Britain’s Year of Arresting Pensioners As Terrorists Has Taken a Hatchet to Our Civil Liberties
It's a slippery slope.
by Charlotte England
6 July 2026
A year and a day ago, octogenarian priest Sue Parfitt told Novara Media, “we cannot be bystanders”. Moments later, she became one of the first people in the country to be arrested under a draconian new law that many didn’t believe could be enforced.
Parfitt had, of course, defied the proscription of direct action group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, after a ban came into effect at 00.01 the night before.
Onlookers, who surrounded the group and chanted “free, free Palestine”, said they were shocked to see her and 28 other mostly elderly protesters bundled into police vans simply for holding up paper signs. Parfitt said she hoped “common sense would prevail” and that the new law would be immediately overturned.
We expected that might happen, too. In the first few weeks, the UN, Amnesty International, many other NGOs and dozens of public figures condemned the ban as a “disturbing legal overreach” with chilling repercussions for freedom of speech and assembly. As more and more people vowed to break the law, things looked pretty bad for the British government and its loyal, miserable police force.
But twelve months later – despite judges siding with Palestine Action across three of four court hearings, and initially finding the ban unlawful – the proscription has held.
In fact, not much has changed at all. Yesterday, Parfitt, who is now 84, was arrested again outside London’s police headquarters, New Scotland Yard. This time, she stood on a plinth that read “I oppose genocide” and used a megaphone to urge others to “join me” in supporting Palestine Action – a small escalation that was met with a familiar, quiet arrest.
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Perhaps the only difference is that now, in July 2026, nobody is shocked anymore; it has become entirely normal to see people, including the frail and disabled, detained for making a simple statement in support of an activist group. Despite admitting they feel “ashamed” by the job, police have now arrested some 3,500 people under the Terrorism Act 2000, all over slogans on written placards or printed out on pieces of paper.
As journalists at Novara Media, we have learned to operate in the grey area. Despite writing to the attorney general and submitting evidence to a court, we have still not been told how we are and aren’t allowed to report on the ban without ourselves falling foul of it. It’s become entirely normal for me to call our lawyer on a Sunday afternoon, and to be told something is probably alright, but that it’s impossible to say for certain; it was made clear by this court case, but then it may have been overturned by that one.
Despite so many people’s best attempts, the draconian use of terror legislation has been normalised and spread, with egregious violations of our basic rights becoming increasingly everyday. We have little choice but to keep operating within that new normal – and that daily accommodation is exactly what puts us at risk of being boiled like frogs that don’t notice the water gradually heating up around us. First free expression. Then a free press that isn’t second-guessing itself over opaque terror law that nobody is willing to clarify. Most recently, our right to a fair trial; as of last month, four young people are languishing in prison cells for taking part in direct actions targeting weapons factories, having been sentenced under terror legislation the jury was never even told about.
Parfitt, it seems, has made a decisive choice not to be boiled gradually alongside the rest of us. She’d rather flout the law than be a frog. “I continue to support [Palestine Action],” she told my colleague, Steven Methven, at the weekend. “That apparently makes me a terrorist. But that’s okay.”
Charlotte England is a journalist and director of Novara Media.
