Defending direct action to prevent a genocide at the Filton 6 retrial in the UK

At the retrial of Palestine Action activists for attacking an Elbit Systems factory, defendants overcame a ban on providing moral and ethical reasons for their actions by representing themselves.

Many thanks to Real Media for their assiduous coverage of the cases of the Filton 24, the Palestine Action activists detained after direct action, in August 2024, against a weapons factory in Bristol run by Elbit Systems, the Israeli arms firm that manufactures most of the drones used in deadly attacks on civilians in the Gaza Strip, an intrinsic part of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.

The Filton 24 were, for the most part, held on remand for around a year and a half — far exceeding the rules on the length of pre-trial custody allowed — and were treated punitively, with many embarking on hunger strikes in protest.

Finally, in February this year, the trial of the first six, the Filton 6 — Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Zainab Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin — took place, at which the jury acquitted them all of aggravated burglary, the most serious charge against them, and also acquitted three of them of a charge of violent disorder.

The jury were unable to reach a verdict on the violent disorder charges against the other three defendants, and were also unable to reach a verdict on the charge of criminal damage against all six, and, in the case of one of the six, a charge of grievous bodily harm.

All of the Filton 24 were then released on bail, but, instead of backing down and accepting defeat, the government decided to proceed with a retrial, which began on April 13. The remaining violent disorder charges were dropped, meaning that the entire focus was on the charges of criminal damage — and the single GBH charge.

Real Media’s account of the trial proceedings is here, and is well worth a read.

The trial is hugely significant in terms of the right to protest, and the right to take direct action against a genocide, which, in the past, both judges and juries have recognized as a valid mitigating factor, most noticeably in 1996, when four women activists damaged a BAE Hawk warplane, to prevent it being used in the Indonesian government’s genocide in East Timor. At their trial, they explained that they “were acting to prevent British Aerospace and the British Government from aiding and abetting genocide”, and were found not guilty after a jury described their actions as reasonable under the Genocide Act of 1969.

In the case of the Filton 6, however, a disturbing new trend, which first emerged in 2023 in relation to trials of climate activists, has once more reared its anti-democratic head: the decision, by judges, to forbid defendants from explaining the moral and ethical reasons why they took the actions they did.

In 2023, this led to the establishment of a powerful protest movement, Defend Our Juries, featuring formidable supporters of the right of defendants to provide context for actions involving their consciences, who, in some cases, then had their own arrests authorized by judges for holding up placards outside the court stating, “Juries have the absolute right to acquit according to their conscience.”

Last summer, when the Israeli-owned Labour government revealed its true colours, proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group, even though terrorism, to have any meaning, must involve a deliberate threat to life, Defend Our Juries activists were at the forefront of a mass campaign of civil disobedience, and legitimate protest, as they gathered in public, and peacefully held up placards that read, “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action”, which, to date, has led to over 3,300 arrests, humiliating the government and the police worldwide.

Outside the Filton 6 pretrial in Woolwich, Defend Our Juries campaigners were once more arrested for holding up signs pointing out, yet again, that “Juries have the absolute right to acquit according to their conscience.” Because a judge established in 2023 that it was legal to hold such signs, this time the police farcically made arrests under section 14 of the 1986 Public Order Act, which, as Jewish Voice for Labour explained, “allows for restriction on assembly in a particular area, based on a belief that because of noise levels or otherwise it will ‘result in serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community’”, even though those holding the placards were resolutely peaceful.

Inside the court, however, the outrageous ban on defendants explaining the moral and ethical reasons why they took the actions they did led to five of the six defendants reluctantly dismissing their barristers, enabling them to circumvent the restrictions by making closing statements themselves.

These were extraordinarily powerful, and we must all be grateful to Real Media for posting them on their website here.

Below I’m posting one of these speeches in its entirety, made by Charlotte Head, which will, I think, be remembered as a hugely eloquent explanation of how and why, when democratic processes fail in the face of a genocide, those driven by their consciences, who take direct action to prevent it, must be allowed to tell juries why they did what they did, and juries must be allowed to acquit them.

