Question**:** What’s the difference between cracking windows of Barclays bank in 2021 and doing the same thing in 2024?
Answer**:** Up to 10 years in prison and being labelled a terrorist!
Barclays battered
Back in April 2021, myself and six other women from Extinction Rebellion (XR) cracked several windows at Barclays HQ in Canary Wharf. Three years later, five other people cracked windows at Barclays’ Burnley branch in northwest England.
We were trying to shift the behaviour of this global bank in terms of their role in climate genocide and ecological collapse. (Barclays did announce some potential “positive” changes sometime after our action.)
Palestine Action (PA) actionists were trying to shift the behaviour of the same bank in terms of their investment in Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms manufacturer, profiting from war crimes and genocide in Gaza. (Barclays reported they’d sold their shares in Elbit shortly afterwards.)
‘Terrorists’?
My co-defendants and I, and the PA actionists, were found “guilty” of “criminal damage” by a jury.
We were left with one legal defence by the judge, who discounted our evidence and, in effect, told the jury to find us guilty. He said that ‘climate’ was irrelevant to what he considered a simple open and shut case of “did they break the windows?”
The PA actionists were left with zero legal defences. Their judge told the jury that they could not acquit the defendants according to their conscience, which was not correct. The jury then returned guilty verdicts.
We received prison sentences of between 6 and 8 months, all suspended for 2 years. The PA actionists are due to be sentenced on 4th September 2026 and face being treated as ‘terrorists’. Their judge, Judge Parry, referred their case to Judge Altham, who will decide whether to apply the ‘terror designation’ at a hearing on 21st August.
This is not what they were charged with, nor was this what the jury were told. Indeed, they took their action prior to the proscription of Palestine Action.
Blatant injustice
If Judges Altham and Parry continue with this blatant injustice, these 5 ordinary people – no different from myself and my six co-defendants – will face up to 10 years in prison, no chance of early release, much harsher conditions, and other restrictions for 15 years after their release.
Compare this to the up-to-4 years in prison we were facing for ‘regular’ criminal damage.
Judge Parry is currently choosing to follow the extremely dangerous precedent set by Judge Johnson, who sentenced four PA actionists as ‘terrorists’ for destroying Elbit quadcopter drones at a factory in Filton, which were destined to murder women and children.
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What changed?
So, what changed in these few intervening years? Well, a lot…
Here in the UK, we’ve had accelerating repression of protest together with increasingly severe sentencing for direct action since 2021. Across the world, we’ve been witnessing televised genocide in Gaza since October 2023, with successive governments under the influence of Zionists and arms/oil companies doing nothing in response.
Then there’s the acceleration of the collapse of the living world and the conditions needed to maintain life, accompanied by a parallel acceleration of technofascism.
Let’s just take a breath before we normalize all of this. We must not let the ‘shifting baselines’ of the political and billionaire media narrative lead us to accept such injustice.
Let’s get some perspective…
The UK government is about to early-release literally thousands of people who have been imprisoned for a whole range of crimes, including violent crime. Indeed, until there was public outcry from victims, ministers were planning on including the most violent sexual offenders and child abusers in this early release scheme.
So please, let’s get some perspective – how ‘dangerous’ to the public are the five people who harmed no one and were trying to save the lives of children in Gaza? Isn’t the truth that they are only ‘dangerous’ to the profits of genocidal banks and arms companies? And ‘dangerous’ to the war criminals who are in power in Israel and the others who enable them?
With that in mind, given the context of the world being on fire right now, even giving short, suspended prison sentences to ordinary people trying to get those in power to put life before profit seems completely crazy.
Cracking windows wasn’t terrorism in 2021, nor in 2024, and it isn’t now. Its direct action aimed at those in power demanding them to stop killing people.
Featured image via Extinction Rebellion
By Zoe Cohen
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