This interview with Saeed, a Prisoners for Palestine spokesperson, took place on Friday 19 December, it has been lightly edited for clarity.

TGWe’re now 48 days into the hunger strike. So can you tell us about the current situation and how the prisoners are doing?

SThere are now six prisoners still on hunger strike. The longest now is day 48, and of the others, the shortest is day 26. That’s a partial hunger strike because Lewie is diabetic, so there would be a grave risk to his health if he was to go on a full hunger strike so he is hunger striking every other day. Five of the hunger strikers have been taken to hospital. So obviously, it’s an extremely dangerous situation for those, and for all of them, because this is an open-ended hunger strike. Until now, the government has refused to even meet to discuss the situation, let alone to negotiate around their demands.

There are two hunger strikers that we’ve heard a lot about because they’re in the most dangerous situations; specifically that’s Kamran, who was hospitalised, at least once, and Qesser, who’s been hospitalised, I think, twice at this point. Those two have been the focus of a lot of medical professionals, with a recent open letter that was signed by over 800 doctors, essentially warning the state that people will die imminently if no action is taken. And again, when we say action, the minimum that we’re asking for right now is just an agreement to meet. So, currently we’re very concerned; their families are desperate to know what’s happening to their loved ones. We are desperate to hear something from a government that absolutely refuses to engage. And while the prisoners are, of course, suffering greatly physically, and they understand the risk of death, there’s an incredible level of commitment, of resilience, of steadfastness, of certainty in the righteousness of their cause. The sort of commitment that I find incredibly moving and inspiring, and of course, worrying, because we understand how dedicated they are to the cause, which means they don’t seem willing to compromise. That’s terrifying, but that’s the greatest strength that they possess at the same time.

TGSo, there’s a demand, as a minimum, to meet with the government to discuss the situation, but can you tell us about the broader demands of the hunger strikers and why these are important?

SAn agreement to meet is not one of the demands of the hunger strikers. That’s simply our most basic request of the government. There are five demands of the hunger strikers themselves. The first is to end the censorship of their communications. They’ve had hundreds of letters withheld, they are disallowed from reading certain books while they’re in prison, they’ve been denied visits from their loved ones and friends. These are fairly extreme circumstances that most people held on remand are not subject to this extent.

The second is immediate bail. Most of these people were arrested around August of last year, they’ve already been detained for over a year and some of them will be detained for around two years before they even have a trial. The limit in this country for being held on remand is six months. So again, this is an extreme situation. Being held for this long above the six months has happened in the past but it’s usually reserved for people who are an immediate and serious danger to the public, we’re talking about violent criminals, who may be held on remand for longer than the limit. That’s not the case with these prisoners at all. The other excuse that’s often given is that they may be a flight risk, but of course, there are other ways for the state to mitigate that: daily check-ins, tags, they could even forfeit their passports. I don’t agree with any of these, of course, but this is what you would normally see for a case like this.

The third demand is the right to a fair trial, which you would think is supposed to be the priority of most people, even conservative politicians. But the concern is specifically around their access to files and their access to their lawyers in preparation for their trials. So they’ve requested a lot of files that are relevant to Elbit and many of them are being denied, some of them are being turned over but heavily redacted. What’s more, video evidence is crucial to these cases but that video evidence can only really be watched on a laptop. You don’t have access to laptops when you’re in prison. So, they’re claiming, and rightly so, that their access to a free trial is being severely denied because they simply can’t process their case files the way that someone outside prison would be able to process their case files.

The fourth demand is the deproscription of Palestine Action. So this is part of a much broader movement that includes the judicial review into the most basic legality of passing that legislation.

The fifth demand, to shut Elbit down, is really focussed more on the general public, although it’s also a demand of the government. This is, primarily, a call to the public to continue to engage in direct action against Elbit systems. The demand to shut Elbit systems down is not only a moral demand, but a legal one. It’s a demand that the government comply with not only their own laws on the exports of weapons from Britain, but the most basic obligation of international law, in particular, the ICJ’s preliminary finding that says countries should do everything in their power to stop the killing of Palestinians.

