Protest, Asylum and Conspiracy Theories
A Kafkian summer of discontent
I haven’t written a Substack for a while. I’ve been spending some time away. An opportunity to step back for a bit, recharge and to try and forget, for a moment, what a shit show the world is right now. August is usually a good time to take a step back, a quieter period in the news cycle and in the documentary film industry. Not so this year. Certainly not in the case of the topics I cover at least, which are all broadly connected under the theme of democratic backsliding.
Let’s begin with Defend Our Juries as last week there was a significant new turn of events in that story. For some reading this, this story will already be well known, but for those outside the UK, or not following this closely, I will start with a summary of what got us to where we are today:
A direct-action protest group in the UK, Palestine Action, had been targeting facilities that supply weapons to Israel in an attempt to stop genocide. They got onto a military base (oops, that was embarrassing for the government) and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft. In case you’re wondering why they did that: Britain sends military cargo, flies spy planes over Gaza and refuels U.S./Israeli fighter jets. Despite there being laws in place to prosecute protesters for aggravated trespass and criminal damage, the government moved instead to proscribe the organisation and thus Palestine Action became the first direct-action protest group to be given the status of terrorists. They now sit in the same bucket as Al Qaeda. The government’s claim in the press that they have secret evidence that justifies the proscription is a flimsy one given it has failed to back that up in any way. They haven’t made reference to their ‘secret evidence’ in the open evidence submitted as part of the legal case, an omission that adds to the flimsyness of their claim. When new terrorism legislation was introduced in 2000, and later after 9/11 and the 2005 London bombings, there were voices in parliament who raised their concerns that those laws were drafted so broadly they could be used against groups that weren’t terrorists at all. Prior to the Terrorism Act 2000 proscription could only be applied to groups involved in violence targeting people, not protest-led property damage campaigns. In response MPs were told not to worry, the police and prosecutors would use common sense and discretion. Some ministerial assurances were added but no statutory wording. The door was left open to misuse. In 2025, it appears that this open door may well have been misused. This is also the view of Liberty and Amnesty International who have been granted permission to intervene in the judicial review about the proscription scheduled for November. Quakers have now also requested to intervene. A judicial review allows the courts to examine whether a decision has been made lawfully, fairly and rationally.
In 2023 a campaigning group, Defend Our Juries, came into being when Trudi Warner was arrested for contempt of court for silently holding a placard on the street outside a court informing people that juries have the right to acquit someone on their conscience. This, and thus the emergence of Defend Our Juries, became one of three storylines in my documentary The Line We Crossed. The words on her placard were a fact in law, not misinformation: The right to acquit on your conscience was first established in 1670 and is enshrined in a plaque inside London’s Central Criminal Court. That right has since been reaffirmed by a High Court Judge.
Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: Trudi Warner holding her, now infamous, placard.
In a series of “I am Spartacus” inspired moments hundreds of others held up the same sign that Trudi held, in silence, outside courts across the UK.
Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: human billboards seated outside Southwark Crown Court
Being a silent human billboard became an effective campaigning tactic: The act of sitting down while holding a piece of cardboard in silence is so peaceful it is hard to justify treating these protesters as if they are dangerous criminals; It is an action that is easy for anyone to take - unlike tunneling, climbing high bridges, blocking traffic or breaking into a military airbase which are direct action tactics for the hardy few. And so, in what appears to be the misuse of the Terrorism Act to proscribe an organisation that was not trying to kill anyone but save people from being killed, the campaigning group Defend Our Juries got busy. The day after the proscription, a small group of silent human billboards gathered under the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square in a bid to test the enforcement of this proscription and show their opposition to genocide. They were all promptly arrested, charged under section 13 of the act and given harsh bail conditions. A charge for which they could face up to 6 months in prison. The next weekend more went out across the UK and did the same. They were arrested too. Then more than 1000 people did the same and 521 were arrested.
