Late last year the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) group collected signatures in support of the activists who had gone on a hunger strike following their arrest. These activists had been held for over a year without trial and, as of the time of writing, they have been found innocent of all charges they’ve faced in court.
The petition had nearly 800 signatures collected in the local area over a 4 hour period of time. For comparison, the e-petitions on the parliamentary website that typically collect signatures for months require a minimum of 100,000 signatures for a parliamentary debate… this works out at around 150 signatures for a area the size of Woking.
As we knew that the petition organisers had difficulty getting this discussed in parliament we decided to send a message to David Lammy, the Justice Secretary, covering this and one of the attacks on this group of protesters.
Since we wrote that message the group has been found innocent of the most serious charges and mostly been released pending trial for the remaining charges. There is one remaining member of that group awaiting a trial for a serious offence that the rest are not charged with.
Following the release of the campaigners we feel that our local party stance has been justified further:
* A year and a half is too long to wait for a fair trial.
* People who haven’t been convicted of a crime should, as a general rule, be allowed to communicate with their families.
* Dozens of people, who have now been judged innocent of serious offences, have now had their lives put on hold for around 18 months.
* We have to compare this to the experiences of protesters who were assaulted locally and, months later, are still waiting to see the assailant arrested.
* The UK has an issue of overcrowding in prisons which has lead to some prisoners being released early. In this situation the 24 spaces used to house these activists should’ve been used to hold convicted criminals instead.
* Around £2 million of public funds has been wasted to detain these protestors, and now they have been found innocent of the charges that they were held for.
* This represents a lot of failures affecting a lot of people and it will be difficult or impossible to make this right for everyone affected.
If you would like to see more on our work supporting the protester who were assaulted please click here.
Part of the text of the message to David Lammy is below. This has been edited because it is already very long and some of the text isn’t relevant to this topic.
…Regardless of the eventual finding regarding several pro-Palestine campaigners a number of them have been held awaiting trial for a very long time. It is no surprise that after a year of waiting several of them went on hunger strike to request, amongst other things, fair trials on quicker timelines. I also think that the longer the wait the harder it is to get fair trials because jurors will have more recent events in mind while judging defendants. … As a gauge of sentiment in my local area nearly 800 residents signed a petition regarding the hunger strikers in the 4 hour window the organisers used to collect signatures.
I say this not to downplay the crimes they are accused of, those are serious and must be judged in court, but the UK has no sentence involving detainees being without trial until they starve themselves. Further, if and when any of those detainees are found not guilty, which can happen, how is the government going to make right their extremely long wait in prison before trial? Regardless of verdict what about anyone who dies due to the hunger strike? When considering the early release of many convicted criminals to make room in prisons how can we justify holding protestors this long without trials to determine guilt or appropriate sentences? … These aren’t hypothetical questions, I would like you to think on them while looking at the requests below.
* Try to ensure that language used by yourself and your colleagues about protestors doesn’t leave room for violent members of society to feel entitled to attack them, regardless of ideological differences. … [Referring to attacks on local protestors]
* To push for greater resources to be made available to the police in tackling violent disorder targetted at peaceful groups, particularly protestors. … [Referring to attacks on local protestors]
* To consider the short statement in EDM 2386, which has broad cross party support (I saw signatures from 8 different parties plus some independents).
* To look into the cases of the Palestine protestors, see what can be done to expedite their trials and ensure they are treated humanely. I do think that requesting less than a two year wait for a trial and easier communication with their families, which I understand has been restricted or denied, is reasonable.
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