Shabana Mahmood has defended the government’s ban on Palestine Action by saying its supporters should face the same law as “skinheads” who back a neo-Nazi organisation.
Speaking on the Rest Is Politics podcast, the home secretary was asked about the thousands of people arrested for publicly supporting Palestine Action.
Mahmood, who was previously a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, said that while she was “very uncomfortable” seeing people she knew “falling foul” of the law, it had to be applied consistently.
“When you get a group of skinheads standing outside a mosque, holding up a placard saying ‘I support National Action’, I’m going to want the Section 13 support offence to be applied,” she said.
“And I’m going to want the police to go and arrest those people… And I’m going to want them to degrade the capacity of a white supremacist terror organisation to recruit more members.”
National Action is a neo-Nazi organisation which was proscribed under the Terrorism Act in 2016.
Palestine Action was proscribed by former home secretary Yvette Cooper in July 2025, making it a criminal offence to belong to or express support for the group.
“You have to do these jobs in a consistent way that stands the test of time,” Mahmood said. “I’m not going to reopen every decision every previous home secretary has made. Was it lawful? Yes it was. Does it meet the legal test? Yes it does.”
She added that a decision to repeal the ban would involve having “to literally relitigate everything”.
Asked what triggered the government’s decision to outlaw the group, she said: “It’s proscribed because it’s met the test for proscription within the Terrorism Act,” and that “the facts of their behaviour and the escalatory effect of their behaviour” were contributing factors.
Critics of the ban, however, argue that the central question is not whether Section 13 should be applied consistently, but whether Palestine Action should have been placed under terrorism legislation in the first place – and whether expressing support for the group should constitute a terrorism offence.
A spokesperson for campaign group Defend Our Juries accused Mahmood of “missing the point entirely”, saying she had provided “no evidence that Palestine Action should have been proscribed in the first place”.
The Morning Star quoted the spokesperson as saying: “The fact that elderly and disabled people are being arrested as terrorists for holding signs should be no less shocking.”
Defend Our Juries has organised multiple protests against the ban on Palestine Action, resulting in mass arrests, most recently at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool.
Mahmood’s comments strike a different tone to that of foreign secretary Ed Miliband who told delegates in Liverpool that Britons were “right” to be outraged by the plight of Palestinians.
In June, the court of appeal upheld the government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action, overturning an earlier high court ruling that found the ban unlawful. This was followed by a supreme court ruling in July allowing Palestine Action founder Huda Ammori to appeal the ban. The hearing is expected this autumn.
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