By Labelling Direct Action as Terrorism Britain’s Judiciary Have Become Complicit in Support for Genocide – Jeremy Johnson is Britain’s Roland Freisler
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Cameras in Court | Home Office wins appeal over Palestine Action ban
I won’t waste words on Jeremy Johnson, a man with no
discernible talents that a Judge in Hitler’s Germany didn’t possess. He would
have been a perfect Third Reich judge. 77%
of senior Justice Ministry officials in West Germany in
1957 were former members of the Nazi party and between 1,100 and 1,200 Nazi
judges served
as public prosecutors and judges in West Germany.
Johnson is in a long line of British judges with no
moral compass, honesty or integrity. He was the go
to lawyer for MI6 and the Ministry of Defence. He was also responsible
for reducing the sentence on Tommy Robinson.
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“The way that we respond to this is by fighting even harder, that every struggle has its setbacks. But we are going to win in the end. We can’t give in. We can’t be deterred”
— Huda Ammori (@HudaAmmori) June 16, 2026
My interview with the Guardian on the Court of Appeal ruling on Palestine Actionhttps://t.co/KsIug2BLXO
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His instruction that the jury be kept in ignorance
of the fact that the Filton 4 would be sentenced as terrorists, even though they
weren’t charged with terrorism, marks a new low, for our ‘justice’ system. We
can expect this reactionary Court of Appeal to uphold the decision to prevent
the Filton 4 defending themselves. British justice today is a charade when
defences such as Necessity have been removed. Judges have become the legal icing
on the merchants of death.
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Johnson attempted to refer Rajiv Memon KC for
contempt of court for informing the jury of their rights to disregard his
directions and find the defendants not guilty. The Court of Appeal rejected
that one because even a law student should know that such a referral has to go
to the Attorney General.
The Court of
Appeal’s Reference to the Suffragettes as ‘Peaceful’ Demonstrates the Depths of
Their Ignorance
Chief Justice
Sue Carr Rewrites History - 'Unlike Palestine Action the Suffragettes Were
Peaceful'
Sue Carr and her four judicial pygmies pretend that they
are independent of the Executive but, as the Court of Appeal in the Palestine Action
case
last Monday proved, they are as independent as a dog on a leash is independent of
its owner. The snarling of Johnson and Carr marks them out as devoted servants
of the security state.
They don’t need to have to be told what to do by
government ministers. They know where their class loyalty lies. As the Law
Gazette pointed
out
senior judges are the most socially exclusive of all professions. The Report, Elitist Britain showed
that 65% of senior judges were educated at an independent school and 75%
attended Oxford or Cambridge. Sue Carr went to an independent private girl’s school and
then onto Trinity College, Cambridge.
This Minister’s Question
Should SHOCK You
The mores of the upper classes find their reflection
in their judgements. Only a fool would maintain that their privileged
background had no bearing on their decisions. Political prejudice oozes out of
every pore of these wretches. Their racist and anti-working class judgements
flow from their class allegiances.
The Genocide in Gaza has demonstrated that British
Judges are willing to ignore both history and the law when it suits them. Sue Carr
said
that Palestine Action
is not as it claims a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open, it is covert group operating in cells. Palestine Action activities have caused injuries. [36.08]
Tim Crosland of Defend Our Juries reaction to the Court of Appeal banning of Palestine Action
The Suffragettes and non-Violence
The first lie is that damage to property is violence.
It is indicative of the mentality that considers property more important than
people.
Between 1912 and 1914, the Women's Social and
Political Union (WSPU) conducted hundreds of attacks across the UK, including
bombings and arson. Christabel Pankhurst declared
in 1913 that:
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‘If men use explosives and bombs for their own purpose they call it war, and the throwing of a bomb that destroys other people is then described as a glorious and heroic deed. Why should a woman not make use of the same weapons as men. It is not only war we have declared. We are fighting for a revolution!’
This was not mere rhetoric. Today it is recognised
that those who opposed the Suffragettes, including the judges of the time, were
reactionaries whose arguments were indefensible.
