AN SNP MP has warned of an "authoritarian slippery slope" after MPs voted to declare Palestine Action a proscribed group.
The legislation naming the direct action group as a terrorist organisation was supported by the Commons on Wednesday, with just 26 MPs voting against the move – although six of these were part of a double vote, which was done as an abstention.
The Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025 is now expected to be debated and voted on by the House of Lords on Thursday before it becomes law.
The SNP and the LibDems abstained, while 87 Tories and 275 Labour MPs supported the effort.
Questions had been raised as to why the SNP abstained, to which MP Brendan O'Hara responded to in an opinion piece for The National.
He said that the SNP did not want to be seen to vote against proscribing other the two other groups in the vote: the "Maniacs Murder Cult", a Moldovan neo-Nazi group, the Russian Imperial Movement – a far-right group aiming to rebuild the Russian Empire – and its paramilitary wing the Russian Imperial Legion.
He wrote: "Despite being asked, the UK Government, in a disgraceful, cynical, manipulation of parliamentary procedure, refused to separate these groups and allow MPs to make individual decisions on whether each of them met the threshold for proscription – forcing an all or nothing vote.
"And that decision to lump all three groups together in the way that they did should lead any reasonable person to conclude that this was a grubby political tactic to proscribe a group that the Government simply don’t like, and not what the Government claims was an issue of vital national security."
He went on to question where the UK Government would go next in proscribing groups, asking if Just Stop Oil, Greenpeace, or the Quakers would be considered in a vote "next week".
He wrote: "We are on a slippery slope. This week it is Palestine Action, next week, will it be Just Stop Oil, or Greenpeace? And how long will it be I wonder until a future UK government deem the activities of The Quakers to be a threat to national security?
"This is a bad law. One which was formulated in anger, driven by revenge and bulldozed through the House of Commons in the most cynical fashion, by a government whose moral compass is becoming a far-distant memory."