The hosting company received a request to take down the Defend Our Juries website. A request that they clearly felt compelled to honour as it was duly removed. Their Zoom calls were shut down too. The group found ways around this and were planning a press conference on Zoom last Tuesday about the next sign holding action. That morning a number of Defend Our Juries key spokespeople, including the group’s co-founder and former government lawyer Tim Crosland, had their homes raided and were arrested under section 12 of the terrorism act. They were arrested for allegedly speaking at Zoom meetings, the purpose of which was to brief activists planning to attend these peaceful sign holding protests. Let it be noted, these calls were not covert, they were openly publicised. The arrestees were held in police custody for two nights before appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court last Thursday.
Image: from the film The Line We Crossed: Tim Crosland being interviewed outside The Royal Courts of Justice prior to the Trudi Warner hearing.
The six arrested on Tuesday morning, including Crosland, have all now been charged under section 12 of the act and released with draconian bail conditions. They could face up to 14 years in prison for this crime. Their case now reverts to The Old Bailey on 26 September. The Old Bailey is the central criminal court in London and it is where they send murderers.
Remember that judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action I mentioned above? Well, on the same day Crosland and the other defendants appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court, The Home Office were successful in their appeal to challenge the decision to grant a judicial review of the proscription. It is now not clear if it will go ahead or not.
Despite the arrest of the Defend Our Juries spokespeople the sign-holding action on Saturday went ahead. Undeterred, in fact most likely spurred on by the government’s extreme response, 1500 people joined the protest and held the same signs. 875 of them were arrested for displaying articles in support of Palestine Action. So by my tally this means more than 1500 people have now been arrested for terrorism for peaceful signholding. For context, only 248 people were arrested under terrorism laws in the UK in 2024.
Mimicking the design of her first, now infamous placard, Trudi Warner created a new sign to hold up during Saturday’s action: “POLICE, OTHER JOBS ARE AVAILABLE”. You have to wonder what the police are thinking as they cart off hundreds of peaceful people, most of them quite elderly, some with mobility issues and others such as Mike Higgins, a blind wheelchair user, whose arrest became a viral sensation.
And so we find ourselves in the land of the absurd. You are now deemed a serious danger to the public for committing the crime of silently holding up a placard for, essentially, showing your concern about people being killed in a genocide.
Which begs the question as to why our government is responding in this way? In a counter-factual scenario, what would have happened if the police had used that discretion we were assured of when the new Terrorism Act was being debated? MP Stella Creasy made the point in parliament yesterday that “there is a difference between people protesting using violence and people protesting the use of proscription”. What if they had just let those first sign-holders be? The campaigning group would have been able to announce a small moral victory but it is unlikely that it would have ended up being the headline news it has become. The resources put into policing and trying these peaceful signholders could have instead been deployed against criminals who were actually causing harm to citizens. Is this Starmer and his posse just being pig headed? Are they responding to criticisms from the Far Right of “two tier policing”? What is certain is, they’re not reading the mood in the room. Everyone is seeing the pictures of starving children in Gaza and most people in Britain are horrified by it. Arresting peaceful people who oppose genocide isn’t a good look. But yet, effectively, that is what they are doing.
What this proscription highlights, and that of the actions of the protesters campaigning against it, is the extent to which our rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association have been eroded as a result of laws that have been introduced over recent years, laws that are so broadly drafted they are open to abuse. When we consider that they are being used like this under a Labour government it is even more chilling: How might these laws be used if we find ourselves with a Far Right government after the next round of elections?
These haven’t been the only protests taking place during my brief time away. The protests outside asylum hotels kicked off again this summer too, and immigration has shot to the top of the political charts in the UK. Lucy Connolly has been heralded by the Far Right as a political prisoner. Her crime? Inciting racial hatred and an intent to stir up serious violence after urging people to “set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers” in a social media post after falsely believing the The Southport attack was carried out by a Muslim asylum seeker who had come to the country on a boat. Let it be noted that days later protesters did actually set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. She was given a 31 month sentence and was released in August after serving 40% of her sentence. On Saturday, while the peaceful sign-holders were being arrested, Connolly took the stage to loud cheers at The Reform conference and was introduced as a “living symbol of two-tier Britain.” Reform has jumped on the free speech wagon in a twisted libertarian-style echo of how Trump and his MAGA supporters have used it.
