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The Debrief – Adam Quarshie speaks to Sean Morrison about his story, Filton 18: the more you oppress people, the more they will rise
INTRO: recording of Sukaina, the mother of Fatema Zainab Rajwani, one of the ‘Filton 18’ activists who were jailed after damaging a Bristol arms factory supplying the Israeli military.
This is the poem that she wrote while she was in prison last month. She starts off with to the people of Gaza, I write to you in my state of love and grief, at night, I dream of a love so wide and so deep, it frees us all. It stretches across continents to fill the space between my brown body and yours. I wish the love I dream of was enough. I wish the love I dream of would hold your grief the same way that our silence holds violence… when there is nothing else to write about. I write about love because there is no life worth living, no strength worth perception, if not for love, the kind of love that forces you to witness, the kind of love that does not stay silent, love that is not patient or kind, but relentless and harsh. I dream of a love so encompassing it hurts, a love that does not make us less afraid, but a love that makes us less compromising. At night, I dream of a love so wide and so deep, it frees us all. When dawn breaks, I dream of waking up to a love that is not new, but old and ancient and unforgiving, the type of love that stands to action. There is no greater act of love than standing uncompromising between, between all which you know and that destroys and all which could be rebuilt anew.
Adam Quarshie
Welcome to this episode of the debrief, where cable journalists take us behind the headlines of their latest investigations. I'm Adam Quarshie. I recently joined the Cable’s media team, and those were the words of Fatema Zainab Rajwani, a prisoner at HMP Bronzefield, read by her mother. This week, I'm sitting down with my colleague, Sean Morrison, to talk through his investigation into the case of Fatima, alongside the so called Filton 18, a group of activists who broke into an Elbit Systems arms factory last year in protest over their supply of weaponry to the Israeli military. Since publishing his article on the group, there have been growing concerns about the use of anti-terror laws against the defendants in jail, and we're going to dive into that alongside Sean's investigations as a whole. You can go back and read Sean's article via the link in the description, along with the other coverage on this issue. So how you doing today? Sean,
Sean Morrison
Yeah, I'm all right. I'm all right. I think we're, we both got the lurgy, haven't we?
Adam Quarshie
I feel like the whole office has had it in the past week going around.
Sean Morrison
My vape is helping, nice and fruity. It's clearing the pipes up,
Adam Quarshie
All right, so let's get into this story. Can you tell me about the Filton 18? And why are they on trial?
Sean Morrison
So the Filton 18 are group of Palestine Action activists. They targeted an Israeli weapons factory based here in Bristol, in Filton, and they did that in August last year. The first six of the protesters smashed their way into the building and occupied it with the intention of disrupting Elbit’s operations.
Adam Quarshie
So what can you tell me about Palestine Action? Who are they and what kind of activism do they do?
Sean Morrison
They're a direct action movement. Been around since about 2020, they've done hundreds of actions against specifically Elbit sites in the UK, including here in Bristol. You know, I've reported from a trial of Palestine Action activists who targeted a different site in Bristol. That report was called Bristol's murder factory,
Adam Quarshie
And maybe it's worth unpicking, I guess a lot of our listeners will have an idea of what direct action is, but maybe it's worth defining it. What actually is direct action?
Sean Morrison
Ao it's distinct from, you know, other kinds of protests, because, you know, it's more direct, yeah, you know they are, in this case, you know, smashing into a building to occupy it with the purpose of disrupting the operations of their target.
Adam Quarshie
So I guess, from the activist point of view, they are engaging in, like, what legally as defined as criminal damage or or, you know that they're destroying things, but their justification is that they are preventing other crimes from happening. So in this case, they're preventing l bit manufacturing weapons that are going to be used to kill innocent civilians in Gaza.
Sean Morrison
Exactly. Yeah. So. And I think it comes from a place, in this case, from talking to Palestine action, that peaceful protest just isn't working. Now the genocide is still happening, so this is the only option,
Adam Quarshie
And we know that that this the weapons that are produced in these factories, this is being exported to Israel, and it's being used in Gaza in ongoing genocide right now, is that that's that correct?
Sean Morrison
Well, yeah, I mean Elbit Systems UK, which is a subsidiary of the parent company, which is based in Israel. They try to distance themselves from the parent company, but they are inherently linked. They design the technologies that are then used by the IDF.
Adam Quarshie
It's actually in their slogan, isn't it that they say that it's battle-tested in Gaza, which is pretty horrific, when you think about it.
Sean Morrison
It's horrible. But I wanted to also to pick up on the point about how direct action, you know, they might be committing criminal damage, but they're preventing a worse crime. You know, we we saw this play out in the courtroom via the defence, you know, during the case of the Colston Four, for instance, where they relied on a human rights defence. And what we've seen since then is intervention by the state to reduce the kind of defences that activists, protesters can use in a criminal trial. So these were not… a human rights defence which was used successfully by the Colston Four, hasn't been open to Palestine Action activists, and which would give them a much stronger case for being found not guilty of their alleged crimes, and since the previous case that I covered, there's been even tougher interventions, you know, like now activists, they rely on a consent defence, which means that the owner of the building that they're targeting would consent to the damage being done if they knew what the people who were working there were doing.