TGThere were reports at the beginning of the hunger strike of mistreatment in prison, and I think often that’s been linked, to come back to what you were saying about the demands, to counterterrorism powers being used against the prisoners. Is that right?

SAbsolutely, the most common complaint is being denied various rights—and again, these are rights that most prisoners would have. They’ve been disallowed from meeting each other, some of the prisoners who were in the same prison, for example. One of them was disallowed from wearing her hijab, which she needed to wear to pray. There are a lot of reports of prison guards calling them terrorists, and using that to deny all of the things that I mentioned in demand number one like denying them visits from their friends and family and denying them mail. They’ve been called terrorists by the prison staff. It’s disgusting. They’re being treated differently and denied rights because the state considers them a terrorist. But what’s even more egregious is, firstly, these people haven’t even had a trial yet. So they can’t even be considered guilty by any stretch of the imagination. But more importantly, they were all arrested before the proscription of Palestine Action, and proscription is not retrospective. So, terrorism laws don’t apply and none of them have even been charged under terror laws.

Clearly and fundamentally terrorism legislation, the Act of 2000 is not fit for purpose and that was highlighted when the legislation was first passed. Even politicians on the right pointed out in 1999 that this legislation was far too broad and would at some point be abused. In particular they mentioned the articles about property damage. They said, this legislation is an outlier internationally, in its definition of property damage as terrorism, and someday it’s going to be abused. Well, that day is now. We’re seeing the abuse of that legislation today. So we get this situation where even the UN, which is hardly a bastion of radical politics, has complained that Britain is an international outlier in its broad definition, and that these cases in particular are an abuse of terrorism legislation.

The UN has also highlighted that the treatment of the prisoners could amount to enforced disappearances. One of the other major complaints of the prisoners in general, but the hunger strikers in particular, is lack of communication with their families. So whenever they’re taken to hospital, well, if they’re even taken to hospital, their families have no news about them. The prison keeps them completely incommunicado. And of course, when families are desperate to learn news about them or desperately trying to inform the prison that they’re in serious ill health. The prison hangs up on them, the prison denies them the information they need. The prison refuses an ambulance. So that leads to exactly what we saw at Bronzefield on Wednesday when there was a popular demonstration there just to give Qesser access to an ambulance.

TGIt was striking that in the wake of the demonstration and what happened on Wednesday that Lord Timpson, the prison minister was saying essentially the hunger strike was bad because all prisoners should be treated the same, which, which felt ironic when, you know, one of the central demands stems from how these prisoners are being singled out for mistreatment, they’re not being treated the same.

SAbsolutely, he was trying to claim that the prisoners have no right to demand “special treatment” because all prisoners are treated the same. The reason they’re on hunger strike is precisely because they’re not being treated the same. And what was also striking about his interview was a total lack of humanity, a total lack of concern for these people’s lives. What I also find perverse is his claim that over the last year, he said, they’ve dealt with approximately 200 hunger strikes in British prisons. Now, that’s a sign that something is seriously wrong with the prison system but he said it as though it was a badge of pride. 200 hunger strikes over the last year isn’t a badge of pride, it’s a sign of desperation.

Statistics have been released that show 411 deaths in prison custody over the last 12 months. So we’re reflecting on an extremely broken system that is not only subjecting people to incredibly cruel treatment, but also completely neglecting their needs. If over 400 people die in prison custody, that’s an extreme situation, that’s an emergency. And that’s the situation in which these hunger strikers are trying their best to achieve some leverage on the state.

And I think it’s also important to highlight that this is a privatised prison system. That’s not only part of the cruelty, but a strategy to keep both ministers and the prisons out of scrutiny, to make sure that they can never be held accountable, because if you pressure the ministers, they will say “this is a private corporation”. If you pressure the prisons, they say: this is an issue for the administration, which we saw again at Bronzefield, whenever someone made the most basic demand, to allow an ambulance in, their response was the bureaucratic response of a privatised system: “my boss said it’s not allowed, we’re passing it up the chain of command”. So there’s no responsibility whatsoever, and I have no doubt that that’s intentional and it’s to try to keep the system out of public scrutiny.

