A Tiny Group of Conspiracy Theorists Are Smearing Defend Our Juries & Denigrating the Mass Protests Against Proscription
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There is
a small group who, ever since the protests against the proscription of
Palestine Action began, have been doing their best to undermine the protests.
Civil Disobedience in their eyes is the wrong strategy but they haven’t
proposed an alternative because, of course, they don’t have one.
In
reality they despise mass action from a mixture of motives, not least contempt
for the masses. They believe the state is all powerful, the repression cannot
be resisted and people should accept their lot. So anyone who takes to the
streets is branded ‘psy-ops’ or an intelligence cut out or some other phrase
taken from the lexicon of conspiracy theorists.
In this
case they represent themselves as the Defend
the Right to Protest Ltd., Company number 16332885, which has 3
Directors – Ranjeet Brar, Novjot Brar and Eleonore KOFFI, all members
of the Communist Party of Great Britain – Marxist Leninist.
Others
conspiracists include Phil Bevin @philbevin who was
once part of Corbyn’s Leader of the Opposition Office, Dr Alan Williams @alanwilliamz, Dic
Penderyn @PenderynDic_ and Jon
Harding @_i0n
Williams was
formerly of Ecological Action. He asked Sayeed
Farouky, a former PA activist, incriminating questions under a fake name (John
Hunter). They believe that mass civil disobedience is state sponsored.
They
have been making strenuous efforts in recent weeks to undermine the protests
accusing both Defend Our Juries and key people like Tim Crosland of being state
operatives. Let us recall the timeline of events surrounding the proscription
of Palestine Action as a ‘terrorist’ organisation.
Timeline of the Proscription of Palestine Action
On the
evening of July 4 Interim Relief was refused by Justice Chamberlain and then
the Court of Appeal. The proscription of Palestine Action went ahead. On the
evening of July 5th, before the banning came into effect Defend Our
Juries held a public zoom meeting at which Huda Ammori, from PA spoke. PA
itself was wound up at midnight.
At this
meeting it was agreed by all, including Palestine Action activists, that a
series of rolling protests would be held at which people would hold up placards
saying ‘We Oppose Genocide, We Support
Palestine Action’. This was to be co-ordinated by DOJ.
Defend Our Juries Protest Tavistock Square Against the Proscription of
Palestine Action
On July
30 leave was granted
by J Chamberlain to apply for Judicial Review. On 4 September the government was
given permission to appeal with Lord Justice Underhill quoted
as saying that “I
believe that the appeal has a real prospect of success.”
On 17
October the Court of Appeal not only refused
a government application to overturn the decision to grant Palestine Action leave
to apply for JR, it also added 2 further grounds for appeal.
It is
clear to anyone who has actually read the Court
of Appeal decision that it was heavily influenced by the fact that over
2,000 people (now 3,000+) had been arrested for defying the proscription of Palestine
Action.
It was
not clear however to Phil Bevin and his co-conspiracists. In a blog Bevin
took exception to my suggestion that the mass arrests might have had something
to do with the decision of the Court of Appeal. Bevin argued that
there are actually two
points to consider regarding the Court of Appeal decision:
1. whether the level of
public support has a bearing on appealing the proscription;
2. whether the
processes of appealing the proscription of a group (POAC – Proscribed
Organisation Appeal Commission) , which is the route the Government wanted to
prioritise over the high court appeal, and challenge to the legality of the
Government’s original proscription of Palestine Action via the High Court, are
separate.
Naturally
for a conspiracy theorist who had attacked the protests, the second alternative
won out. Unsurprisingly Bevin echoed the Court of Appeal’s rationale, stating
that ‘The Court of Appeal has in fact
based its decision on the second point’.
Well as
Mandy Rice-Davies said, ‘they would,
wouldn’t they’.’ It is highly unlikely that the Court of Appeal would come
right out and say that but for the protests they would have upheld the government
appeal. The surprising thing though is that they as good as did confess that
the protests had had a major impact on their decision.
If you go
to paragraph 59 of Huda
Ammori v Secretary of State for the Home Department
you will read:
It is
blindingly obvious that the Court of Appeal’s decision was indeed due to the
mass protests. However if you have
staked everything, including your reputation, on slandering and denigrating the
protests as counterproductive, alongside a group of mad Maoists, then it is
very difficult to climb down. If your reputation rests on a series of false,
conspiratorial lies, backing down and admitting you are wrong is difficult.
Most
people find eating humble pie disagreeable and indigestible. Bevin and fellow
conspiracists are not the first people to find it so and they won’t be the
last. David Aaronovitch promised
to gorge lashings of the stuff if he was proven wrong over the Iraq War.
Unfortunately he didn’t keep his promise.
However
there is no way of reading the above other than accepting that the protests
have led to the brink of the proscription of Palestine Action being declared
unlawful. It may turn out that at the
last hurdle the High Court will nonetheless uphold Yvette Cooper’s decision to
equate a protest group with a terrorist group.
Given
that the definition of ‘terrorism’ is so wide in the Terrorism Act 2000
that is still a possibility. See Conor
Crummey: The Principle of Legality, the Definition of ‘Terrorism’, and
Palestine Action
The
presence of the two Brars as company directors suggests that this nonsense
originates with the CPGB-Marxist Leninist, a small Stalin worshipping Maoist
group. You
can read their letter to DOJ, in the name of Right to Protest Ltd., here. The
first question is why the Brars haven’t written it in the name of their own
organisation. Joti Brar also
doubles as the President of the Stalin Society and was Vice-Chair of the
Workers Party before George Galloway got rid of her.
