Palestine Action to be banned after break-in at RAF base

Yvette Cooper has decided to proscribe the group, making it a criminal offence to belong to or support Palestine Action.
The decision comes after the group posted footage online showing two people inside the base at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.
The clip shows one person riding an electric scooter up to an Airbus Voyager air-to-air refuelling tanker and appearing to spray paint into its jet engine.
The incident is being also investigated by counter terror police.
The Home Secretary has the power to proscribe an organisation under the Terrorism Act of 2000 if she believes it is 'concerned in terrorism'.
Proscription will require Ms Cooper to lay an order in Parliament, which must then be debated and approved by both MPs and peers.
Some 81 organisations have been proscribed under the 2000 Act, including Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas and al Qaida, far-right groups such as National Action, and Russian private military company Wagner Group.
Another 14 organisations connected with Northern Ireland are also banned under previous legislation, including the IRA and UDA.
Belonging to or expressing support for a proscribed organisation, along with a number of other actions, are criminal offences carrying a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
Friday's incident at Brize Norton, described by the Prime Minister as 'disgraceful', prompted calls for Palestine Action to be banned.
The group has staged a series of demonstrations in recent months, including spraying the London offices of Allianz Insurance with red paint over its alleged links to Israeli defence company Elbit, and vandalising Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) welcomed the news that Ms Cooper intended to proscribe the group, saying: 'Nobody should be surprised that those who vandalised Jewish premises with impunity have now been emboldened to sabotage RAF jets.'
CAA chief executive Gideon Falter urged the Home Secretary to proscribe the Houthi rebel group and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, adding: 'This country needs to clamp down on the domestic and foreign terrorists running amok on our soil.'
Former home secretary Suella Braverman said it was 'absolutely the correct decision'.

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Spectator

2 hours ago

• Spectator

Let's call Palestine Action's RAF attack what it is: sabotage

It might be a little unfair to pick on Lisa Nandy – who was bounced on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday morning and who, to be fair, did condemn unequivocally the actions of the Palestine Action cadres who attacked two of the 14 Voyager aircraft that form the Royal Air Force's strategic tanker force. But her extemporised response betrayed annoyance at 'choices' over a protest before, correctly, reminding the audience that this was about national security. And it certainly is. These aircraft are vital to our national defence. They refuel the air-defence fighters that patrol the thousands of square miles of the airspace over the North Atlantic that is our Nato responsibility, intercepting nuclear-capable Russian bombers on a regular basis. They allow us to deploy aircraft quickly at range – such as to reinforce Cyprus only this week. The defence of the Falklands hinges on it. At the other end of the scale, they will deploy forces to conduct disaster relief at global range – did the 'protesters' want to disable this? The RAF must ask itself whether it has slipped into too much of a peacetime mode So, damaging and disabling such key assets of the national defence architecture is not a 'protest'; it is an act of sabotage likely to assist our enemies. And it should be treated as such. Many immediate thoughts flow from the incident. Most people are unaware of how hard it is to secure and defend a large area such as Brize Norton (BZN), which consists of 1200 acres and has an approximately 6 mile perimeter. What might seem like a serious perimeter fence to most of us is no obstacle to the determined – in military parlance, an obstacle is only such if it is under constant surveillance, and fire support can then be brought down on anyone trying to cross it. This does not apply at BZN, nor any major military facility in the UK. So what does? Any station commander worth their salt knows that anything of value on the base has to become a local citadel. When the RAF had nuclear weapons, the bomb-dump was such a citadel – multiple layers of barbed wire, constant surveillance, armed guards, a heavily armed, quick response force. It was accepted that the airfield boundary fence was little more than a 'Keep Out' sign and played little part in the security plan. What did contribute over time was a good relationship with the local population, who will spot anything untoward before anyone. It will be interesting to see, therefore, what the risk assessment was for BZN, and the plan for how highly valuable, operationally vital assets were to be guarded. Because this is not new. In recent decades, anti-war in Yemen protesters broke into BAE Systems Warton and anti-drone protesters into RAF Waddington with varying degrees of intent. And that was at a time when the general backdrop of protest was not as it is today. In the last couple of years we have seen defence companies attacked by Palestine Action, resulting in millions of pounds worth of damage and operational delays. The perpetrators of those incidents, by and large, were given light sentences and even acquitted on grounds of doing a 'greater good'. What message did that send? The media continued to refer to the perpetrators as 'protesters', not saboteurs, and they were treated sympathetically. This sets societal norms, and so such 'protests' can become quasi-legitimised as acts of principled opposition. Worthy of a slapped wrist, perhaps, but… As Sir Stephen Watson succinctly explained at Policy Exchange recently, there has only been one Just Stop Oil protest in Manchester, and it lasted just 45 seconds before they were arrested for blocking the King's highway. Set boundaries and you get less bad behaviour, get less bad behaviour and you can control what remains. And so it must be with Palestine Action. Their act of sabotage needs to be recognised for what it is and treated accordingly as the action of a de facto fifth column acting as 'useful idiots'. In this light the MOD's reference to 'vandalism' in its much later press release seems inadequate. 'Vandalism' is what happens to the bus stop outside the Navy, Army and Air Force institutes. Only recently, that sympathetic default to well-meaning 'protest' has started to harden in the courts. It needs to stiffen up more. The times we are living in do not give us the luxury we enjoyed in the 1990s, in that brief holiday from history when threats appeared to have gone for good and our Armed Forces could be seen as normative vehicles. The threats are back, as the heads of our intelligence services are reminding us with increasing urgency. The RAF must ask itself whether it has slipped into too much of a peacetime mode, assuming it will be essentially safe 'at home'. A more operational mindset across the Service would not go amiss. And we might ask what else is possible in the light of Ukraine and Israel launching operationally brilliant drone attacks from the enemy's own territory and within sight of strategic targets? How confident can we in the UK be that our enemies won't be able to conduct such operations here? In a nation-state where actual hostile action has now emanated from a climate where aggressive hostile intent has long been signalled – but, perhaps, has become so common and tolerated that we have become inured to it.

