Police arrest more than 50 at Liverpool rally backing banned Palestine Action

More than 50 people were detained by police in Liverpool on Sunday after a demonstration outside the Labour Party's annual conference, where protesters displayed signs declaring their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action. Merseyside Police said officers began making arrests after warning demonstrators that holding items in support of a banned organisation was a criminal offence.

The rally, organised under the banner of the group Defend Our Juries, drew a crowd of more than 250 people who sat down outside the conference centre. Many carried home-made banners reading "I support Palestine Action", a phrase that supporters say is deliberately mundane — a statement of lawful opinion rather than an incitement to violence.

According to the force, the arrests followed a staged escalation. Scores of officers were deployed and initially stood by while protesters gathered, before moving in and asking those holding signs whether they intended to continue displaying them. Those who confirmed they would carry on were led away, and officers told them they had been arrested under the Terrorism Act.

A Merseyside Police spokesperson said more than 50 people had so far been detained at the Defend Our Juries event, and that officers were "in the process of making arrests on suspicion of wearing/carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation" — the wording officers use for signs, banners and clothing bearing pro-Palestine or pro-Palestine Action messages.

The spokesperson said the force respected the right of individuals to protest lawfully, while also seeking to keep the peace and protect the public. The force said it made "detailed and co-ordinated plans ahead of such events to ensure it can apply this consistently, fairly and proportionately", and stressed that not everyone who attended the protest was committing a criminal offence — a distinction echoed by the scene inside the perimeter, where supporters carried on sitting as officers worked methodically through the crowd.

Human rights barrister Margaret Owen, aged 94, was among those detained. Her presence drew sharp criticism from Amnesty International, which condemned the arrests as a "shameful attack on freedom of speech". Demonstrators inside the cordon reacted with cheers each time a protester was carried away by police, turning the enforcement operation into what appeared to supporters a running public demonstration of the ban's reach.

Kerry Moscogiuri, chief executive of Amnesty International UK, said: "Protesting is one of the most effective tools we have to make our leaders listen to us, but we have seen consecutive governments crack down on our right to do it. The arrests of grandparents, teenagers and everyone in between for holding placards outside the Labour Party conference are a truly shameful attack on freedom of speech." Moscogiuri also pointed directly at the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, arguing that he retains the power to change the law. "The new prime minister can reform our laws so that communities are protected in coming together and demonstrating on the issues they care about. Will he do so?"

A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said the group had hoped the new prime minister would "do the sensible thing and bin the ban on Palestine Action given the weight of public pressure to do so and the escalating amount of resources required in enforcing it." The statement added: "Continuing the charade of the proscription of Palestine Action is illogical, unsustainable and immoral" — a complaint that speaks directly to the practical burden of policing events such as this one.

The legal position remains contested. The ban on Palestine Action came into force in July 2025, and the group was subsequently proscribed as a terror organisation under the Terrorism Act. In July, it was confirmed that the proscription would be reviewed by the Supreme Court, after the court granted the group's co-founder permission to appeal. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, said at the time that the government would "robustly defend this appeal".

The Home Office has repeatedly maintained that the proscription is not about protest or support for Palestinian causes, and that the ban was necessary because the group was causing significant criminal damage to legitimate businesses. Both the High Court and the Court of Appeal have accepted that the group's activities involve criminal acts, though the Court of Appeal judges were divided on whether those incidents justified the use of terrorism legislation. The Court of Appeal ruled in June that the ban was lawful.

That split — a finding of wrongdoing accepted alongside disagreement over the legal framework used to punish it — is the crux of the dispute now playing out in Liverpool. Supporters of the group argue the Terrorism Act is a blunt instrument being used to punish speech; the government argues it is a proportionate response to sustained disruption of businesses. Sunday's arrests brought that argument onto a city street, where the cost of enforcing the ban was measured not in courtrooms but in handcuffs, a stretcher-free walk to a police van, and 250 people sitting in the rain-free autumn sunshine chanting.

BBC News has asked the Ministry of Justice to comment. The Supreme Court review of the proscription, and the government's stated intention to resist it, will determine whether the dozens of arrests made in Liverpool are ultimately treated as a lawful use of emergency powers or as an overreach.