TGThere’s that famous Bevan line, on the NHS, “if a bedpan is dropped in a hospital corridor in Tredegar, the reverberations should echo around Whitehall”, and that’s, in theory, at least, the kind of democratic accountability a public system should entail, and like you’re saying the privatisation of prisons works as a way to try to evade that political accountability, doesn’t it?

SAbsolutely, and it’s sickening at the best of times — but when people’s lives are on the line, you see the naked cruelty of a privatised prison system, of the neoliberalisation of every step of the justice system. I saw it the other day at the trial of one of the Filton 24. She had not eaten breakfast because she felt ill that morning, and she asked for a meal break earlier than lunchtime during her trial. The judge ordered a break so that she could eat and when they came back after the break, she had to explain that she was not allowed to eat her prison issued lunch because it was twelve o’clock and the prison said she was only allowed to eat her prison issued lunch at one o’clock. The prison manager stood in the courtroom and justified that decision to the judge. The judge had absolutely no power to overturn it. He did nothing. So we’re in a situation where a private corporation can walk into a courtroom and tell a judge how to run his trial. It’s unbelievable.

TGThis is the biggest collective hunger strike in the prisons of the British state since the Irish Republican hunger strike of 1981, and there was a really important solidarity statement that Prisoners of Palestine published from Bernadette McAliskey, where she was pointing out similarities between that action and the prisoners’ struggle today. How do you think about the relationship between the two struggles?

SThere are definitely similarities and there’s no doubt that this hunger strike is inspired by the principles of the hunger strike in 1981. It’s also historically connected because the Palestinians and the Irish have a shared history of oppression under the British government and that’s even as specific as a shared history of suffering under the Black and Tan soldiers themselves. So that’s a shared solidarity that those movements have always had and which has mutually inspired each other. Some of the strategies also have inspired this hunger strike, in particular the strategy to mobilise communities outside the prison. But there are also fundamental differences that we have to take into account. The hunger strikers in 1981 were able to mobilise their communities en masse because those communities were directly suffering under the oppression of the British state. With this, we’re talking about, at least on the first level, an oppression that’s happening overseas, far away enough that many people in Britain and certainly politicians are happy to ignore it. But the other difference, which I think is shocking, is that even Margaret Thatcher’s government were willing to negotiate. This government is not willing to negotiate. So we’re in a perverse situation, where they’re even more cruel and inhumane than Margaret Thatcher, who, for many of us, is the embodiment of cruel and inhumane politics. Also at the time, don’t forget that the 1981 hunger strikes became a national scandal, and even on some level, an international scandal. This was partly because the press was reporting it but today we’ve seen almost nothing in the mainstream news. I have no doubt that’s because of pressure from the government, whether it’s formal or informal. So the story is more or less being buried.

TGThinking about this a bit more, and linked to the capacity of the 1981 hunger strikers to mobilise communities and, at least, force acknowledgement by the government and media, and pressure Thatcher towards engagement, however, cruel, there’s the famous Kwame Ture line, reflecting on Martin Luther King’s tactics and how they relied on the assumption that “if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart”, but in order for that work, “your opponent has to have a conscience”. What happens when it’s been demonstrated that David Lammy, Keir Starmer or the British state doesn’t have a conscience?

SThe end of that quote is “the United States has none”. I think that was true of the United States under the Black liberation movement, and it’s true of the British state today. But the strategy is not to appeal to the morality or the conscience of people like David Lammy because they’ve made it clear that, as you said, they have no conscience. But what we know is that those politicians are obsessed with their public image and they’re obsessed with their reputation. We’re also dealing with a party that is on the ropes—possibly close to collapse—a party with the lowest ratings for a Prime Minister in recorded history. We know that it’s a party that has no principles and which rules by opinion poll and by measuring the PR they’ve generated. Even more than that, it’s a party that’s desperate to project in the country an image of stability and strength, and, internationally, to project a chauvinistic and frighteningly militaristic image, essentially, a fantasy of their colonial days. So that for me, is part of the leverage that this movement can hold, that if the hunger strikes can mobilise popular opinion that can turn against the party and that can mobilise internal dissent within the party itself. All this can also mobilise international pressure. That’s the pressure that we’re going to be able to apply to them. It is not that they feel bad about hunger strikers dying. I doubt they’ll feel bad about that at all.