Adam Quarshie
Okay. So is that implying that the owner of the factory doesn't know what their their own products are going to be used for? How does that work?
Sean Morrison
So it would be the landlords of the building. So in the case of this previous trial of Palestine Action activists, they were the Elbit Seven, yeah, the landlords of the building were Somerset Council. And for instance, there'd been councillors who had raised opposition to them being landlords to Elbit, knowing what Elbit do. So if the landlords knew what was going on, they would consent to the damage. But it's a significantly less powerful defence than a human rights defence, and there have been attempts to water down the consent defence even more so. Just like after the Colston trial, the attorney general intervened, changed what would be possible for people who commit criminal damage to… the defences they can rely on. The same thing happened more recently, limiting the legal defence of consent as well.
Adam Quarshie
And just for those of us who are less familiar with the legal system, can you remind us what an attorney general does? What's their role?
Sean Morrison
So, essentially, the attorney general, they're the person who provides legal advice and will represent the state in legal cases.
Adam Quarshie
All right. So we talked a little bit about direct action, how, and, you know, it's, there's obviously a tradition of like using that by activists. So why is it that now these particular activists are being treated with anti-terror legislation? What's the kind of political context to that? Why is it happening?
Sean Morrison
So it comes as part of a wider context, a wider crackdown on protest in the UK, but it's a big question, like as I keep referring to the previous case of Palestine Action activists who did similar things against a different factory, they were not treated in the same way. So it marks a serious escalation in how the state is responding to these kind of actions. And, yeah, it's a big it's a big question for me, and a big question for lots of people.
Adam Quarshie
Do you think it's mainly to deter people, to try and stop them from taking action?
Sean Morrison
Yeah, for sure, but it's clearly not working. From, you know, the people that I spoke to, I spoke to the parents of some of the Filton 18, spoke to other Palestine Action activists. And, I mean, it's in the title of the piece that we published. The more you oppress people, the more they're going to rise. And speaking to the parents of the Filton 18, who are the ones who are running the campaign to drop the charges against their children, you know, they lost faith in a system that they once believed in, that, you know, is meant to support them, when actually they're acting in the interests of this weapons manufacturer.
Adam Quarshie
Yeah, do you think that the media has any… I mean, obviously we're part of the media, but in terms of, you know, when a lot of the big, Palestine protests were happening in London, a lot of the tabloids were whipping up all this stuff about hate marches. Do you think that had a part to play in in kind of shaping this kind of crackdown on protesters?
Sean Morrison
I mean, they definitely played a part. How significant that is in how the state treats protesters. I don't know.
Adam Quarshie
It's also ironic as well, given that our current prime minister is a former human rights lawyer, that this is happening under his watch.
Sean Morrison
Yeah.
Adam Quarshie
So you mentioned just now that you spoke to a couple of parents of the defendants. Could you tell me a bit about them? Who were the people that you contacted?
Sean Morrison
I spoke to two parents of the Filton 18 activists, the mother of Fatema Rajwani and the mother of Zoe Rogers, both young women in their early 20s, and both of them actually are writing poetry from jail about their experience, why they took the action that they did, which we heard in the intro.
Adam Quarshie
And they're both students, right?
Sean Morrison
So Fatema was at university and Zoe was applying to go to university.
Adam Quarshie
Are they both from Bristol?
Sean Morrison
No, they're actually both London based. I spoke to Fatima's mom specifically about the repressive sanctions that her daughter was facing in jail. And just to list some of them, and this is under terror powers, right? And we should say, if I haven't already, that none of the Filton 18 have been charged with crimes that are related to terrorism. They've been charged with violent disorder, criminal damage, but they're still being subjected to repressive powers under terror legislation, and it's caused a big backlash, really, including from the UN who intervened and said that this is a misuse of terror legislation. So Fatema, she spent six days in solitary confinement before she was moved to a regular cell in HMP Bronzefield, where she's being held, two weeks in jail before she was even allowed to speak to her mum, three weeks before she was allowed a visitor. And through this time, she was routinely woken in the middle of the night to be interrogated by a counter-terror police. And you know, her mum spoke of the big impact that these kind of repressive powers would have, the use of them against her would have, but also the great resilience that she's showing, which comes through in the poetry that she's writing.
Adam Quarshie
Did her mum give much of a indication of where Fatema's at in terms of her kind of psychological and emotional state right now?
Sean Morrison
It was clear that being in jail or being held for this length of time is, of course, going to have a huge impact on her mental health, which is what her mum said. But yeah, again, showing resilience. And it's very clear from her poetry, from what her mum says, that, you know, she feels like she did the right thing. She felt compelled to do this so that, I think, would give her strength.
Adam Quarshie
So you mentioned before that they haven't actually been charged under this anti terror legislation yet, but what could be the potential consequences if they were? Presumably the sentences would be quite long?
