\n<\/p>\n
Retirees making up some of the nearly 3,000 people arrested for supporting Palestine Action since the organisation was proscribed have said they feel \u201cvindicated\u201d by the high court\u2019s decision to overturn the ban this week.<\/p>\n
However, uncertainty remains over whether their trials under terror laws may still go ahead after the government revealed it plans to appeal against the judgment made on Friday by three of the UK\u2019s most senior judges.<\/p>\n
A former army colonel and ex-military attache, Chris Romberg, who was yet to enter a plea after his Palestine Action arrest last August, said he was \u201cpleased and satisfied that this proscription, which we knew was illegitimate, has now been shown to be unlawful as well\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since July last year, police have arrested at least 2,787 people across the UK for holding signs displaying statements such as \u201cI oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action\u201d, according to the civil liberties organisation Defend Our Juries.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Chris Romberg was arrested last August and is yet to enter a plea.<\/span> Photograph: Christopher Thomond\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In a written judgment, Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the king\u2019s bench division, ruled the proscription of Palestine Action was unlawful on two grounds: breaching human rights laws and the home secretary\u2019s own proscription policy requiring the government to take into account the genuine threat to the UK posed by the group.<\/p>\n While the ban was overturned by the court in principle, Sharp said she would hear from both sides before issuing an order to remove the proscription while the appeal process was in place.<\/p>\n The Metropolitan police said on Friday that, as a result of the decision, officers would cease arresting people expressing support for the organisation, but would continue to gather evidence at protests.<\/p>\n Trisha Fine, who was arrested in Cardiff and spent 27 hours in police custody \u2013 during which officers failed to tell her husband what had happened to her \u2013 described the ruling as \u201cgood news, but with big reservations\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/span>Trisha Fine spent more than 27 hours in custody after her arrest.<\/span> Photograph: Sam Frost\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cQuite a lot of friends have got in touch to say: \u2018Yay, aren\u2019t you lucky it\u2019s all over?\u2019 It bloody isn\u2019t. It seems like our jolly government has got all the cards in their hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Richard Whitmore-Jones, who was arrested on 9 August last year at a silent vigil in Parliament Square, said celebration had given way to caution. \u201cObviously yesterday was such a good day, we were all ecstatic that the prescription ban was overturned, but I think today I\u2019m feeling a little bit more circumspect about what might happen in future with the appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n Father John McGowan, a Catholic priest arrested at the same protest, said he \u201cwould have been really upset had the judgment gone against us\u201d. \u201cSo yes I\u2019m pleased, I\u2019m very pleased,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He was, however, \u201cangry at the government, and even angrier now that they should want to appeal\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey do not seem to understand the anger of probably the majority of British people at them for supporting Israel. If they want to know the reason why they\u2019re unpopular, this is one of them. Their unconditional support for Israel,\u201d said McGowan, who lived in Jerusalem for five years.<\/p>\n <\/span>Richard Whitmore-Jones, who was arrested in Parliament Square last year, said the crackdown was a waste of public money.<\/span> Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n For McGowan, it was clear the government was \u201con the wrong side of history\u201d and he said \u201cit just struck me how out of touch the government is with the people in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n Romberg, a member of Holocaust Survivors and Descendants against the Gaza Genocide, said he thought the Palestine Action ban had come about due to \u201cthe type of political class we have now, which doesn\u2019t seem to believe in anything\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a government that seems to have given up on its values, on its liberties, on rights, happy to turn on its own people, and even to lie, and it hasn\u2019t worked for them,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may go to the supreme court, but whatever happens, this has been a big blow for the government because their credibility, I think, is completely shot.\u201d<\/p>\n He was pleased that \u201clots of talk about secret evidence that would definitely prove that [Palestine Action] should be banned as a terrorist organisation hasn\u2019t convinced the judges\u201d.<\/p>\n Whitmore-Jones lamented the saga\u2019s cost to the public purse, money which he thought could be put to better use. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly just a disgraceful waste of money to keep arresting people for this and putting them in prison and holding people on remand for excessive periods,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just unconstitutional and disgraceful.\u201d<\/p>\n All those with outstanding charges or an open police investigation remain in limbo while the appeals process takes place. It is not clear yet whether they may still have to stand trial on terror charges.<\/p>\n <\/span>Father John McGowan, who was arrested in London last August, said he was angry with the government.<\/span> Photograph: Alicia Canter\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Whitmore-Jones, who was arrested six times and has so far pleaded not guilty to the first of the charges, joked that he still had \u201ca number of bad-boy appointments at magistrates courts\u201d. On Friday, he received a summons to a plea hearing through the post while he was away celebrating the high court\u2019s decision outside the Royal Courts of Justice.<\/p>\n All the arrestees the Guardian spoke to said they would repeat their actions, apart from Fine, who said: \u201cI\u2019m not sure that I would.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to get my life back. I\u2019ve had enough,\u201d added Fine, who was denied antibiotics she needed for a serious gum infection while in custody, and was subjected to a travel ban which made it difficult to go away with her husband who was recovering from cancer treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d do it all over again, no question,\u201d said McGowan. Whitmore-Jones echoed the sentiment adding, \u201cin a heartbeat\u201d.<\/p>\n McGowan added: \u201cAnd if I have to go to prison, I would do so. I could justify it to my conscience. It isn\u2019t an easy thing to do, to break the law, to get arrested, but I\u2019d be willing to do it over again. It\u2019s just an inconvenience to me, compared to what people are going through in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n They all also spoke about their frustration that while all this was going on, Israel continued to kill Palestinians in large numbers as part of a continuing genocide. Whitmore-Jones said: \u201cI\u2019m concerned that all this fiddling around with the law doesn\u2019t prevent civilians being killed in Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cAt least one child is being murdered every day in Gaza. I think yesterday there were 30 or 40 people killed. People are dying from cold, lack of medicine, and they\u2019re being killed by munitions. And our country is supporting it. I\u2019m just horrified.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just been talking to my grandchildren and I came out with this rather trashy quote that bad things happen when good people stand around and allow it to happen. And that\u2019s exactly the situation that we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Retirees making up some of the nearly 3,000 people arrested for supporting Palestine Action since the organisation was proscribed have said they feel \u201cvindicated\u201d by the high court\u2019s decision to overturn the ban this week. However, uncertainty remains over whether their trials under terror laws may still go ahead after the government revealed it plans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[919,6058,1240,23120,18445,571,23127],"class_list":{"0":"post-44587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-arrested","10":"tag-palestine","11":"tag-proscription","12":"tag-retirees","13":"tag-ruling","14":"tag-vindicated"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}