The Keir Starmer government has the strange and counterproductive ability to face the groups and the most revered people – with or without reason – by citizens: pensioners, doctors, farmers, ranchers and, now, to which for many it represents the voice of the generation of the ‘millennials’: Sally Rooney. The popular Irish writer, author of sales successes such as Interlude, Normal people o Conversations between friendsHe has openly challenged Downing Street by announcing that he will devote the copyright of his works and adaptations to the screen that he still broadcasts on his platform of streaming BBC to finance the activist organization Palestine Action (Palestine Action), declared terrorist group by the British Minister of the Interior, Yvette Cooper, and thus cataloged at the same level as al Qaeda or the Islamic State.
“I want to make it clear that I intend to use this income for my works, as well as in general the public platform that I have (as a successful writer), to support Palestine Action and all direct action against the genocide in any way that I can. If the British State considers this ‘terrorism’, it might should investigate the shady organizations that continue to promote my work and finance my activities, such as Wh Smith (the book chain of the United Kingdom) BBC ”, wrote this weekend Rooney in the newspaper The Irish Times.
The challenge of the writer puts the Government of Starmer and his minister Cooper against the ropes, but also to an institution so of the establishment like the BBC, which must now decide what it does with series like Normal peoplewho has enjoyed remarkable success.
“Support for a forbidden organization is a crime under the Terrorism Law, and obviously the police, as it has already made it and expected, will apply the law,” said a spokesman for the Starmer government.
On August 9, more than 15,000 people concentrated on Parliament Square, in front of the British Parliament, to express their support for Palestinian action. Police arrested more than 700 of them, who carried posters in which I read ‘I oppose the genocide. Support to Palestine Action. ”Most of them exceeded fifty years, and many approached the eighties. The faces of the agents reflected a feeling of overflow before a peaceful and unstoppable act: the accusation was read to each of the detainees at the turn of the corner and they were left to go, because it was evident that there was no logistics to put between bars to so many people.
Since then, dozens of them have been prosecuted, and face sentences of several years in jail. “Citizens have the democratic right to demonstrate peacefully in this country, and I understand the intensity of the feelings that cause the horrible scenes of Gaza,” said Chief Prosecutor Stephen Parkinson, “but Palestinian action is now a terrorist organization and those who choose to violate the law will be submitted to a criminal process,” he warned.
Minister Cooper insists on having information on Palestinian action activities that would justify a decision as drastic as the adopted. The group has carried out acts of sabotage against industrial and arms interests of Israel in the United Kingdom, and against military facilities, without extending violence to people.
In mid -June, two of its activists crossed the safety metal fences of the Brize Norton military base, the largest in the United Kingdom, and led their electric motorcycles to two transport aircraft and refueling of Voyager Kc fuel. With the help of stuffed paint stones, the engines of the two aircraft stuffed red, and caused some damages in their structure with iron bars. Everything was conveniently recorded and disseminated in the networks. That was the drop that filled the Starmer’s government vessel.
Intellectual support
Dozens of writers, intellectuals and academics such as Naomi Klein, Angela Davis or Judith Butler have signed an open letter in which they require Starmer to raise the Palestinian Action qualification as a terrorist organization and “put an end to their attacks against fundamental freedoms” as the right to demonstrate and protest.
Previously, another public statement signed by about 300 prominent Jewish figures, such as film director Mike Leigh or writer Michael Rosen, had written to the British prime minister to denounce his measure as something “illegitimate and anti -ometic.”
But Rooney’s challenge, which has sold millions of books translated into dozens of languages, and has formed around it a sentimental communion of readers, is a serious problem for the Starmer government, forced – in theory – to arrest it if it expressed its support for Palestinian action in any of the numerous literary festivals or cultural events in which it participates.
The author already caused a stir at the end of 2021 when she announced that she would not give up the translation rights of her novel Where are you, World Beautiful to an Israeli publishing house, in protest of Israel’s treatment to the Palestinians. He also supported the boycott campaign, divestments and sanctions (BDS), which promotes the boycott of companies and institutions of that country throughout the world.
Rooney’s books, love stories with young people facing the daily challenges of class, sex or politics, have been the Instagram flag of the generation of today under forty years. Not so much of those belonging to the Z generation, which, however, can attract its gesture of challenge to Starmer with an issue, Palestine, which has caused a whole generational gap in the ranks of British labor.
“To make sure that British citizens are aware of my position, I would love to publish this statement in a British newspaper, but today it would be an illegal act,” Rooney written in The Irish Times. “We owe our gratitude and solidarity to these brave activists (of Palestinian Action). Two years after a genocide broadcast live, we owe to the people of Palestine more than mere words,” Rooney concludes.