Bevin
has been much put out by my rebuttal of his nonsense and issued A response to defamatory statements. He
can make defamatory statements a plenty but he finds them obnoxious when he is
on the receiving end. He didn’t
like my accusation that he is a conspiracy nut or anti-Semitic, despite him giving
full backing to David Miller own conspiracy theories.
However
Bevin has had no hesitation in attacking individuals in DOJ. People such as
Clive Dolphin, who worked at Lockheed Martin. It is as if
we should condemn forever people who have worked in arms factories. They bear
the mark of Cain.
Tim
Crosland, who used to be a government lawyer, is a particular target. Tim has
been upfront about his decision to resign government service and he has now
been charged under s.12(1) of the Terrorism Act, which carries a 14 year
sentence.
Even
I came under attack for having ‘a family connection to the IDF’. My brother lives in Israel
and has for a long time. He will therefore have served in the army although he’s
too old to do so now. However according to
the McCarthyite playbook of Bevin and co. I am somehow tarred with the same
brush. This is the methodology of our conspiracy theorists.
Phil Bevin ranting
Bevin
and co. have never risked anything. They seem to think that once you have taken
the government’s shilling that you will never redeem yourself. This argument, I
have to confess, leaves me cold. If Tim had hidden his past then it would be a
different matter but he has been quite open about it.
Edward Snowden
As a friend remarked, perhaps we should
damn Edward
Snowden too because he once worked for the CIA even though he betrayed the secrets of
how they and other government agencies spied on the public. Chelsea Manning is
equally suspect, despite having been prosecuted because she too was an army intelligence
analyst.
I
contacted former activists in Palestine Action to get their take on this groups
activities and their first response was ‘They
are nuts mate. And they have been trying to trick people.’
‘These people, never met them, put
2 & 2 together and make 85 – its literally madness.’
And that just about sums it up.
One
of the methods of the conspiracy theorists is to take any disagreement in the government
or civil service as proof of collusion. The Guardian ran an article about how government advisers told ministers that banning Palestine
Action could make it more popular. It is quite normal for the civil service to
advise Ministers about proposed legislation. It is for Ministers to either accept
or reject that advice. Yvette Cooper, being a rich, thick, white and racist ‘feminist’,
chose to ignore that advice. Why?
Probably
because of the Zionist campaign against PA. The misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism, which is a
charity despite being funded by the Israeli state, had long been campaigning
for the proscription of Palestine Action. When Palestine Action was proscribed,
the CAA claimed
victory. The CAA were not the only Zionist group to campaign for proscription. We Believe in Israel also urged
their supporters to write to their MP demanding action.
This
was the backdrop to the proscription of PA. Zionist organisations, Elbit, Lord
Walney – the government’s sex pest advisor on ‘extremism’ had all been mounting
a campaign calling for PA’s proscription. Bevin and his co-conspiracy theorists
knew better.
When the Guardian
published an article on 11 November “Advisers told ministers banning Palestine Action could make it more
popular” which evaluated the possible consequences of proscribing Palestine
Action Cooper decided to steam ahead, not because she disagreed with the advice
but because she wanted to make Palestine Action more popular according to Bevin and his co-conspiracists!
If you
follow the conspiracy it was because she wanted to use the inevitable protests
as an excuse for more repressive legislation. Defend Our Juries according to
Bevin’s theory saw its chance to help
Cooper achieve her objectives.
The advice of the civil servants
was that PA was a‘small single issue group with lower mainstream media exposure’ than
other direct action groups such as Just Stop Oil.’ The Advisors suggested there was a ‘growing frustration with Israeli
military methods and actions in Gaza’ and that ‘60% of Britons believed Israel had
gone too far in the war in Gaza.’
Bevin’s
conclusion?
Ministers intended
to raise Palestine Action’s public profile through proscription and that Defend
our Juries has played a significant role in serving that agenda via its “Lift
the Ban” campaign, leading to the arrest of thousands of activists.
Bevin
then had a detour to attack another favourite target, Roger Hallam, who has just served a prison
sentence. Hallam is
a
psyop and/or security apparatus backed provocation - has links to the US
national security apparatus. I won’t bore you with the tedious details of this conspiracy [thank god! – TG] but it is of a piece with all the other conspiracies.
Bevin
lays out two scenarios. One is that ignoring the adviser’s advice was a mistake
‘that Defend our Juries have since sought
to exploit.’ The other scenario which Bevin prefers is that
raising
Palestine Action’s profile was the purpose of the proscription, which provided
the opportunity for Defend our Juries to act as agent provocateurs, driving
activists into the net of the police. In my view, the following evidence weighs
the case in favour of the second interpretation:
In
support of his thesis Bevin cites ‘the
curious failure of the police to close down DoJ’s online communications’
but he is wrong. Twice the Police contacted Zoom who closed down the activists’
meetings at their request.’
The actions
of DOJ are in a long line of similar protests stretching back to defiance of the
Combination
Acts by trade unionists resulting in the transportation of the Tolpuddle
Martyrs. There have been many similar acts of defiance of unjust laws –
Chartists, Suffragettes, Anti-fascists and anti-racists. If Bevin and his
myriad conspiracy theorists had their way then no struggle would ever have been
successful because when setting out on a campaign people would have been
overawed by the strength of the state.
Anyway
come and hear the debate on Thursday at 7.15 pm. and decide for yourself
whether the conspiracy theorists and loony tunes have got it right or not.
Tony
Greenstein
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