Highlights:
- Author Sally Rooney says she will continue to back Palestine Action, despite the group being proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK.
- Writing in the Irish Times, she pledged to use her book earnings and public platform to support the group’s activities.
- The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has defended the ban, citing security risks and evidence of violent action.
- Palestine Action has targeted UK arms companies and was linked to an incident at RAF Brize Norton, causing £7m worth of damage.
Sally Rooney reaffirms support
Irish novelist Sally Rooney has said she will continue to support the pro-Palestinian direct action group Palestine Action, even after its proscription as a terrorist organisation in the UK.
In an article published in the Irish Times, the award-winning writer of Normal People and Intermezzo said she would keep using the proceeds of her work — including residuals from the BBC adaptations of Normal People and Conversations with Friends — to fund the group.
“If this makes me a supporter of terror under UK law, so be it,” she wrote, describing her stance as part of resisting “genocide” in Gaza.
UK government’s stance
The group was banned by the UK government in July 2025. Defending the decision, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper argued that Palestine Action was not “a regular protest group known for occasional stunts” but an organisation linked to repeated unlawful activity.
She pointed to an “Underground Manual” allegedly produced by the group, which she said offered “practical guidance on how to identify targets to attack and how to evade law enforcement”.
Cooper added she had received “disturbing information” about future planned attacks, and warned: “These are not the actions of a legitimate protest group.”
Activities and legal cases
Since the ban, more than 700 people have been arrested, including over 500 at a central London demonstration last week.
The group’s most high-profile action came in June 2025, when members broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed two aircraft with red paint, causing an estimated £7m in damage.
In August 2024, alleged members also broke into Elbit Systems UK in Bristol — a subsidiary of the Israeli defence company — an incident which has led to criminal charges including aggravated burglary and violent disorder. The trial of 18 defendants is scheduled for November 2025.
Rooney’s history of activism
Rooney has previously spoken out against the group’s proscription, describing it in the Guardian earlier this year as an “alarming attack on free speech”.
In 2021, she refused permission for her novel Beautiful World, Where Are You to be translated into Hebrew by an Israeli publisher, saying she would only work with a company aligned with the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
In her latest opinion piece, she criticised the UK government for what she described as eroding citizens’ rights and freedoms “to protect its relationship with Israel”.
Context
The war in Gaza began after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, in which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent military campaign has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health ministry figures, which the United Nations treats as broadly reliable.
Israel rejects allegations of genocide, but several international human rights organisations say its conduct amounts to genocide against Palestinians.
