A few months ago in the back of a police van in Liverpool, a 94-year-old Jewish human rights barrister turned to the officer sitting beside her and asked a simple question. “You didn’t join the police force to do this, did you?” The officer, Margaret Owen told me, began to cry.
Owen had spent months trying to get herself arrested, placing a placard in the window of her home that read “Stop the genocide in Gaza. I support Palestine Action.” She took a picture of it and sent it to the police, and, as a lawyer, added a helpful note explaining that she had broken the law and that they should arrest her. They didn’t come – she suspects they knew exactly how it would look – but Merseyside Police, on the opening day of Labour’s conference in September, were less bothered, apprehending her for supporting a proscribed group.
That is the scene the five justices of the Supreme Court were really being asked to judge this week – not whether Palestine Action broke the law, but whether the state that responded to this group protesting a genocide in Gaza by arresting supporters under the Terrorism Act had lost its sense of proportion. In February, the High Court said it had, and in June the Court of Appeal said it had not. The appeal by Huda Ammori, the co-founder of Palestine Action, was heard yesterday and today in the Supreme Court. Its ruling will be the last word any British court will have – and if the justices rule against the government, thousands of people facing trial for supporting the group will have their terror charges quashed.