UK warns Sally Rooney after novelist pledges to fund Palestine Action

The government of the United Kingdom has warned Irish novelist Sally Rooney against funding Palestine Action after she pledged support to the campaign group banned by the Labour-led government as a “terrorist” group last month.

The prime minister’s office said on Monday that “support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act” and warned against backing such organisations.
“There is a difference between showing support for a proscribed organisation, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and legitimate protest in support of a cause,” a spokesperson was quoted by PA Media.

In an opinion piece in the Irish Times on Saturday, Rooney, the author of best-selling novels such as Normal People and Conversations with Friends, criticised the government’s move to ban the pro-Palestinian group.

“Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation,” she wrote in the article.

Palestine Action was banned after its activists broke into a military base in central England in June and sprayed red paint on two planes in protest against the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children.

What’s Palestine Action?
Since its founding in 2020, Palestine Action has disrupted the arms industry in the UK with “direct action”. It says it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
Israel has been accused of widespread abuses in its 22 months of war on Gaza. The International Court of Justice in January 2024 said Israeli actions in Gaza were plausibly genocide. Since then, multiple rights organisations have called Israel’s war a genocide. In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes.

Rooney said she chose the Dublin-based newspaper to publicise her intention rather than a UK one as doing so “would now be illegal” in Britain after the government banned Palestine Action.

“The UK’s state broadcaster … regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can,” she wrote.