TGIsn’t there still a question about what kind of public opinion they care about? We’ve seen with the genocide, where public opinion was strongly critical, but was ignored, and that there can be ways for the state to insulate itself from public opinion - and what you were saying earlier about privatised prisons represents another element of this, perhaps?

SThat’s true, but don’t forget that a lot of this pressure takes time to accumulate. So, I have no doubt that public opinion against the genocide has had a significant effect on the Labour Party, or on the state in general. We may not necessarily see it now, because don’t forget, the hunger strikes in 1981 had some significant successes, but they took time.

The significant successes were that Sinn Féin became a serious political player and the British government understood they had to negotiate. It came at the tragic cost of the lives of ten of the hunger strikers in 1981, but all but one of their demands were eventually met. It also brought the hunger strike and the liberation movement of Ireland onto the international stage and into international consciousness. So, there were successes that took time to manifest. In terms of public opinion against genocide, what we’ve got now is an incredibly robust and dedicated movement against the state’s genocide, and something more proactive than I’ve seen in 30 years of activism.

We’ve reached a point where people see the fundamental cruelty of the state, and they’ve lost the fear that the state usually wields over them. Right? State pressure is usually a simple threat, which is socially enforced: you might be arrested, you might spend time in prison. For most people, that’s terrifying, but for the movement now, it’s very clear to me that people are no longer afraid of that. This is because the alternative is intolerable: the alternative is living in a fascist state, which is committing genocide overseas and crushing the fundamentals of democracy in this country.

TGIt’s really noticeable that, exactly as you’re saying, if for people the consequences of bearing this clearly morally intolerable situation are felt to matter more than how scared they are of being arrested, there’s a freedom to that, isn’t there?

SOh absolutely. Absolutely, I think that fear is a political project, but it’s a socially constructed fear, right? The idea that the state is good. The idea that the state is here to protect you. The idea that anything that Britain does overseas must be good because it’s done by the state. The flip side of this is that if you’re arrested, it means you are a bad person, right? If you’re convicted, it means you’ve done something wrong and you should be socially ostracised. That myth is being slowly but very forcefully taken apart by this movement, who are proving the opposite is true, being arrested is seen as a badge of honour—and those arrested should see it as such.

TGDefinitely, and obviously the blatant overreach of arresting often very, very conventionally respectable older people for solidarity with Palestine Action seems to have really broken that stigma attached to being arrested, even the stigma of being arrested as a “terrorist”.

SAbsolutely, and people have shown they’re not only unafraid to be arrested, they’re unafraid to be arrested on terrorism charges because, again, the alternative is intolerable. The alternative includes the level of repression that we’re seeing now, including new waves of policing bills that would make protests even more difficult. Just yesterday we saw the wild attempt by the police to ban the use of the term intifada. It blows my mind how desperate the state has become to crush any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people. This even includes non-political solidarity, but in particular, any kind of speech associated with the movement to liberate Palestine.

TGJony Cink, one of the hunger strikers, has said “we have a duty to resist wherever we are, weaponising everything at our disposal.” So, for those of us outside the prisons, what weapons do we have to support the hunger strikers and, as we’ve been discussing, put the kind of necessary pressure on the British state given it doesn’t have a conscience?

SUntil last week, the campaign was to pressure the government politically through letter writing, through petitioning through Parliament. John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn have done a very good job of at least mobilising more than 50 MPs—but it became clear last week that this wasn’t going to work fast enough to save the lives of the hunger strikers. So a new phase of direct action has been initiated. We saw it at the Ministry of Justice, people locked on and painted the building. We saw it at Bronzefield the other day when people occupied the lobby of the prison. So there is a demand now from the movement to take direct action to force the government to negotiate with us. They’re no longer satisfied with politely requesting the government to save lives.

