Palestine Action Is Putting Britain’s Government to Shame
In February, a series of court rulings in Britain exonerated activist group Palestine Action and released most of its jailed activists. Yet the government continues to call it a terrorist operation in its attempt to repress dissent.
The Filton 24 trial concluded with all defendants acquitted of aggravated burglary and three found not guilty of violent disorder. (Lab Ky Mo / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
- Interview by
- Zoe Holman
When a jury at London’s Woolwich Crown Court announced on February 4 that Lottie Head had been found not guilty of aggravated burglary, she broke down and wept. Head had appeared first on an indictment that included six defendants — the first of a total twenty-four to be tried on charges relating to activities by direct-action group Palestine Action at a factory of Israeli arms company Elbit Systems in Filton, near Bristol, in August 2024.
The ten-week trial concluded late this February with all defendants acquitted of aggravated burglary and three found not guilty of violent disorder. The jury was either hung or refused to convict on the remaining charges. Twenty-three of the so-called Filton 24 were granted bail and released, after eighteen months detained in prisons around the country. However, there are also threats of a retrial.
Amid these criminal hearings, a panel of judges at the High Court also concluded on February 13 that the government’s proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization last July — a ban that has since seen almost three thousand demonstrators arrested around the country — was unlawful, following a judicial review brought by the group’s cofounder.
In an interview for Jacobin, Zoe Holman spoke to Lottie Head about the trial and its implications for free speech and Palestine solidarity.
Immediately after the first verdict was handed down in your case, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that it will seek a retrial of all defendants. Will this retrial go ahead?
The CPS has said they want to retry all of us, but we still don’t know when that’s going to be — they could retry us in April [2026] or in February 2027. But it’s definitely going to happen. It’s exactly the same thing as when we were in prison — it’s using the process against us, keeping us in this perpetual uncertainty of “you might be on bail, but you can’t relax, we’re still coming for you.”
That was made really clear a couple of days after the trial, when rather than use our agreed meeting about a retrial in our hearing schedule — i.e., going through the legal court system, as you’re supposed to do — the CPS just announced on Twitter that they would seek a retrial.
So, this is more about indicting you in the public realm, rather than any legalities or form of due process?
Completely. Due process went out the window the moment we were arrested. It just disappeared.
One of the key things to emerge during the trial was the level of violence on the part of security guards at Elbit Systems — for example, body cam footage that showed one guard wielding a whip. This had been airbrushed in a media narrative that sought to demonize Palestine Action by casting you as the violent assailants. What did you experience while at the Filton factory?
We went in mentally prepared to be there for several hours, and within minutes, these security guards came running in, screaming and shouting, immediately being very threatening. Four of the six of us are very small, femme types and we were terrified. We said it in court and it’s true: every instance of physical violence I witnessed was initiated by the security guards — their whole role was to escalate, there was no de-escalation or offers to talk. One of them was shouting “I’m not taking this shit anymore” and it was totally clear what they wanted to happen.
The problem is that so much of the footage showing what the security guards did to us has mysteriously vanished, all that CCTV footage has vanished, even though Elbit is one of the world’s leading surveillance firms. At one point, the prosecution asked us how the whip got into the building in the first place, all the time knowing that they have the footage of the guard bringing it in. So, we have very little evidence that shows the true nature of what happened.
There is footage of one of the guards screaming at me and [fellow Palestine Action activist] Fatema Zainab when we are lying face down on the floor. I’d been pepper sprayed at that point and I remember thinking, “This guy is going to break my arm, he is going to hurt me really badly.” And he just carries on screaming at us, standing over us. It’s a perfect metaphor for the whole thing.
There is also evidence of political interference in your trial — even before October 7, 2023, the Home Office had tried to influence police and prosecutors’ dealings with Palestine Action, telling Elbit Systems that they were cracking down on the group, right?
It’s so pervasive. I’ve been involved in activism for a decade, I’ve seen more than my fair share of how the police and state treat people who disagree with them, yet this whole case has genuinely shocked me. I had very little faith in there being any justice or law and order at all, but I didn’t quite realize how subjective the law is — how it is so completely at the whim of whichever person above who decides what they want the CPS or the police to do. It’s just puppetry.
