Greens' Polanski calls for UK Palestine Action ban to be lifted

Green Party deputy leader Mothin Ali has backed Zack Polanski’s call to deproscribe Palestine Action, telling The New Arab on the sidelines of the party’s annual conference that Britain “can’t keep seeing grannies being carted off into meat wagons” for supporting the banned group.

Speaking exclusively to The New Arab at the Green Party conference in Brighton on Friday, Ali praised Polanski for speaking “powerfully” about Gaza, the cost of living and other issues facing the country.

“We can't keep seeing grannies being carted off into meat wagons by the Old Bill. We just can't have that anymore. It's not befitting of a 21st-century democracy,” Ali said.

Referring to calls for Palestine Action to be removed from the UK’s list of proscribed organisations, he added: “It's something that we're all wanting to see.”

His comments came after Green Party leader Zack Polanski used his conference speech to sharply criticise the Labour government over its approach to Gaza and the 2025 proscription of Palestine Action.

Addressing supporters at the Brighton Centre, Polanski also hailed the party's record-breaking achievements over the past year, including a surge in membership and a record number of councillors.

But some of his strongest criticism was directed at the government’s stance on Gaza, particularly Labour MPs' support for the proscription of Palestine Action.

“To a government so determined to crush dissent that it labels those with views it doesn't want to hear as terrorists. Terrorists,” Polanski said. “And hundreds of Labour MPs who were willing to troop through the voting lobbies to approve it.”

Polanski contrasted Labour's support for the ban with Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's admission at the Labour conference earlier this week that the party had been wrong in its approach to Gaza.

He noted that while Miliband was delivering his speech in Liverpool on Monday, dozens of protesters, many of them pensioners, were being arrested for holding placards in support of Palestine Action.

“The sight of pensioners being put in handcuffs and bundled into police vans for holding up cardboard signs has been a stain on this country’s reputation for far too long,” Polanski said.

“And Greens, we stand with one voice now as we say: Drop the charges. End the Genocide. Deproscribe Palestine Action.”

Polanski also welcomed Miliband’s “long overdue” move to ban trade with illegal settlements, describing it as “necessary…but not nearly sufficient”.

Alongside Gaza, the Green leader used his speech to address climate change, the cost of living, housing and immigration.

‘It was very charismatic’

Speaking to The New Arab after the speech, Ali also praised Polanski's focus on domestic issues, including rent controls, council housing and water.

“It's so important to have someone speak so powerfully about the issues that concern us,” he said.

Green Party members and conference attendees who spoke to The New Arab also welcomed the speech.

“I thought it was very good. It was very charismatic,” Keith Garrett told The New Arab.

“But also, the things he said were very powerful and moving towards people and actually get to the nub of a lot of our problems, which is our societal ills and also the climate crisis and the wider issue of genocide and the genocide that's happening in Gaza.”

Garrett said Polanski's position on Gaza had strengthened his support for the leader.

“It really helps that the leader has taken a stand on [Gaza], on being essentially right, not just trying to be populist, but doing the correct things, which I think is the way forward with any modern party now.”

Another attendee, Conall Monaghan, described the speech as “compassionate”.

“You could see the influence the Holborn & St Pancras has had in thinking about the issues that really resonate in the community at the moment,” Monaghan told The New Arab.

“I felt like it was really, really powerful and the celebration of everything the Green Party has done in the last year… It felt really celebratory and positive and strong and really, really makes me feel hopeful about next week.”

The Green Party became the first political party in England and Wales to officially declare Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide at its September 2024 conference, while Polanski has been vocal in his support for Palestine since before becoming leader the following year.

This year’s conference comes days before Polanski contests the Holborn & St Pancras by-election on 8 October, following the departure of former prime minister and constituency MP Keir Starmer in September.

Polanski did not directly reference his campaign during the speech, other than joking that he had been knocking on a lot of doors “for some reason”.