It has been a long few weeks covering the hunger strike demonstrations. If it weren’t New Year’s Eve, I wouldn’t know what day it was. Suffice to say, I’ve been on the road more than I’ve been off it.

As I reported a few weeks ago, this road trip across the country started outside the BBC in Leeds. Standing in the rain, watching the abject ambivalence of the police as a passerby assaulted a protester, I didn’t realise how fitting that was as a metaphor for the coming weeks.

HMP New Hall, 29/12/25

HMP New Hall, 29/12/25

On hunger strike in the UK

A few days later, trawling through the sparse woodland and brambles next to HMP New Hall, I’m covering a protest attempting to send solidarity to Heba Muraisi. These prison actions can be rewarding for both sides. A prisoner is reminded that people are out there fighting for them. Those involved in an action can go home knowing they made a tangible difference – they didn’t just shout in the street, a cathartic release with nothing concrete to show for it.

As I train my lens on a shadow in the window, I realise that it’s Heba looking back. It’s no longer abstract. I can see the lines on her face. This is day 42 of her hunger strike. I am standing next to an independent journalist in the woods, surrounded by the drumbeat. The BBC have only started to report on this because they couldn’t ignore the people on their front lawn. No one actually cares.

HMP New Hall, 14/12/25

After the footage is published, there’s the usual barrage of notifications from Twitter. It’s wild. I could write about anything else, and it wouldn’t get a single comment. Write anything about Palestine, and I have to turn off Twitter notifications for three weeks. Look, you fucking dregs, people aren’t protesting because they aren’t eating. Not eating is the protest. They are starving themselves to feed something larger than themselves. I’m exhausted. I genuinely don’t know whether these people are intentionally arguing from a false premise or just genuinely incompetent. At this point, does it even matter if it’s malice or incompetence? Either way, they are happy to see these people die.

Manchester, 23/12/25

It’s tomorrow already. Wednesday. I’m losing track. I’m outside the Ministry of Justice in Sheffield. Once again, I’m surrounded by the slap of sticks on skins. I love the drummers. There’s a local auditor. Still no press. The auditors can make it, but the BBC can’t. Shame on them.

Leeds, 27/12/25

A surreal press conference

It’s Thursday the 18th and I am in London for the press conference. It’s 9:30 and I’m on the tube. I am crying with a stranger as we talk about eight strangers who are going to die. I don’t think I’ve come across a political issue that cuts into people as violently as this one does. Whatever way you slice it, there is no justification for what is happening.

Leeds, 27/12/25

The media starts to arrive and filter into the press conference. They are nearly 50 days late. Suddenly, everyone cares. Or maybe they can’t really ignore it anymore. And all it took was an MP starting an impromptu pyjama party on the front doorstep of a prison.

An urgent phone call comes in to a family member from the prison during the presser. As she rushes out of the room, several grown men chase after her with cameras – “it’s a story”… Wild. Honestly, fuck these people. The guy from The Times – googling about Bronzefield five minutes before the family took their seats. The reporter asks a sister who is literally watching her brother die, “What’s the worst-case scenario for you?” A vulnerable young woman with no idea what is happening to one of the most important people in her life. A queue of middle-class men waiting in a line to get their quota of her time and then fuck off with it. Fuck being a part of that circus.

I’m talking to an activist while interviews are underway around us. We are talking about them. I don’t care if they can hear. I think it’s disgusting. These people are hypocrites. And it’s not just the mainstream corporate shills. New-age left-wing media has failed, too. They don’t give a shit, and they turn up after nearly 50 days to extract something of value. Maybe I’m being too loud – someone tells me to keep it down. I don’t know why, but I apologised. I don’t like to be impolite. But as I sat and watched the TV later, this correspondent draped himself in faux concern, and I found myself getting angry. Nothing for 47 days – no outrage – until someone ruins your interview by talking too loudly about your complicity. Where the fuck are your priorities? Sit on TV – the Lionel Hutz of journalism – pretend to give a shit about these people. We all know what you’re about.