In 2023 I spent time with some middle-aged MAGA women in America who too shared and acted on misinformation spread online. They ended up spending time in prison for storming The Capitol on Jan 6. (That film, The Conspiracists is being released in the UK later this year - check below for details). The women I met are so far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole that it is hard to see a way back for them. In both instances, whether it be The Capitol or British hotels being attacked, it is clear to see how dangerous disinformation powered by social media can become. And, it feels unstoppable.
Image: from the film The Conspiracists: Ethnographer Noelle Cook in conversation with two MAGA women featured in the film.
I have been making a film over a period of 3 years now about how our right to asylum is under threat, yet another example of the current democratic backsliding we are experiencing. In that pursuit, I have been following the progress of a number of asylum seekers who have made the journey to the UK across The Channel in a small boat. Years later they are all still stuck in the system awaiting a resolution. They don’t want to be in those hotels either, but the failure of the previous government to process asylum claims humanely or efficiently has led us there.
Video: a video clip I made back in August 2023 to open an event about my films. 2 years later and nothing much seems to have changed, except perhaps to say the situation has worsened.
I’ve been inside one of the asylum hotels and it was not a nice place and I definitely did not feel safe. It wasn’t some kind of budget hotel experience that I had naively imagined it might be, but a repurposed former hotel. It was a place that immediately crushed your soul. The entrance was tightly controlled by security guards. Many of the walls were boarded up, as if in a building site. There was a sense of threat as you walked down the corridor, and you sure as hell didn’t hang around outside your room for long. Better to shut yourself away. The asylum seeker I was with that day told me he could see a woman from his window, and she would cry all day long. He would make her a heart sign with his hands, but felt helpless because there was nothing more he could do to help her. While I was there, there was a knock at the door. A paper bag with an insufficient meal had been left outside for him. That was dinner. A row of matching paper bags were lined up on the small table in his room, a week of paper bag meals. Before I arrived at the hotel I had thought, at least he is safe, has a bed to sleep in and a place to wash. When I left the hotel I felt very differently. This particular hotel was in a dead area, there was nowhere to go. Its residents would just lurk around in the car park when they needed air. The backdrop was a ring road and a pile of black rubbish bags and nothing much else. Everyone I have met who has taken that perilous journey on a small boat has told me they are just looking for somewhere where they can feel safe to live. They thought that the UK would be that place. If Lucy Connolly is anything to go by, they are far from safe here either. It leaves me asking the question, what kind of country do we want to be? We used to be proud of our human rights record but that no longer seems to be an accolade that some of us want our country to have.
In another disturbing twist the anti-migrant protesters have turned this into a story about keeping our women and children safe. In fact, it turns out that 2 in 5 of those arrested at the protests outside asylum hotels last summer had previously been reported for domestic abuse themselves. Taking an issue and turning it into one cloaked as protecting our women and children is a classic from the authoritarian playbook. This same trope played out with the MAGA women who stormed The US Capitol that I met while making The Conspiracists. They saw themselves as the “mama bears” and felt able to justify anything if it was being done in the name of protecting children.
And so the culture wars appear to be in full swing and while the divisions grow and authoritarianism creeps unashamedly into the UK, while we fill up our courts and prisons so that they bursting at the seams, we continue to divert ourselves from collectively addressing the single most pressing issue of our times: finding a swift and just transition to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis.
What is on my horizon in the coming weeks?
I am continuing my tour with The Line We Crossed currently showing in cinemas and community centres across the UK. I’ll be heading up to Birmingham for a screening at MAC and on to Chester and then Hedben Bridge for screenings there. I’ll also be doing Q&As at upcoming screenings in London at Forest Cinema, Act One and The ICA. Information about other screenings can be found here.
The Conspiracists won two awards last week: Best Feature Documentary at The Miami Women Film Festival and an “Exceptional Merit” award at Documentaries Without Borders. We’ve announced plans to screen the film in cinemas and community centres in the UK later on this year. If you’d like to see it at a screen near you, let us know by filling out our petition form.
As the anti-migrant rhetoric continues to rage I am continuing to film and edit my next documentary. It is such a complex and charged issue, but as I try and navigate my way around it I keep coming back to the thought, “what if I were in their shoes, what would I do?” and, “what do you do if you discover there is nowhere safe to go?