Telegraph

2 hours ago

• Telegraph

MoD staff lose record number of security passes

Officials at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) have admitted losing a record number of security passes. More than 15,000 passes have been lost over the past five years by MoD employees, while another 1,000 were logged as stolen. It means the passes, which give access to buildings within the nation's defence institutions, are vanishing at the rate of almost 80 every week. Security experts fear the number of AWOL passes could pose a security or terror risk to the nation if they fell into the wrong hands. The revelation comes after pro-Palestinian protesters broke into RAF Brize Norton and damaged two military planes on Friday morning. Palestine Action said two of its activists had broken into the Oxfordshire base and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft. Friday's incident has led to calls for Palestine Action to become a proscribed terror group in Britain, from high-profile politicians such as Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, the shadow home secretary. The numbers on missing MoD security passes, obtained under Freedom of Information requests, show the number of passes lost has almost doubled in the space of four years, rising from 2,043 in 2020 to more than 3,830 last year. The number of stolen passes trebled from 82 to 278 over the same period. The figures show there was a dip in reports of missing passes during the pandemic, but the number increased as workers returned to the office. A security industry expert said many organisations have opted for a pass system called 'exchange badging', where the employee only leaves their HQ with a blank plastic card that has no markings to reveal either the staff member or their employer. This unmarked card gains the employee access to their company building, where it is then exchanged for their named access card. The security source said: 'This system is used more frequently now and it has the advantage that if a card is lost outside it is just a blank piece of plastic and the security ramifications are much less.' 'Worrying lack of responsibility' Admiral Lord West of Spithead, the former navy chief, said in 2023 that lost passes were 'not something that should be taken lightly'. He added: 'It is a security risk, but also a terrorist risk.' In June 2021, the MoD suffered an embarrassing security breach when a senior official mistakenly left a stack of sensitive documents at a bus stop in Kent. John O'Connell, the chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'It's ludicrous that thousands of security passes have been lost or stolen by those in the very department meant to keep Britain safe.' Col Philip Ingram, the former army intelligence officer, said: 'What the numbers highlight is a worrying lack of responsibility by employees so there should be consequences if passes are lost – as one has to ask what else is being misplaced. 'However, the loss of passes provides a small risk – to access sensitive areas there are always other checks, whether they be signing into guard rooms or security offices, using digital PIN codes or other means.' A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: 'We treat all breaches of security very seriously and we require all suspected breaches to be reported. All incidents are subjected to an initial security risk assessment, with further action taken on a proportionate basis.'

BBC News

3 hours ago

• BBC News

Harry Dunn: What happened in the case of teenage motorcyclist?

