A LABOUR MP was grilled for backing the proscription of Palestine Action despite celebrating the legacy of the suffragette movement.
Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, was questioned by Novara Media journalists at the Labour Party conference on whether she would have voted to proscribe the suffragettes, given they had done “much worse” than Palestine Action.
Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July after a break-in at RAF Brize Norton caused an estimated £7 million worth of damage. Proscription means that membership of or support for the group is now a criminal offence and could lead to a prison sentence of up to 14 years under the Terrorism Act.
The journalist pointed out that the suffragettes poisoned letterboxes and killed at least three people and asked whether the decision to proscribe was “different when it’s women’s rights campaigners”.
Phillips said: “No, no, no, no, it’s absolutely not different, it’s based on intelligence that is gathered and risk.”
"Would you have voted to proscribe the Suffragettes?" At Labour's annual party conference, Novara Media reporter @RivkahBrown asked Jess Phillips MP about the seeming hypocrisy of voting for the proscription of Palestine Action, while also celebrating the legacy of the… pic.twitter.com/b0Q7D8ntTz
— Novara Media (@novaramedia) October 2, 2025
The journalist pointed out that the group haven’t been charged for causing physical harm to anyone, and Phillips replied saying that “those trials will go on, won’t they”.
She was asked again about her decision to back proscription and laughed as she said her vote was based on “intelligence”.
Asked about the intelligence, which has not officially been made public, Phillips replied: “I’m not going to talk about that sort of thing.
“That’s the thing about being in government, isn’t it.”
The UK Government has been consistently criticised for its decision to proscribe, with the High Court told by Raza Husain KC: “The decision to proscribe Palestine Action had the hallmarks of an authoritarian and blatant abuse of power.”
Campaigner and former diplomat Craig Murray also argued that a leaked document from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) left the case “in tatters”. Murray claimed that the report, which laid out the case for proscription, did not back up then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s claims that the group were “violent”.
