- Beyond Colonialism
- Posts
- How the UK Government f!cked itself (Issue #24)
How the UK Government f!cked itself (Issue #24)
What Palestine Action protesters know about resistance
Chris Musei-Sequeira
September 09, 2025
Let's talk about the group Palestine Action... and let's talk about it carefully, because Palestine Action is a "proscribed" group in the United Kingdom under the Terrorism Act 2000.
Therefore, this newsletter is not an endorsement… it’s a lesson.
What can protesters supporting Palestine Action teach us about resistance?
When the UK Government proscribed Palestine Action not so long ago, some people told me that the UK Government would reverse its proscription if enough people were to get themselves arrested. At that time, I thought to myself, "that's a silly notion. I don't think the Government cares how many people it arrests." My friend Heather Luna and I talked about this on the 25 June episode of our Morning Tinto podcast.
Well. I now think my thoughts were quite misguided.
Because what is happening in the United Kingdom is an example of the people using system processes against the system itself. As follows: By proscribing Palestine Action, the United Kingdom has compelled itself to arrest and detain anyone who shows support for Palestine Action. Thus if you show support for Palestine Action, the Government must arrest you. If a thousand of you show support for Palestine Action, the Government must arrest a thousand of you. And if a thousand of you show support for Palestine Action all at the same time, the Government must arrest a thousand of you… all at the same time.
Here’s a quote from the article, “Police Fail to Arrest Two-Thirds in Biggest-Ever Protest Against Palestine Action Ban” by Harriet Williamson, published in Novara Media on 7 September:
At 1pm on Saturday, more than 1,300 protesters, the majority of them over 60 and some visibly disabled, sat down in Parliament Square and wrote “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine action” on cardboard signs. By 9:15pm, the Met said officers had managed to arrest “more than 425” and called its operational plans “effective” – despite having failed to arrest everyone, as it had claimed it would.
UK police forces are taking hours to handcuff and detain Palestine Action protesters, running out of room in which to corral them all, and spending an enormous amount of taxpayer money in the process. And still, the protests keep coming.
We have seen videos and photos of all kinds of people being arrested and carried away for quietly holding signs... young and old; women and men; employed, unemployed, retired. But honestly, I think the “optics” are of least concern to the UK Government.
I believe that what’s of most concern is this: Palestine Action protesters are forcing the UK Government to bear the material costs of its own proscription decision.
I made a short video the other day where I said that if you want to stop billionaires, you must hit them in the pocketbook… because their primary concern is profit. Well, something similar is true for governments, in the domains of cost and resource allocation. Staff time is a scarce resource. Human expertise is a scarce resource. Money itself is a scarce resource. That is to say, opportunity cost is real. Every minute that UK police spend arresting peaceful protesters is a minute that they cannot spend being somewhere else, doing something else. That’s not to mention the time and cost of processing all of those arrested people.
All of this is happening for two reasons:
When the United Kingdom proscribed Palestine Action, it told the entire world the following: “If you support this group, we must use our resources to arrest you. (Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more…)” It told the entire world about the weakness in its own system.
Palestine Action protesters organized and mobilized together to exploit the weakness that the UK government broadcast globally.
Now, we can get to the lesson: official systems often serve to box in the very officials themselves. But a weakness is not really a weakness if people don't mobilize together to exploit it.
What are you doing to find and exploit system weaknesses... not just as individuals, but as organized individuals?
Know someone who needs to see this issue? Copy the link from your browser and send it to them.
My position
My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of African slaves brought to the islands during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.
My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18; I now reside in Queens, New York with my wife.
I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.
Image source: Nolan, I. (September 6, 2025). Palestine Action Protest, London, Saturday 6th September. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/indigon/54771869288/ — This photograph is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.