The attitude of Authorities
was vehemently hostile. On Black Friday, 18
November 1910
Lines of police and crowds
of male bystanders met three hundred female protestors outside the Houses of
Parliament; the women were attacked for the next six hours. Many women
complained about the sexual nature of the assaults, which included having their
breasts twisted and pinched. Police arrested 4 men and 115 women, although the
following day all charges were dropped. The conciliation committee were angered
by the accounts, and undertook interviews with 135 demonstrators, nearly all of
whom described acts of violence against the women; 29 of the statements included
details of sexual assault. Calls for a public inquiry were rejected by Winston
Churchill, then Home Secretary.
The violence
may have caused the subsequent deaths of two suffragettes. The demonstration
led to a change in approach: many members of the WSPU were unwilling to risk
similar violence, so they resumed their previous forms of direct action—such as
stone-throwing and window-breaking
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The Police were as hostile then to
the Suffragettes as they are to anti-Zionists and Palestine actionists. The
Judiciary were equally hostile
though they now like to pretend that the Suffragettes were in the best of
British traditions. The Judiciary have always supported the most reactionary
political sections of British society.
During the 1909 trial of
suffragettes in Bristol Justice
Grantham declared
that their actions were "entirely unwomanly."
Such women were considered
‘unladylike, unwomanly and unsexed!
Lord Chief Justice Alverstone in 1913 presiding over major
trials of the WSPU leaders, consistently framed the suffragettes' direct action
as a descent into irrationality and madness, arguing that true English
womanhood should be defined by quiet domestic influence.
Magistrates at Bow Street Police Court routinely dismissed
suffragette defences as the ramblings of "hysterical women,"
explicitly noting that the movement relied on
emotional distress rather than logical or political strategy.
The Arrest of Peaceful 'Terrorists' in Trafalgar Square
The Suffragettes As Terrorists
On the very same day that Yvette Cooper introduced
the motion banning Palestine Action she
turned up in the House of Commons in the colours of the
Suffragettes – purple. Ignorance and hypocrisy are the hallmarks of our ruling
class.
If there was any group of protesters who deserved to
be classified as terrorists it was the Suffragettes. Twice Chief Justice, Sue
Carr, said that the Suffragettes were a peaceful direct action group unlike the
violent Palestine Action.
Palestine Action characterises itself as a non-violent direct action protest group following in the footsteps of the suffragettes and the campaigns against apartheid and the Iraq war.
In our judgement that premise was seriously flawed. It was not a sustainable proposition to portray Palestine Action as a non violent organisation and not accurate for Ms Ammori to paint Palestine Action as an ordinary protest group falling within the tradition of peaceful protest.
And
Carr wittered on:
Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawfully promotes violence amounting to terrorism. It is not as it claims a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the Suffragettes operating transparently in the open, it is a covert group operating in cells. Palestine Action activities have caused injuries.
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Even a cursory acquaintance with the facts would
have demonstrated that Carr’s assertions were one long lie.
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On 20 November 1909 a suffragette attacked
Winston Churchill with a horse whip on the platform of Bristol railway station.
In the same month, Selina Martin and Lesley Hall, disguised as orange sellers
and, armed with a catapult and missiles, attacked Prime Minster Asquith’s car
in Liverpool.
In 2010 in Battersea, a clerk suffered burns as he tried
to stop a suffragette throwing a liquid over the papers of an MP. Newspapers
(and even the accounts of the suffragettes) prove that there were numerous
instances where injuries occurred, and that personal risk, or even death, was
great.
In 1912
Suffragettes attempted to set fire to the Theatre Royal in Dublin during a
packed lunchtime matinee attended by Asquith. They left a canister of gunpowder
close to the stage and threw petrol and lit matches into the projection booth
which contained highly combustible film reels. Earlier in the day, Mary Leigh
had hurled a hatchet towards Asquith, which narrowly missed him cutting John
Redmond MP on the ear.
