Sarah Helm has spent her working life writing about what states do and what they would rather we didn’t find out. She covered the Middle East for The Sunday Times and was diplomatic editor of The Independent – she even wrote a play about the road to the Iraq war. She is now writing a book about Gaza and on Thursday she added 10 more words to the record.
Responding to the news that Sally Rooney, who has pledged her royalties to Palestine Action, had just been told she could no longer sell her books in Britain, Helm replied on X: “God help us authors who support Palestine and Palestine Action.” For 15 months the British state has treated statements like that one as terrorism – thousands of people have been arrested simply for expressing their support for Palestine Action – but Helm was cleared by the police within 48 hours.
The thing is, Helm is not just a successful journalist and writer – she is married to Jonathan Powell, who was Tony Blair’s chief of staff for the whole of his premiership.
Powell is a man with a mighty reputation and has been closer to the heart of government than most. It was Powell who asked for parts of the infamous weapons dossier to be changed and Powell who, as chief negotiator, was one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement.
Out of government, he has helped bring conflicts to an end by assisting states in negotiating with groups that they call terrorists. He worked on the negotiations that demobilised the Basque separatist group, ETA, in Spain, advised on Colombia’s settlement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC and on the peace negotiations in Mozambique. In 2024 Keir Starmer brought him back into government as the national security adviser, and Andy Burnham kept him on in the job.
So the man who has spent years negotiating with groups that states have called terrorists – the man who literally wrote the book on how to talk to terrorists – now sits at the top of a security apparatus that, in the year to June, made 3,867 arrests for suspected terrorist activity, 94% of which were linked to Palestine Action. To give full context: in the year prior there were just 234 arrests for suspected terrorist activity in total.
The vast majority of those 3,867 recent arrests were under section 13 of the Terrorism Act, which outlaws the wearing or displaying in a public place articles which suggest support for terrorist organisations; the vast majority of these arrests were for holding a sign with the words: “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” – words very similar to those posted in plain English by Powell’s own wife, who faces no consequences.
To be very clear, nobody sensible wants Helm arrested. What many people do want to know is