In an interrogation room just after 1am, 68-year-old grandmother-of-seven Marji Mansfield was sat across from counter terrorism officers after being arrested at a pro-Palestine protest in central London.
She had suffered days of poor sleep in anticipation of this eventuality. Now, an “aggressive” man was asking her repeatedly if she sympathised with a terrorist organisation, leading her through an extensive list of questions about her politics and who she knew in Gaza.
A few hours earlier, on the afternoon of 5 July, half a dozen officers had handcuffed the pensioner and hauled her off the ground and into a police van, alongside her 73-year-old husband.
The couple who once described themselves as small ‘c’ Conservatives had travelled to the capital up from near Chichester for the protest, declining to tell their children what they were about to do.
It was only a day later that their son realised what had happened after he saw her in the news, suspended and flanked by the large group of officers.
She had been following the conflict in the Middle East since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014, but only became an active protester after former home secretary Suella Braverman branded peaceful protesters as “hate marchers” in November 2023.
“I have never been political or an activist. I was just an ordinary, middle-England person,” she says. “But then I became outraged.”
She said she was “shocked” by the events of 7 October, when Hamas militants broke into Israel and killed around 1,200 people, taking 251 more hostage. “But the actions that subsequently followed, where entire families are being wiped out, I had to join those urging for a ceasefire now,” she adds.
More than 60,000 Palestinians are believed to have been killed since Israel launched its retaliatory aerial and ground offensive in Gaza. Humanitarian organisations have warned that, with not nearly enough aid entering the enclave, the 2.3 million residents of Gaza are now being effectively starved.
Sir Keir Starmer this week warned that Britain would recognise the Palestinian state if Israel did not end its “appalling” war in Gaza. He urged Israel to work towards a ceasefire and a two-state solution.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Sir Keir of “rewarding Hamas’s monstrous terrorism”. Ms Mansfield dismissed Sir Keir’s move as “performative rather than substantial”.
Fighting her own battle for Gaza, the pensioner was arrested under Section 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for holding up a placard that said: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”. The charges carry a possible maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The protest group Palestine Action had just been proscribed as a terrorist organisation, after they claimed responsibility for activists spraying red paint on fighter jets at RAF Brize Norton, making it illegal to support them. It put the group in the same legal ranks as Isis, Al-Qaeda and Hamas, leading critics to accuse the government of heavy-handedness.
Ms Mansfield had known it was a possibility she would get arrested, but had no idea how the police would actually react when she and dozens of others held up placards in support of Palestine Action outside the Houses of Parliament. It was the first of what would be weekly protests, all of which resulted in arrests.
As the police interview with an exhausted Ms Mansfield drew to a close around 2am, after more than 60 questions had been asked, the counter terrorism officer made one final remark.
“Look, even if you get hundreds of people, thousands of people, we’re 30,000 strong,” Ms Mansfield recounts him saying. “We’ll put all our resources, and not just police forces, into arresting and interrogating you.”
Then he let the “traumatised” pensioner go free, hundreds of miles from home. She was not charged with a crime.
A total of 385 MPs voted in favour of the unprecedented move to criminalise Palestine Action. Only 26 dissented.
Announcing the vote, home secretary Yvette Cooper said that while the right to protest and to free speech form “the cornerstone of our democracy”, Palestine Action was guilty of “violence and serious criminal damage” that does not constitute “legitimate protest”.
As a result, Palestine Action was proscribed alongside a white supremacist, neo-Nazi organisation called Maniacs Murder Cult and a pro-Kremlin ethno-nationalist organisation which seeks to create a new Russian Imperial State.
Critics and human rights activists quickly accused the government of infringing upon people’s right to protest after the proscription.
In a letter to Ms Cooper, the Network for Police Monitoring said: “Misusing terrorism legislation in this way against a protest group sets a dangerous precedent, threatens our democratic freedoms, and would be a terrifying blow to our civil liberties.”
Several United Nations human rights experts, meanwhile, said criminal damage that does not endanger life was not “sufficiently serious to qualify as terrorism”.
On Wednesday, a judge ruled that Palestine Action would be allowed to challenge the Home Office in court over its proscription, but it could be months until a result.
The outrage over the move has increased as more protesters are arrested.
Private Eye editor Ian Hislop branded the arrest in Leeds on 19 July of 67-year-old Jon Farley, for holding up a printout of the magazine’s front page that questioned the proscription, as “mind-boggling”. Mr Farley has not been charged.
The case was cited by Mr Justice Chamberlain on Wednesday as a reason to allow Palestine Action to fight the proscription. He said it was evidence of the “chilling effect” the proscription was having “on those wishing to express legitimate political views”.
In total, more than 200 people have been detained since the ban. Not a single person in England and Wales has been charged.
The large majority are over 60, according to Tim Crosland, a former government lawyer who now campaigns for Defend Our Juries, an organisation supporting many of the detainees. He says some of the protesters are “well into their 80s”.
The police are aware of these optics. Ms Mansfield claims her male counter terrorism interrogator even asked her at one stage: “Was this a conspiracy to make the police look bad?”
The reality, she says, is simpler: the seriousness of terrorism charges is a significant disincentive to younger protesters at the start of their careers; for pensioners determined to take a stance, it is the perfect opportunity to step up.
Robert Lee, 61, another protester arrested on 5 July but not charged, who later went to support demonstrators in Bristol, says he remembers one 83-year-old woman gleefully telling him that police were too afraid to arrest her “because they are terrified I might die in custody”.
But the crowds of pensioner protesters are nonetheless peppered with younger demonstrators, a reality they say nods to the broad spectrum of opposition to the proscription of Palestine Action.
For Zara Ali, 18, among the youngest people to have been arrested, her involvement felt especially high stakes. She was already on bail for conspiracy to cause public nuisance after blocking a road in March. She has not been charged.
“I was told to prepare myself for prison,” she says, admitting that she was very “anxious” when she arrived in Parliament Square for her 19 July protest.
“But at the end of the day, I had it in my mind that this is not about me but about Palestine, and about every single political prisoner who is being held.”
The Independent spoke to half a dozen protesters for this piece, all of whom mentioned their “disgust” with Israel’s war on Gaza as the primary motivation for their involvement. Claims that the proscription pointed to a “dystopian” future in Britain were also commonly cited as key motivation.
The Home Office declined to comment.