This has broadened out also to, I would say, a resurgence in direct action against ‘Israeli’ weapons manufacturers. Obviously after the proscription of Palestine Action, there was a lull, people were terrified. Now it’s become clear that this state’s commitments to genocide is unshakeable and that we may not win that war through legislative fighting. So, people have returned now to direct action. We’ve seen last week one or two actions by various groups against ‘Israeli’ weapons manufacturers. I think the resilience of the movement, the steadfastness of the movement, and the focus on very practically breaking the material supply chain of ‘Israeli’ weapons from here to the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank has been inspiring the people. A lot of what’s helped restart this is the steadfastness of people like all of the political prisoners, but in particular, the hunger strikers. These are people who realise what’s really at stake here, and again, how it is intolerable for anyone to watch what the state is doing in Palestine. This small group of people have decided, they’re no longer willing to sit back and watch it happen.

TGThat feels crucial in terms of, as you were saying, at the beginning of the interview that the hunger strikers fifth demand is not only directed at the government, but the demand to shut Elbit down is a much wider call, interpellation even.

SYes, it’s a call to the public. It feels much longer but it’s only been six months since Palestine Action was proscribed. What proscription shows is that on the one hand, the government will stop at nothing to crush the Palestinian liberation movement in this country, but at the same time, on the other hand, people are still not deterred. Even the greatest threats that the government can make, which are terrorism charges, have not deterred people. It’s taken some time but I think people have absorbed that level of bravery. They’ve seen the public support for activists, for direct action and for the hunger strikers and they’ve seen that the tide is changing. They’ve even seen political support and protests for the deproscription of Palestine Action and in solidarity with the hunger strikers. There’s been popular support internationally as well. So the repression has, ultimately, had the opposite effect: it has lit a fire under the movement in this country and internationally, to support direct action against ‘Israeli’ weapons manufacturers. I think people have heard that call and they’re no longer afraid so they’re committed.

TGAnother aspect of the international situation has been the expressions of solidarity from liberated Palestinian prisoners for the hunger strikers. Are the hunger strikers aware of these and what has it meant to them?

SThey’ve been given those messages and they’re an incredible source of inspiration. It’s really fundamental that people understand that what’s happening in this country is not a spontaneous protest movement, it’s not a British protest movement, it’s not activists in this country deciding on a whim to start sabotaging ‘Israeli’ weapons factories; they are inheriting a very proud tradition from decades of Palestinian resistance in which the Palestinians not only laid a roadmap of how to resist the weapons industry, but have also made a direct call to people around the world to say: this is an emergency situation, a genocide, and we call out to you to participate in sabotaging the supply chain of weapons. So the tactics involved, the philosophy involved, the ideology and the dedication are all inspired by the Palestinian movement itself. So, of course, it’s inspirational to hear the Palestinians, who are the source of that strength, turn to us and say, we see what you’re doing, we recognise you as part of the resistance movement—and we thank you.

In particular, there were two beautiful statements made in November at the start of the hunger strike. One from Abdel Nasser-Issa, who represents displaced Palestinian prisoners, and he wishes them victory from the Palestinians in exile. He says, we recognise you as part of the movement and we wish you victory. The other is from Ammar al-Zaben, who represents the freed Palestinian prisoners in Palestine, and he said the news of your resistance has reached us. He has a beautiful quote, he says, “oh, revolutionaries of the world, you’re not alone”. And that kind of message is enough to bring me to tears because you understand that you’re part of an international movement, you’re part of a very proud legacy and that the Palestinian people, who you are sacrificing your freedom and in some cases, willing to sacrifice your life for, recognise that sacrifice.

Don’t forget that when Rachel Corrie was killed in Gaza, the Palestinians made martyr posters for her, and carried her body through the streets, as though she was one of their own. When the British journalist James Miller was killed in the same year they held a funeral for him in Gaza. There’s no doubt that they consider the network of international solidarity as part of the Palestinian liberation movement. It’s always been part of it. I mean, the entire history of resistance from 1948 includes many foreigners who fought in solidarity with the Palestinians so we need to see it as part of the continuity of resistance. But there’s no doubt that the Palestinians—and I speak also as a Palestinian—see, recognise, and respect, and love dearly the international movement in solidarity with them and conceive it as a fundamental part of the Palestinian resistance.