Description
This paper explores how experiences of proscription impact the means by which individuals can access human and democratic rights, in the context of the UK’s counterterror banning of Palestine Action. In June 2025, the UK Government banned activist organisation Palestine Action, prompting widespread protests and a proliferation of counterterror arrests, with 2025 representing the greatest number of counterterrorism charges since the introduction of the Terrorism Act 2000. Whilst the proscription of Palestine Action is perhaps the most controversial example and the first Palestinian activist organisation proscribed, it is one of over 80 organisations banned by Britain as part of a growing international trend seeking to curtail non-violent activism under counterterror legislation (Haspeslagh 2021; Jarvis and Legrand 2019; McNeil-Willson 2024; Zeller and Vaughan 2023). Whilst research has tended to consider either the organisational impact of proscription (Macklin 2018) or its associated political processes (Jarvis and Legrand 2020), more research is needed on the effects of proscription on an individual level, particularly how it interacts with and exacerbates patterns of social and societal exclusion (Abbas and McNeil-Willson 2025). Through interviews with activists directly impacted by the counterterror proscription of Palestine Action, this paper explores how proscription is acting to change the means by which individuals and communities are able to access and engage with democratic and other civil and human rights, even after organisational disengagement, and the implications this has for long-term patterns of (in)security.