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Also in 1912
Glasgow Art Gallery has its glass cases smashed. Bank and post office windows
were smashed from Kew to Gateshead. In September 23 trunk telegraph wires were
cut on the London road at Potters Bar and on 28 November simultaneous attacks
on post boxes occurred across the entire country. By the end of year, 240
people had been sent to prison for militant suffragette activities.
In 1913,
a suffragette attacked the glass cabinets in the Jewel House at the Tower of
London while in Dundee four postmen were severely injured by phosphorus
chemicals left in post boxes. In Dumbarton 20 telegraph wires were cut; Kew
Gardens orchid house was attacked and its teahouse burnt down. In Ilford, three
streets had their fire alarm wires destroyed and Saunderton railway station was
destroyed.
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In 1914 the destruction continued. Mary Richardson
slashed the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery. London saw a wave of cultural
violence: The British Museum had mummy cases smashed, and bombs were discovered
in St Paul’s and the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where a postcard was left bearing
the message, ‘Put your religion into
practice and give the women freedom.’
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Filton Protest 12 June 26 Speakers inc. Tim Crosland and a member of the jury at the first trial
Suffragette bombing and arson campaign
The arson attacks put Palestine Action to shame. A
£2,000 house at Cheam was burnt as was Croxley Green Railway Station. Lady
White’s house at Staines (£3,000) and a house near Chorley Wood were burnt. So
was a railway-carriage at Teddington. The house of Arthur Du Cros was burnt at
St. Leonards. In Tunbridge Wells the Cricket Pavilion was burnt. Fulham Park
Bowling Green Pavilion was burnt as was Farington Hall, near Dundee, with
damage estimated at £20,000. See National Archives Suffragettes on File.
Did they
injure anyone? Were the Suffragettes Non-Violent?
The official directive from the WSPU leadership was
to damage property and disrupt the economy without taking human lives. However,
their explosive devices and arson attacks directly injured dozens of people.
At least 24 people were injured
(including two suffragettes) as a direct result of their bombs and fires. Bombs
were placed on busy train carriages and in public spaces like Dublin theatres.
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The Suffragettes weren’t terrorists. But to describe
Palestine Action as a terrorist group compared to the Suffragettes is ludicrous.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn this decision then it too will hold its
head in shame for its dishonesty.
That all 5 judges were unanimous suggests that the
judiciary will do anything to support the genocide in Palestine.
Sue Carr emphasised the covert nature of Palestine
Action as if when planning a factory occupation it is a condition of being a
protest group that one must do it openly. Did the Suffragettes openly plan
their arson campaigns? Of course not. To suggest otherwise is deceitful.
Genocide and a Lawful
Business
The Court of Appeal referred repeatedly to the
operations of Elbit as lawful. Palestine Action’s ‘operations were intended to
close down the operations of a company pursuing lawful business.’ Elbit’s
manufacture of quad copter drones are anything but lawful. They have been
repeatedly used to kill children as Professor Nizam Mamode told
the International Development Committee.
Israeli soldiers have boasted of killing children and posted videos
to that effect.
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The International
Criminal Court Act 2001 s.53 [ICCA] makes being
ancillary to genocide or war crimes a criminal offence. Elbit is doing exactly
this yet our judges turn a blind eye to this. How can this be lawful? The Judges
have taken a conscious decision to turn a blind eye to Elbit operations.
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On 12 November 2025 the Court of Appeal rejected an appeal against a
decision to permit the UK government licensing F-35 parts that reach Israel.
The Court declined to rule on the UK government’s assessment of genocide,
stating that this was not for the courts but the government to decide.
Which other laws will the judges leave
to the government to interpret. What then is the role of the Judges?
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The Court of Appeal decided, on the
basis of three alleged terrorist incidents, to proscribe Palestine Action as a
terrorist group, not because it was a terrorist group but because ‘proscribing Palestine Action would
offer significant disruptive benefits including recruitment, operating model
and finances’. This was
despite accepting that ‘there may
be many people subject to this chilling effect’ on free speech under
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights as a direct result of the
proscription decision.
