Bestselling Irish novelist Sally Rooney has pledged support to the campaign group Palestine Action, with the UK government warning it’s “an offence under the Terrorism Act”.
Last month, the Labour-led government proscribed Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation.
Meanwhile, Rooney wrote in The Irish Times over the weekend that royalties from her books, including Normal People and Conversations with Friends, as well as BBC film adaptations of them, would be used to support Palestine Action.
Now, a legal expert has said Rooney could face prosecution if she were to express her views in the United Kingdom.
Lawyer and writer Sadakat Kadri said that “receiving money with the intention of using it to support terrorism is an offence under section 15 of the 2000 act”.
“Rooney could be arrested without a warrant as a ‘terrorist’,” he said, adding that “the absurdities don’t end there”. Kadri says the government’s decision to bracket Palestine Action alongside groups such as Islamic State means the BBC would also be criminally liable if it continued to pay royalties to Rooney in view of her stated intentions.
“Authoritarian governments routinely threaten writers and intimidate broadcasters, but I find it quite extraordinary that Labour under Keir Starmer has now chosen to go down the same path,” said Kadri.
An official spokesperson for the UK prime minister would not comment specifically on Rooney’s pledge, however, they said: “There is a difference between showing support for a proscribed organisation, which is an offence under the Terrorism Act, and legitimate protest in support of a cause.”
When asked what message the government would give to people considering giving money to Palestine Action group, the spokesperson said: “Support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act and obviously the police will, as they have set out, they will obviously implement the law within the law as you’d expect.”
Since its founding in 2020, Palestine Action has protested the UK’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza, disrupting the arms industry, and saying it is “committed to ending global participation in Israel’s genocidal and apartheid regime”.
Palestine Action was banned by the UK government after its activists broke into a military base in central England in June and sprayed red paint on two planes.
Within her opinion piece, Rooney criticised the government’s move to ban the pro-Palestinianc group, writing: “Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation.”
Rooney said that she wrote of her support for Palestine Action in the Dublin-based publication, as doing so in “a UK newspaper […] would now be illegal”.
She wrote that she supports Palestine Action and that “if this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it”.
“My books, at least for now, are still published in Britain, and are widely available in bookshops and even supermarkets. In recent years the UK’s state broadcaster has also televised two fine adaptations of my novels, and therefore regularly pays me residual fees.”
“I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can.”