The problem is that the CPS had tried to argue that Palestine, Israel, and whatever Elbit does, is irrelevant to the case — the argument being that Elbit is a private company. That made it very difficult for us to bring any of it up. But we kept a list for ourselves of the questionable elements of the handling of the trial. For example, there was an email a month after our arrest between the Israeli embassy and the attorney general, talking about counterterrorism. So, then it’s like: Why? If Elbit is a private company and not a representative of Israel, why are you talking to the Israeli embassy about us?
The Home Office has been having meetings with Elbit for years. One of my favorite examples is in 2022, when Priti Patel [at the time, the Tories’ home secretary] was talking to the CEO of Elbit to “reassure” him about Palestine Action. These conversations are not new information. The unlawful proscription of Palestine Action brought attention to a lot of this stuff. For me, it became perfectly clear that they treated us the way they did because they saw an opportunity to use a logic of “terrorism” against us so they could proscribe the group.
So it’s a complete double standard, whereby you are not allowed to talk about Palestine in court because Israel is purportedly irrelevant, yet Israel is allowed to interfere in your trial?
The CPS was originally going to make an argument about Elbit and dispute any of our claims about what this company does in Palestine. But then they decided not to contest it in court because they knew that if they did, that they would lose —because Elbit itself boasts about how it is the biggest weapons factory supporting the Israeli military. It’s a revolving door between the upper echelons of Elbit and the Israeli military and the prosecution knew that — it would be farcical to argue otherwise. There was a very specific reason why we were at the Filton site, it wasn’t just a random visit, but they wanted to make us look like random thugs.
Keir Starmer’s Labour government is making plans to abolish jury trials in many cases. Do you think you would have gotten the same verdict had there not been a jury?
Absolutely not. At every turn in this whole process — whether it’s the police, the counterterrorism unit, the prosecution, the judges, the Home Office — every element of each institution has done its best to deny us of our rights, or to breach parts or the law or ignore it completely. It’s done its best to use us as deterrence to stop people speaking up about Palestine. It was only thanks to the fact that, for now, we still have juries in this country that we got the verdict that we did — because the jury saw the truth.
They don’t have the vested interests, they’re not getting paid off by so-and-so, they’re not doing this as a career move or to make sure they don’t get sacked. They saw the evidence, they saw the truth, and they were able to act accordingly. The authorities think that the general public is stupid, but they’re not. They’ve spent two years watching a genocide, it’s impossible to ignore what’s happening in Palestine. Then they see all this stuff about direct-action groups who are trying to do something to stop it. They see the madness that the right-wing media and the state and the Home Office are coming up with against them. And they know what’s going on, that it’s a smear campaign.
Did you expect such a sympathetic outcome?
Throughout this whole thing, I’ve been bracing myself for the worst. Because frankly, every time there’s been a fork in the road, it has gone badly. You’re just getting slapped down again and again. So I was trying to prepare myself to spend fifteen years in prison.
And it is a relief — to hear that we are not guilty of aggravated burglary, because we never had any intent to go into that building and harm anybody. We know that’s the truth. But the scary thing is, the biggest takeaway from all of this is that sadly the truth doesn’t matter. It is about how it fits into the agenda of the establishment.
In the context of the direction that the UK is going in, do you see your verdict or the judicial review as a kind of victory?
It has been building up to this for a while — every idea of the sanctity of life or human rights is just being stripped away. If there aren’t any standards for the general public to be protected under, all you are left with is a huge mechanism for perpetuating the existing power dynamics of class and wealth. It is terrifying.
So, on one hand, this is a semblance of justice. But it also doesn’t erase the injustice, or the physical, verbal, and emotional abuse we’ve all suffered at the hands of the state and prison service. It doesn’t take away from the fact that we were denied our rights.
On the other hand, I think of Palestinian friends or people with family in Palestine, which is why we did this and why we continue to keep pushing. This isn’t about us — it’s become a nexus for so many political conversations in this country. At the same time, it’s also a distraction, they want the public to forget about the UK’s complicity in mass slaughter and its financial and political support for Israel.
The genocide is ongoing and the ceasefire isn’t a ceasefire. But still, we have to take the small wins. When Palestinian prisoners are released, even if it’s just one person and they are going back to a tent instead of a house, they will still celebrate and be joyful in that moment, because that is how you keep going. We cannot exist off pain and rage alone. You have to have that hope. It’s a choice.