I Oppose Genocide, I Support Palestine Action”. Their actions could lead to arrest under the Terrorism Act for expressing support for a proscribed group.
On the 5 July 2025 they were proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government, after spray painting two military aircraft used for transport and refuelling at RAF Brize Norton.
Using the performative nature of direct action, these protests bridged a gap between instrumental disruption and symbolic communication. Rather than merely being amechanical tool to force a material outcome, their actions operate as a political conflict through a theatrical lens.
Through a subversive approach, the work discloses the images' awareness of their own deceptive nature. Bold artificial lighting constructs an apparently fabricated reality aiming to help question how reality is presented to us, much the same way that idea that the “truth” is being presented to us.
These moments when captured create ‘scenarios’; referring to the performative and emotional construct of image-making: encapsulating the theatrical perspective as well as the speculative power of imagery and narrative.
Palestine Action’s proscription as a terrorist organisation, means they have been added to a list that includes Al-Qaeda and ISIS, whilst opposing and trying to stop the abetting of a genocide.
Ironically in 2003, the now former UK Prime Minister, Kier Starmer defended an activist whilst working as a Human Rights barrister under similar circumstances. Activists had broken into RAF Fairford with the aim of preventing war crimes in Iraq, Starmer defended his client’s actions; determining it “not terrorism, but conscience”.
His government was asking us not to believe what we all have seen live streamed and are declaring a group actively trying to disrupt a genocide and war crimes, as terrorists.
In a change of direction, the new Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband stated at the Labour Party Conference on 28/09/26: “I want to say to the millions of people in this country, and indeed elsewhere who have been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people, we hear you. You were right”.
This comes a year after the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared in 2025, that Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide.
Palestine Action have been granted permission to a final challenge against the proscription in the Supreme Court toward the end of 2026.
-
As part of this work, I self published 200 newspapers and distributed them for free during the September 2025 protest outside the Houses of Parliament. A free digital download is available in Publications.