A PROTESTER arrested at a pro-Palestine rally is not banned from “mentioning [[Palestine]]” as has been claimed, police have said.
Audrey White was arrested in Liverpool on Sunday and reports have suggested she was gagged from speaking about Palestine after she was released on bail later that night.
The 74-year-old, who has a heart condition and low bone density which puts her at risk of fractures, was dragged by police officers across the ground and handcuffed as she lay prone.
Campaign group Defend Our Juries has said White and others including her brother and a local priest were arrested for holding signs reading: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."
Merseyside Police told The National that White, a veteran activist, was banned from attending protests in support of Palestine Action, but that her bail conditions did not prevent her from speaking about Palestine.
She was detained for nearly eight hours and released shortly before midnight on Sunday along with three others.
A spokesperson for the force said her bail conditions set out that White was “not to attend or go to any planned or unplanned protest, spontaneous or otherwise – and this is the key bit, really – in support of Palestine Action”.
They added: “It’s fairly specifically around the group itself.”
Palestine Action was branded a terrorist organisation and banned by Labour in an unprecedented move against a protest group.
The organisation was proscribed under the Terrorism Act after breaking into RAF Brize Norton and vandalising planes.
BREAKING: Four arrested on terror charges in Liverpool, including local legend Audrey White, her brother and a local priest. They were detained for holding signs during the local protest which said "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action." pic.twitter.com/2JbCzf2sQr
— Defend our Juries (@DefendourJuries) July 20, 2025
Her other bail conditions stipulate that she must “live and sleep at her address” and a ban on entering Liverpool city centre, the spokesperson said.
Lawyers for Palestine Action’s co-founder Huda Ammori told the High Court on Monday that Merseyside Police had barred people from mentioning Palestine as a condition of their release.
White told The Guardian earlier this week that she was “very sore, very shaken, very emotional and I’m frightened to be honest”.
She added: “It’s designed to stop human rights and to stop protest and to stop free speech.
“There’s two things to be afraid of in this country and one is that we lose everything we are proud of – the ability to speak out – and the other is that we would ever be involved in a genocide.
“We look at these visions of children losing their limbs and being blown to bits. We’ve got to say: how can we stop our country’s involvement in this genocide? Everyone has a responsibility to stop horrors like this all throughout history.”
White, who is a carer for her husband who has cancer, said it was the first time in her more than 50-year career of campaigning for peace.
The Trades Union Congress previously described her as one of the pioneering activists of the last 150 years for her decades-long campaign to change sexual harassment laws, which was dramatised in 1988 with Glenda Jackson playing a character based on White.
She had recently made the headlines for giving Keir Starmer a brutal dressing down for crushing dissent within the Labour Party and writing for The Sun.
