Hendra Wijaya
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband was confronted by pro-Palestine activists while dining at a Pizza Express restaurant in Liverpool, in an incident that underlines the widening confrontation between the government and civil society groups it has designated as terrorist organisations. The confrontation, captured on camera and published as part of Al Jazeera's NewsFeed coverage on 28 September 2026, took place away from the more visible stage of the Labour Party conference but carried an identical political message: the ban on Palestine Action will not stop the organisation's supporters from pressing their case.
The encounter at the restaurant was the most visible element of a day of protest and arrest. According to the report, more than 50 demonstrators were detained while demonstrating in support of the group outside a Labour Party conference venue. That figure, in itself, suggests a significant police operation, and it points to a shift from the small, symbolic stunts of recent years towards large-scale, coordinated mobilisation — the kind of action designed to be impossible to ignore on mainstream television news.
Supporters of Palestine Action have long specialised in disruptive tactics. The group, which campaigns in favour of Palestinian rights and has organised sit-ins, blockades and other non-violent direct actions, has drawn sustained criticism for choosing high-profile targets and for the disruption it causes to ordinary members of the public. Critics of the protest movement argue that such tactics alienate moderate supporters and hand opponents a ready-made image of disorder. Supporters reply that conventional campaigning has achieved little, and that the scale of the destruction in Gaza has left them with little appetite for polite but futile appeals.
The legal instrument at the heart of the dispute is the UK's proscription regime. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, ministers can designate an organisation as terrorist-imminent without any prior court hearing if they are satisfied that it is an organization which is concerned in, or has links with, terrorism. Designation is a powerful tool: it becomes a criminal offence to belong to, or to provide support to, members of the group, and it permits the home secretary to issue search powers and other measures. Critics of the ban say the threshold has been lowered, and that groups engaged in protest — however disruptive — are being treated as if they were engaged in violence.
Campaigners and civil liberties organisations have consistently pressed for the ban to be challenged, arguing that proscription is a blunt instrument that chills lawful speech and lawful dissent. They contend that designation of a group engaged in non-violent protest effectively recasts political advocacy as security risk, and they have questioned whether ministers have provided sufficient evidence to Parliament to justify such an exceptional measure. Supporters of the ban say the government has a duty to act where an organisation glorifies or celebrates violence, and point to statements made by individuals linked to the group.
Miliband himself occupies an awkward position. As a member of a Labour government that has, since the election, moved on some foreign policy files while remaining deeply contested on others, he is the most visible target for demonstrators pressing for a more forthright defence of Palestinian rights. The confrontation in a public restaurant is a deliberate attempt to place that contradiction in front of him, in ordinary, unscripted surroundings, rather than in the rarerfied setting of a parliamentary debate.
Liverpool is not a random choice of location. The city has a long history of Labour strength and a large Muslim population, including a substantial community of Palestinian heritage, and it remains one of the UK's most reliable Labour strongholds. Holding protests in a city that overwhelmingly returned MPs of the governing party is a calculated message: the pressure on the government is not coming from marginal constituencies or from opponents of the party, but from some of its own supporters.
The arrests outside the conference sit at the centre of a wider argument about the right to protest. When demonstrators are detained in significant numbers, the immediate questions become whether the arrests were lawful, whether charges have been brought, and on what basis. Supporters of the right to protest will be watching whether the courts treat disruptive protest as a matter of public order or as a matter of political liberty, and whether any charges brought against participants result in convictions or acquittals.
Miliband's confrontation, then, is a symbol rather than the substance of the story. It represents a moment in which the government's position on Palestine Action has become a live political liability, and one in which the argument over proscription is being conducted not in Westminster but on the streets, in restaurants and outside party conferences, where cameras are rolling and organisers are keen to keep the issue at the top of the news.
Internationally, the row is occurring against a backdrop of intense pressure on Western governments over their positions on Gaza, arms sales, recognition of a Palestinian state, and the continuing work of the flotilla campaigns aimed at breaking the siege. In this environment, the United Kingdom's decision to proscribe a domestic organisation — rather than simply prosecute individuals for specific offences — is being watched closely by campaigners as a test of whether the space for dissent is narrowing.
For the activists, the day's outcome is at least a partial success: the foreign secretary was confronted, a conference was disrupted, and arrests drew national attention to a group that the government says should not be able to speak for itself. For the government, the immediate task is to convert arrests into convictions, and to show that the rule of law has been applied even-handedly. The likely legal challenges, parliamentary scrutiny and, above all, the question of whether the ban survives a courtroom test, will determine whether the confrontation in Liverpool is remembered as a colourful episode or as the moment a policy of restriction became a policy of punishment.
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