Police have started arresting protesters supporting the banned group Palestine Action outside the Labour party conference in Liverpool.
Around 100 people have gathered silently to hold signs reading: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, protest group Defend Our Juries said.
Palestine Action was banned as a terror organisation in July after the group claimed responsibility for an action in which two Voyager planes were damaged at RAF Brize Norton the previous month.
A Merseyside Police spokesman said: “We can confirm that officers are in attendance at a Defend Our Juries protest near to The Wheel of Liverpool this afternoon, Sunday 28 September.
“Some of the people in attendance have displayed material in support of Palestine Action.
“Officers are in the process of making arrests on suspicion of wearing/carrying an article supporting a proscribed organisation.”
A spokesman for Defend Our Juries said: “We’ve come to remind everyone that the Labour Party is in breach of its duty to act to prevent genocide under international law.
“Instead it made the cowardly decision to ban the direct action group that was trying to prevent genocide.
“Labour members and trades unions are overwhelmingly against their party’s complicity in genocide and the ban on Palestine Action.
“Yet party officials have shut down all the debates that members wanted to have on these issues during their conference.
“Labour also reneged on Jack Straw’s promise that the Terrorism Act he introduced would never be used against a domestic protest group.
“This sets an alarmingly authoritarian precedent and unless the law is redrawn and the ban overturned, any group that this government or a future government does not like could be treated as terrorists.
“Instead of shutting down protest, it’s time the Labour Party took the responsibility to prevent genocide seriously and impose blanket sanctions on Israel including stopping the flow of arms from factories in this country.”
One of the protesters, Keith Hackett, 71, said: “I’m risking arrest today under terrorism legislation because as a former Labour councillor in Liverpool I am deeply ashamed of how Labour are acting.
“If they want to start turning the party around and win back the support they have lost they need to stop their complicity in this genocide and end the ban on Palestine Action.
“They need to recognise that direct action has been a fundamental part of the gains that have been in the labour movement.”
Tayo Aluko, 63, an actor, writer and singer from Liverpool, said: “This Government, like all authoritarian regimes in modern times, wants to plant fear in the citizens so that it can continue to let their friends and paymasters get away with genocide.
“This is a time for bravery, as was shown by people who went before us, so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have today, which are now under threat.
“I feel I have no choice but to stand up and be counted.”