Almost six years since the death of motorcyclist Harry Dunn outside a US military base in the UK, an investigative review has criticised the way Northamptonshire Police handled the driver of the car involved in the collision, US diplomat Anne Sacoolas, was handed an eight-month jail term, suspended for 12 months, after pleading guilty to criminal did a road collision end up with the victim's family losing confidence in the police and the Northamptonshire force being criticised in an official report? Who was Harry Dunn? Mr Dunn's mother, Charlotte Charles, said the 19-year-old was "larger than life" with a "great" sense of 27 August 2019, he died in a crash near RAF Croughton, Northamptonshire, after Sacoolas's car struck his motorbike moments after she left the car was driving on the right-hand side of the road when it should have been on the had diplomatic immunity asserted on her behalf by the US administration. They then both left the UK. Who is Anne Sacoolas? Sacoolas was described in the 2025 investigative review of the case as "a married mother of three" who had "held a US drivers' licence and had done so since the age of 15".At the time of the collision in 2019, her husband Jonathan was a US intelligence officer and the couple and their three children had been in the UK for a few family's four-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son had been in the car with their mother when the collision happened. They had been attending a barbecue at RAF a court hearing in Virginia in 2021, a barrister said that Ms Sacoolas herself had been "employed by an intelligence agency in the US" at the time of the crash and her work was "especially a factor" in her leaving the immunity gives some people, such as foreign diplomats and, in some cases, their families, protection from arrest and prosecution in their host had, however, been a secret agreement between the UK and US governments that allowed for the prosecution of diplomats for crimes committed outside their duties but gave their families greater protection. Why did the crash cause a diplomatic row? Following the fatal crash, Mr Dunn's parents Mrs Charles and Tim Dunn, aided by spokesperson Radd Seiger, began a campaign to have the case brought to led them to the White House and a meeting in October 2019 with Donald Trump, then in his first term as US the meeting, he revealed Sacoolas was in the next room, but the family felt "ambushed" and did not meet December 2019, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised Northamptonshire Police to charge Sacoolas with causing Mr Dunn's an extradition request for her to be brought to the UK was rejected by the US the then-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, when she was Foreign Secretary, raised the case with the US government. How did Anne Sacoolas end up in court? In the absence of extradition, the family launched a civil claim for damages against Sacoolas and her husband in the December 2021, the CPS said Sacoolas would appear at court in the UK to face unspecified a month later it said the court date had been postponed to allow "ongoing" discussions with the US national's legal a change in the law meant Sacoolas was able to appear in court via video-link and she pleaded guilty on screen at the Old Bailey to causing death by careless driving on 20 October 2022. The 45-year-old was originally charged with causing death by dangerous driving, but the CPS accepted her plea to the lesser was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment suspended for 12 months, once again appearing via video-link after the US government advised Sacoolas not to attend her sentencing was also disqualified from driving for 12 months. What did Harry Dunn's family say after the hearing? Mrs Charles said: "Getting to court and getting to where we are now has been the most monumental thing for me because I can talk to him now and tell him we've done it. Promise complete."Mr Dunn Snr said: "I go up to the crash site quite a lot - I went there a couple of days ago to strim and put some daffodils in ready for the spring."Hopefully we've given hope to other families that they can do the same as us and get justice and believe and fight because it will happen in the end, it will happen." What has happened since the sentencing? A second funeral for Mr Dunn was held in March 2024 after human tissue was found on clothing returned to the inquest in June 2024 concluded Mr Dunn died as a result of a road traffic collision, and the coroner called for driver training to be given to US personnel working in the UK. Northamptonshire Police launched an investigation into how the case was handled from the beginning. What did the investigation find? The review, written by a former senior police officer, made 38 separate found that, while officers believed Sacoolas was in a state of shock at the time, she "could and should have been arrested" after the also revealed that Mr Dunn was subjected to drug testing after the collision, but Sacoolas was review said none of the officers at the scene managed to gather footage from their body-worn cameras. It was also very critical of the chief constable at the time, Nick Adderley, who was sacked for gross misconduct in 2024 for lying about his career in the Royal said he made "erroneous statements" about Sacoolas's immunity status, and should not have criticised the family's spokesperson, Radd Seiger, at a press conference. The force has apologised for failing to "do the very best for the victim".Mrs Charles said: "I'm absolutely bewildered that the most fundamental of policing was not carried out. I'm struggling to get my head around that."Mr Seiger said Mr Adderley "nearly derailed" attempts to get justice for Mr Dunn but that Northamptonshire Police, under a new chief constable, was now "headed in the right direction". Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.