Defend Our Juries

Martin Newell on the need to both resist and discern

As I write, the Appeal Court verdict on the proscription – the banning – of Palestine Action (PA) is due in one week. Many of our friends have been among the more than 3,000 arrested over the last year for their participation in the ‘Defend Our Juries’ protests opposing the banning of PA. The Ploughshares movement and Palestine Action have a number of things in common, as well as some differences. Many Catholic Workers, including myself, have also taken part in the Ploughshares movement over the 46 years since it started.

Lift the Ban Protest, indigonolan, 2025

The Ploughshares movement and Palestine Action advocate a similar form of property damage as a way of resisting preparations for war. However, Palestine Action is banned in the UK, while the Ploughshares movement, and Trident Ploughshares specifically, are not. Then again, both the Ploughshares movement generally, and Trident Ploughshares in particular, have a highly developed philosophy, practice, and discipline of nonviolence. As far as I know, Palestine Action is far more pragmatic about the activism of its members. At the same time, it could be a very short distance from the banning of one protest (or nonviolent resistance) organisation to the same happening to another. It is worth remembering that if Jesus turned over the tables of the temple traders today, he could easily be charged with criminal damage too.

In November 2000 I was, along with Susan van der Hijden, part of the ‘Jubilee Ploughshares 2000’ action. With household hammers we symbolically and actually disarmed a part of the British nuclear warhead convoy – one of the trucks that carry nuclear warheads up and down the country from AWE Aldermaston, where they are made, to Faslane, where they are loaded onto the Trident nuclear missiles, ready to go on the submarines that are based there. We waited to be arrested, were charged with over £30,000 of criminal damage, and eventually given twelve-month sentences for our witness. No one ever mentioned terrorism.

Susan and I had been through a long process of discernment and preparation for likely prison time as part of our action. I hope and pray that any PA activists who will spend, or have spent, extended prison time have had similar opportunities for preparation and discernment. There is no need to discern the truth of whether genocide has been happening in Gaza, any more than we needed to discern whether or not nuclear weapons were indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction. But there is a need to discern and understand how each of us, given our personal strengths and weaknesses and life circumstances, is best placed to oppose injustice and violence, and promote life and freedom. My prayer is for the proscription of PA to be ended; for all PA members to be acquitted and freed; for all those PA activists in prison to have the strength and support they need; and for freedom for the Palestinian people.

Martin Newell