As
Mark Zuehlke wrote
about the Nazi Judge Roland Freisler:
Before the war, Freisler had argued that anybody committing a crime against the state should be considered a terrorist
This is the judicial philosophy of Sue Carr and the judicial
dwarves who made up the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal
conducted what is known as a test of proportionality, whether banning Palestine
Action was disproportionate in terms of its effect on free speech and
unsurprisingly the Court found it wasn’t. This was a wholly artificial exercise
in which irrelevant factors such as the effect on Palestine Action’s
organisation were taken into account. They engaged in a circular argument
because they based it on the assumption that Palestine Action was a terrorist
group.
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The Court of Appeal cited as proof ‘the panic among staff as pyrotechnics and
smoke bombs were thrown.’ So anyone throwing a smoke bomb is now a
terrorist? Terrorism has traditionally been seen as the domain of explosives
and guns. Now it is pyrotechnics and smoke bombs.
The Cambridge English Dictionary defines ‘terrorism’
as ‘violent
action
or threats
designed
to cause
fear
among ordinary
people,
in order
to achieve
political aims.’
The Collins English dictionary has a similar definition.
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According
to
Dr Kshitij Prabha of Columbia University
‘Terrorism is the use of violence, especially murder and bombing, in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to do something.’
Palestine Action doesn’t even remotely come near these
definitions of terrorism yet the Court of Appeal has gone along with the idea that
dissident groups that damage property are ‘terrorist. As George Orwell noted:
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.
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We live in an Upside Down Society where opponents of
Genocide are gaoled and the Merchants of Death are lauded.
There is only one thing that will prevent the Court
of Appeal having the last word on the proscription of Palestine Action and that
is if enough people are prepared to defy the law.
Historically freedom of speech and democratic rights
were not handed to us on a plate. The fight for our rights was won, not because
of judges but despite them. Judges have always been on the wrong side of these
struggles. Today’s Court of Appeal dresses up its support for repressive bans
with phrases like ‘national security’’ but the greatest threat to our security
comes from those who would take away our basic civil liberties in the cause of
supporting genocide.
Filton Protest 12
June 2026 drumming and protesting
In the battle to convict anti-genocide protesters we
have pathetic creatures like David Lammy abolishing the right to trial by jury
because juries are the one independent element in our ‘justice’ system.
From the Tolpuddle Martyrs, whom Sir
John Williams ordered to be transported to Australia, to the Suffragettes,
Judges have been on the side of repression. They presided over strict licensing
laws for the press, the Star Chamber, sweeping treason acts and prosecutions
for seditious libel. Crown-aligned judges actively enforced these tools to
suppress dissent, famously ruling that the jury could only decide if a text was
published, not if it was illegal.
The case of Edward Bushell in 1670 is the most
famous case in British history. It was this case which established the independence of the jury from the Judge. Jeremy
Johnson forbade the barristers to mention this case.
The last government prosecuted Trudy Warner
for reminding jury members of their right to acquit defendants regardless of
the wishes of the Judge. When taken to the High Court it was thrown
out by Judge Sani who said that:
It is fanciful to suggest that Ms Warner’s behaviour falls into the category of contempt. The category is limited to threatening, intimidatory, abusive conduct or other forms of harassment.
Judge Sani said there
was a well-established principle in law of jury equity; this was a de facto power to acquit a defendant
regardless of the judge’s directions. The principle in law had been tested in
the highest courts in England and Wales and existed in other countries such as
Canada and the US.
In Bushell two Quakers, William Penn and
William Meade were prosecuted for preaching to an unlawful assembly. It was a
crime to preach to a religious assembly of more than five people unless you
were of the Church of England. They stood trial at the Old Bailey and at the
end of the evidence, the judge directed the jury to convict, but the jury
refused to do so.
The judge was furious, and stated that the
jury would not be dismissed until they did so. The jury again refused to
convict. The judge remanded the entire jury in custody for two days and ordered
that they be denied food, water and chamber pot.
As the jurors were being taken from court to
prison, William Penn, it is said, shouted out, “You are Englishmen, mind
your privilege, give not away your right”, to which one member of the jury,
Edward Bushell, replied, “Nor shall we ever do.” When the jury returned
to court two days later, the judge again ordered them to convict. The jury
refused.
