Peter Hain on Palestine Action 'terrorism' appeal & Labour party's support for apartheid PM 30Jul25

The Labour peer Peter Hain, who was a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in the UK and who led the direct action protests that disrupted South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969 and 1970, has told peers that he is “deeply ashamed” that his party is banning Palestine Action. (See 4.48pm.) He was speaking in a Lords debate to approve the order banning the group. Peers have just voted, and the amendment condeming the ban was voted down, by 144 votes to 16.

16.48 BST
Peter Hain says anti-apartheid campaigners would have been treated as terrorists under logic used to ban Palestine Action

The Labour peer Peter Hain, who was a leading anti-apartheid campaigner in the UK and who led the direct action protests that disrupted South African rugby and cricket tours in 1969 and 1970, told peers that he was “deeply ashamed” that his party was banning Palestine Action.

If he was doing that today, he would be “stigmatised as a terrorist, rather than vilified, as indeed I then was”, he said. He went on:

That militant action could have been blocked by this motion [the order banning Palestine Action] as could other anti-apartheid activity, including militant protests to stop Barclays Bank recruiting new students on university campuses, eventually forcing Barclays to withdraw from apartheid South Africa.

Remember also that Nelson Mandela was labelled a “terrorist” by the apartheid government, by British prime minister Maragret Thatcher, by the United States and other Western governments during much of the Cold War.

Mandela even remained on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008, many years after becoming South Africa’s first democratically elected president and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.

After his African National Congress had been banned, Nelson Mandela was convicted for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the apartheid government when he backed armed struggle despite strongly opposing the very essence of terrorism: namely violent and indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians.

Nevertheless, he became a global icon and in 1996 President Mandela addressed both Houses of this Parliament in Westminster Hall.

Hain said the suffragettes would have been banned under the same logic,

The suffragettes too have gained iconic status, treated as heroines today. Yet they could have been suppressed under this proscription. They used violence against property in a strategic manner to demand voting rights for women as part of civil disobedience protests when their peaceful protests seemed futile.

They intended to highlight the injustice of denying women the vote and to provoke a reaction that kept the issue in the public eye. Like Nelson Mandela, they were vilified at the time, including in strident denunciations by members of this house …

They even hid small homemade bombs inside mailboxes and attempted to bomb Westminster Abbey and Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s uncompleted house.

Frankly Palestine Action members spraying paint on military aircraft at Brize Norton seems positively moderate by comparison. And those alleged to have done this are being prosecuted for criminal damage – as indeed they should be.

Hain said that “real terrorists” were groups like al-Qaida and Islamic State, who have killed thousands of people.

He ended:

This government is treating Palestine Action as equivalent to Islamic State or al-Qaida, which is intellectually bankrupt, politically unprincipled and morally wrong. Frankly I am deeply ashamed. And that is why I support this regret amendment.

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