Sean Morrison
Well, I think it remains to be seen what's going to happen in this case – it is really difficult to speculate, but clearly they're already facing harsher conditions than previous activists who took similar action.
Adam Quarshie
And you mentioned that the UN had stepped in as well. Could you explain what that means? How does that happen? Is that normal for that to happen?
Sean Morrison
It's definitely not normal. But you know this, this case has attracted a lot of attention, you know, in the media, by human rights groups, you know, and yeah, the UN intervened and said there was an unjustified use of counter-terrorism laws to target these activists when they were initially arrested, the property damage that they've been charged with doesn't meet an international threshold for terrorism and that there was no credible connection between activist conduct and terrorism. They said as well that ordinary criminal law would be more appropriate to strike a balance between the rights of the individuals and the interests of national security.
Adam Quarshie
So there's currently a campaign on the way to drop the terror charges. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Sean Morrison
So yeah, there's a campaign which is being led by the parents of the Filton 18 that specifically the two mothers that I spoke to for this piece, for the charges to be dropped against the Filton 18, and to highlight the misuse of terror legislation against them when they haven't been charged with terror related crimes. So there's a petition that has more than 40,000 signatures, which we'll share a link to in the description, and there's been protests outside the hearings. There was a plea hearing in January, which I went to.
Adam Quarshie
What happens at a plea hearing?
Sean Morrison
So it's where the defendants plead guilty or not guilty to the charges that they face, and all of them, in this case, pleading not guilty, so they are now awaiting trial in December, you know, there were campaigners outside, protesters outside, which you could hear, you know, from the big grand hall of the Old Bailey in London, chanting for them to be freed and for the charges to be dropped.
Adam Quarshie
So it's obviously, like a quite a massive case in a lot of ways. It's drawn a lot of attention. What do you think it says about the UK right now in terms of the right to protest and the crackdown that's happening around it?
Sean Morrison
I mean, it's clearly a further escalation from the wider crackdown on protests in this country that's been happening for a long time now, and it's really worrying. And so it's right that it's getting a lot of attention. But what happens, we don't know. We'll have to wait and see.
Adam Quarshie
So in terms of what's coming up next in relation to this trial, there's a bail hearing for Zoe and Fatema. Is that right?
Sean Morrison
Yeah, and there's been bail hearings for some of the other defendants as well. So we won't know whether Fatema and Zoe will be granted bail, but there was a previous case recently, earlier in March, Cameron Ahmed, he was denied bail at the Court of Appeal after a judge at the Old Bailey did grant in bail in February. He's a carer for his elderly parents, who've been left with no support for three months since he was arrested.
Adam Quarshie
So he's currently still in prison.
Sean Morrison
He's still in prison. Yeah, the Court of Appeal overruled the Old Bailey decision.
Adam Quarshie
So in terms of the next steps for you, Sean, in terms of your reporting on this case, what's going to be Yeah, what's happening next?
Sean Morrison
So I'm going to continue gathering information from defendants, from their parents, people connected to the case, Palestine Action, more broadly, because there have been, you know, other actions by Palestine Action, happening in Bristol and elsewhere that we're keeping tabs on. In terms of the case I'll be in court, it's hard to know what the reporting will look like. You know, it's the nature of court reporting. We don't know how things are going to go, and there's a long wait to the trial. So we're kind of limited in what we can do.
Adam Quarshie
What's it actually like attending these cases at court? Because obviously you've, you've kind of got this quite specific niche now focusing on criminal justice.
Sean Morrison
Yeah, it can be quite a strange experience, like this one was at the Old Bailey, which is a really grand building, the security is really, really tight. You know, I struggled to get in, actually, because I wasn't on the list. It can be just surreal. Everyone's in their cloaks and wigs…
Adam Quarshie
Is it quite an intense experience? Like, what's the what's the sort of mood like in the court room?
Sean Morrison
Just very serious. And actually, in this case, in the plea hearing, all the defendants appeared via video link from jail. So there was a distinct difference between their vibe and the vibe in the courtroom. You know, they were struggling to get the video link up and running. And I think it was the first time that the defendants had seen themselves in different prisons for a long time. So there was, you know, they were making jokes, which I'm not sure they knew could be heard in the courtroom!
Adam Quarshie
And so was that the first time that some of the defendants had communicated with each other?
Sean Morrison
I'm not sure, to be honest, but it would seem that way. You know, they they were waving and things like that. So, yeah, it was, it was surreal. Yes, we're sitting in the press bench. Everyone is very serious.
Adam Quarshie
And yeah, what was the response within the court to all these like defendants waving each other on there?
Sean Morrison
It's just a stuffy place, really. They don’t… there's no room for jokes, it seems.
Adam Quarshie
Sean, thanks for joining us.
Sean Morrison
Cheers, Quarshie.
Adam Quarshie
This was the Debrief, on the Filton 18 – the more you oppress people, the more they will rise. Presented by me, Adam Quarshie, and produced by George Colwey for the Bristol cable. Head to the Bristol cable.org, forward slash, join to become a member of the cable and subscribe to the Bristol Cable wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
ENDS