In defence of direct action

In February of this year, myself and two comrades took action against Pearson Engineering, a site which produces armoured vehicles and military intelligence equipment on behalf of Rafael Defence Systems, an Israeli state owned weapons company. In the early hours of the morning, we drove a van to Scotswood Road, made famous by the Geordie folk song “The Blaydon Races”, emptied rubble in front of the main entrance, climbed on top of the security building and set about shutting down production for as long as possible. We did this as part of the direct action network Palestine Action, donning the now famous red overalls, unfurling flags and home-made signs, before getting to work. We followed in the footsteps of actionists who had targeted the site in 2023, and those who had continued to target factories and offices of companies active or complicit in the genocide in Palestine.

Direct action is a political practice which involves people using agency, either by physical force or economic sabotage, to achieve certain goals. In this case the aims are, to put it simply, to prevent further deaths and cripple the imperialist war machine. Direct action can take many forms, from a workers strike, to property damage, and I would argue that a revolution is the ultimate form of direct action, albeit one enabled by robust political theory and organisation.

For myself and many others, the push to take direct action occurred after a lengthy process of utilising “legal” forms of protest to appeal to those in power to make use of the consciences we were all born with. From mobilisations of thousands in the capital, raising awareness of the ongoing situation, signing petitions, writing to MP’s to civil disobedience in the form of sit-ins, and early morning blockades, all in the hopes that someone with the power will shut down that factory, or even do anything to slow down or stop the genocide. While I had an awareness of the limitations of legal protests, it seemed wrong to sit at home and just hope that things would change. We shamefully watched a year pass by as the genocide raged on, claiming thousands of lives, young and old, male and female, all Palestinian.

Palestine Action does not describe itself as non-violent. Violence is a means to a political end, and violence can be employed in the pursuit of liberation, in fact some (such as Frantz Fanon) would argue that liberation will only be achieved by employing violence against the oppressors. We are workers and unemployed people and retired people and students questioning the divine right of our masters, the people who manufacture war and misery at the expense of humanity. We question and sabotage capital to further the goal of Palestinian liberation, as well as our own. This liberation comes not at the expense of fellow human lives, but at the expense of global capital and profit margins.

The British Labour government will seek to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation this week. The Crown Prosecution Service outlines Terrorism in British law, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.

The specific actions included are:

serious violence against a person;

serious damage to property;

endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action);

creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public;

action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

It appears that the British government has decided to classify that action taken by Palestine Action as serious damage to property. Serious enough to warrant a maximum 14 year prison sentence for supporting the group.

A society which legally manufactures weapons that kill people, and brandishes those trying to stop those weapons from being manufactured as terrorists, is a profoundly sick and diseased society. Lenin marked the period of time defined by spontaneous strikes, revolts, and destruction of machinery prior to the Russian revolution as “the awakening antagonisms between workers and employers”, and using the words of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey we carried out a “simple proletarian protest”, wielding what little power is afforded to us as workers. I would argue that the world is at yet another impasse, to accept the status quo of colonialism, which has the power to enact genocide, or to unite as proletarians and do everything in our power to change the world as we know it. We have an opportunity on our hands to seize power from those that would line their pockets with blood money, we have an opportunity to reform the world into one which values human lives over capital, one which is decolonised and united through class struggle and national liberation. Marx told us “workers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains”, it’s time to unite in material solidarity, in deeds not words.

Even though the tide is turning against us for what we have done, I will never feel ashamed for trying to stop war, death and murder. I will never feel ashamed for putting myself in the way of imperialism, not in a theoretical or abstract way, but by disrupting the flow of weapons and capital to a colonialist state. Martin Luther King Jr, a man who’s image has been sanitized throughout the years stated that “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” Police commissioner Mark Rowley has issued a statement today describing Palestine Action as an “organised extremist criminal group”, and we know that it was once a crime for women and working men to vote, for slaves to be free citizens, to be LGBTQ+ and to get an abortion. Criminality is socially constructed and well known political revolutionary Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years and considered a terrorist in Britain at that time, until public opinion shifted and this status was revoked. I don’t believe our actions are extreme, in fact I question a society where murder and destruction through war and genocide is considered moderate and conventional.

In the UK we are told to never forget the horrors of war and we learn about the Holocaust in school as a cautionary tale of what happens when people blindly accept dehumanisation and fascism. We are taught that people fought, and used violence to achieve things denied to them, things we consider human rights today. The Suffragettes would have been classified as terrorists under modern legislation, but I am thankful that they did what they could so that women could begin to be seen as human. I am grateful for national liberation movements the world over for showing us what the people can achieve when they organise and exert political power. To change one's material conditions, to reject misery and poverty and dehumanisation through the Struggle. We are seldom taught about the horrors of colonialism, the ways in which people have been oppressed and continue to be oppressed through it. Now is the time to educate ourselves and continue the struggle in the face of repression from our governments. We know that the government is wrong sometimes, and it’s our job to give them a little push.

Recommended reading list

Rashid Khalidi - The Hundred Years War on Palestine

Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth + A Dying Colonialism

Vladimir Lenin - Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism + What is to be Done

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto

Edward Said - The Question of Palestine

Antonia Raeburn - Militant Suffragettes