Leeds, 27/12/25

“Balance” over the hunger strike and balance over Palestine

I mean, it genuinely baffles me. I’ve seen more outrage come about as a result of a three-and-a-half-minute interview with a 22-year-old activist than the collective outrage in the whole corporate media, collectively, for the last six-and-a-half weeks over the fact that the government seems hellbent on letting people starve to death before giving them bail. Greta is bang on – the government are a disgrace, but they are being enabled by a corporate media which is refusing to scrutinise them – or even ask them basic questions… just easy shit. “Minister, is it appropriate to shackle a 20-year-old woman, 47 days into a hunger strike, while she showers and uses the toilet?” would be a good start.

Even a simple interview with a family member has to be accompanied by the opinion of a Zionist mouthpiece to “balance” their suffering. Either that or the exhaustive selection of pieces chastising the left for “encouraging this.” Is their inability to comprehend manufactured internally or a result of existing in a system that numbs your basic humanity? I still don’t know, but please understand that we are not encouraging the hunger strikers. It is them who are encouraging this movement.

Sheffield, 21/12/25

Since I’ve been on hunger strike, there have been nurses and officers telling me that I’m shrinking. And it’s funny because they don’t see what’s actually growing on the outside…

Twenty minutes ago, a nurse just tried to come and speak to me, asking me why I am hunger striking? And when I went to her office, I opened the window, and all you can hear is the drums.

–  Kamran on day 39

The UK government doesn’t understand what they are feeding with every crackdown. This isn’t even just about Palestine anymore. The same way the absurd and irrational proscription of Palestine Action managed to turn criminalising direct action into a free speech issue. This isn’t about what anyone did to get put in prison – it’s about the state abusing the judicial system to make examples of people.

You don’t have to agree with their actions

It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the actions that led to these individuals’ imprisonment. Dangerous criminals who are arrested for premeditated acts of extreme violence are regularly given bail. If the CPS aren’t even able to bring a joint enterprise conviction against Sam Corner’s alleged conspirators, it becomes increasingly complex to justify the continued detention of 33 predominantly peaceful activists awaiting trial for criminal damage.

Sheffield, 21/12/25

Sheffield, 21/12/25

Sheffield, 21/12/25

Sheffield, 21/12/25

The government will argue that the remand system exists for good reason – to keep dangerous criminals away from the community. The reality is that around 20% of prisoners in Britain are on remand. This is within a prison system that is saturated to the point of crisis. The remand system exists to serve financial interests; it is used to justify the further expansion of the industrialised prison system in the UK, which not only strips people of their dignity but also redistributes taxpayers’ money to the burgeoning private sector. Even by the MOJ’s own standards, these prisoners do not meet the level of offence to justify their continued incarceration beyond the six-month pre-trial limit.

What happens when many of these young people on hunger strike are inevitably found not guilty, or given sentences that are far less than the two years spent on remand? Two years, locked in a box 23 hours a day. No access to work or study programs. Moved hundreds of miles away from their loved ones and support networks. Shackled. If this was happening to British people in prisons anywhere in the world, ministers would be in uproar. Fuck, if this were happening to anyone, we would have something to say about it. Happening on home turf – crickets.

Leeds, 10/12/25

Christmas and little changes

I’m meant to have some time off.

I can’t.

It’s Christmas week – Monday, Sheffield; Manchester on Tuesday. Durham for the vigil on Christmas Eve at the front of the Cathedral. Leeds for the 27th – New Hall for the 29th, and I’m back in London today. I can take a day off on the 2nd before it’s time to head back to Leeds and New Hall on the 3rd. The hunger strikers aren’t going to stop, and neither are any of us here.

Manchester, 23/12/25

This is not the time to stop. And this isn’t about these eight people on hunger strike. They don’t want it to be about them. They aren’t striking to be cool – they aren’t doing this to be famous, and they don’t want us to make them famous. They want us to remember that this is not the time to stop; this isn’t the time to stand by – to sit and accept a phoney ceasefire; that this is the time for maximum pressure. This is the time to agitate and take direct action against every single strand of this system that facilitates, supports and profits from the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

It is our job to make the fucking earth move until Palestine is free.

It’s a new year coming. See you out there on the streets.

Featured image and additional images via the Canary

By Barold

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