The judge fined the jury for contempt of
court and remanded them in custody until the fines were paid. Eight jurors paid
but four refused, and one of those was Bushel, who petitioned the Court of
Common Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, which if granted, would result
in his immediate release from custody.
The higher court issued that writ, and Bushel
and the other three were released, establishing
the right of a jury to return a verdict without fear of punishment from
the trial judge.
This is one of the most celebrated cases in
British legal history. There’s a marble plaque inside the Old Bailey which
reads as follows:
Near this site, William Penn and William Meade were tried in 1670 for preaching to an unlawful assembly in Grace Church Street. This tablet commemorates the courage and endurance of the jury, Thomas Veer, Edward Bushel, and 10 others who refused to give a verdict against them, although locked up without food for two nights and were fined for their final verdict of not guilty. The case of these jurymen was reviewed on a writ of habeas corpus, and Chief Justice Vaughan delivered the opinion of the court, which established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions.
British Judges Have Become
Increasingly Reactionary
There was a period during the 1980s to 2000s when the Court
of Appeal and House of Lords/Supreme Court were relatively liberal under judges
like Thomas Bingham, Lord Woolf, Peter Taylor, Johann Steyn, Brenda Hale,
Anthony Hooper, Stephen Sedley and Lord Hope.
Today we have a gaggle of senior judges who are judicial
pygmies. Sue Carr’s bizarre citing of the Suffragettes should disqualify her
from judging a game of tiddlywinks. She and her fellow judges are fond of
referring to ‘national security’ when it is the security of their class that
they mean.
Genocide and the bombing and burning alive of children and
their parents in tents is an abstraction to them. They are racist to the core with
a police state mentality. There is no scenario in which Palestine Action is a
threat to ‘national security’. Not supporting Israel’s genocide is not a threat
to national security but a threat to Britain’s imperialist alliances.
If anything is a threat to national security it is Israel’s perpetual
wars. With it attack on Iran it caused a rise in fuel prices as well as causing
instability in the Middle East.
In my view there is no doubt that there is a body of judges
who would like to overturn the case of Edward Bushell. If the government had
appealed the decision of Judge Sani to the Court of Appeal they might have. Jury
Equity or Nullification is likely to come under attack in the future.
Jeremy Johnson’s decision, in a hearing kept secret from the
jury, that if found guilty of criminal damage, the Filton defendants would be
guilty of terrorism, defied the most basic legal principles. For justice to be
done it has to be seen to be done. As Geoffrey Robertson said:
It is a foundational principle of English law that
no one should be convicted of an offense that has not been charged and
proven.... The principle of the Elbit Four case is larger than they are. The
British state has redefined civil disobedience as terrorism
It will be interesting to see whether the Court of Appeal resorts
to another dishonest legal subterfuge in upholding Johnson’s decision.
The Court of Appeal verdict in the Palestine Action case is
so shoddy that the Supreme Court will have difficulty upholding it. However it
is likely that they will make the attempt.
That is why we should aim in the next few months to building
a mass movement of defiance. We should aim for at least 10,000 people willing
to be arrested for the ‘crime’ of opposing genocide and supporting Palestine
Action.
We should also make Jeremy Johnson feel the full force of
public disapproval. Whenever he speaks in public or deigns to lecture others he
should be reminded that he is only fit to be a judge in a fully fledged police
state.
That is why I have compared him to Hitler’s favourite judge, Roland Freisler. Freisler
died when the Americans bombed the court house he was sitting in. It is
probably too much to hope for a similar fate for His Honour Judge Jeremy
Johnson.
Tony Greenstein
See The
Belfast riots, Palestine Action protests. What is terrorism now – and why the
hypocrisy? George
Monbiot
A Very Short History of Freedom of Speech
The
Judiciary Exits the Scene - The Palestine Action Ban in the England and Wales
Court of Appeal
Punishing Protest as
Terrorism – Geoffrey Robertson KC
Breaking
down the Court of Appeal judgment on Palestine Action’s proscription Liberty
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