Charlotte Head’s powerful closing statement at the Filton 6 retrial

Hi. It might seem odd that I’m now speaking to you from out here, instead of in the dock – trust me it’s odd for me too. Sadly, despite how unbelievably kind and smart and wise my barristers are, after some decisions made by the court, I no longer feel like they are permitted to represent me in a way that does us all justice. So I’ve had to represent myself. This is a pretty scary situation so I apologise in advance if I seem a bit nervous.

I recently found out that it wasn’t until 1898 that a person who was charged with a crime in the UK could speak to the jury under oath during their trial. In that situation, I wouldn’t have been able to give evidence from the witness box like I did, let alone address you directly for my closing speech like I am now.

Under those conditions, me and my co-defendants would have had to sit quietly in the dock and await our fate, unable to tell you in our own words who we were and why we were sitting before you. I was unsurprised to learn that, in 1898, when the first person was allowed to answer the charges they faced from the witness box and testify to their own defence, many people, including prosecutors and judges, were worried about what would happen. Not because they feared that the defendants would lie but because they feared the jury sympathising more with normal people than the elites of the legal profession.

A long time has passed since then but it might be said that some prosecutors and judges still share that fear. A fear of the jury’s ability to be compassionate, to question the motives and integrity of the state, and to act as a barrier to the outcomes they want to achieve – namely to convict defendants. Not only that, but the government wants to get rid of juries. This isn’t a secret, politicians are openly discussing how to abolish trial by jury as we speak. They are frightened that you will listen to us, the defendants, when we talk to you and afraid of the power you hold as a jury. It’s entirely possible you may be one of the last juries to get to make decisions in a case like this before even that right is taken away from ordinary people.

Despite how it may (or may not) appear, I am not a confident person. Like most people, I find it difficult and uncomfortable to talk about the things those who know me say are my good qualities. In that regard, self-representing is extremely difficult for me so I will try to stick to the facts. Miss Heer [Deanna Heer KC, Crown prosecutor] said to you in her closing speech that, because we entered not guilty pleas, none of us were willing to “take responsibility for our actions”, but that’s not true. As she herself pointed out, I have said on multiple occasions that I dismantled weapons in the Elbit factory and that I set out to do so. I didn’t enter a not guilty plea to try and deceive a jury or attempt to “get away with” anything. I did so because I believed I was legally justified in doing what I did at the Elbit site and because, in my opinion, the narrow approach to the definition of ‘criminal damage’ misses one key thing: context. So that’s what I’m going to attempt to summarise for you now.

I was raised to believe that kindness and empathy were incredibly important. I was taught to support those around me and, as a pretty sensitive child, was always deeply affected when I saw others suffering. You heard in evidence that, just after I turned 20, I went to volunteer in the refugee camp in Calais. I don’t know what I was expecting but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer level of pain and needless suffering I saw there. I met people from all over the world, most of whom were seeking safety having fled conflict in their own countries. As volunteers, we tried to provide people with clothes, food, shelter – the basics to maintain even a shred of dignity, only to watch it routinely get taken away or blocked by the French police. When people got sick, we transported them to a clinic for the homeless because the main hospital often refused to treat refugees. When more and more people needed medical attention due to injuries sustained by the police, we started documenting these human rights abuses that were taking place on a daily basis. In the article Mr Menon [lead defence counsel, Rajiv Menon KC] showed you, I laid out some examples including chemical agents being sprayed into the mouths of refugees and children being kicked in the head while they were lying on the floor. I mentioned a 15 year old who was blinded by a rubber bullet shot at his head by the French riot police. I didn’t mention that I saw it happen and that I watched his friends rush his bloodied body into a volunteer’s car because ambulances routinely refused to transport refugees needing emergency care.

I was young, naive and not politically aware in any way when I arrived in Calais but how could events like this have anything but the most profound impact on me? How could it not shape the person I was becoming? Fast forward several years. In October 2023, events unfolded, events which have been deemed irrelevant to this case. Regardless, we all know what events occurred and, when they did, I had an excruciating sense of déjà vu. In Calais, I knew that it was money from the British government that was funding the state violence I was witnessing. It was British money that maimed a 15 year old child and left him for dead before my eyes. And regarding the events in late 2023, I was aware of the British complicity in housing weapons manufacturers on our soil, capable of inflicting the same devastation I had witnessed but on an exponential scale. So when I saw a genocide unfolding on my phone, livestreamed to us every day, I couldn’t sit back and do nothing when I knew that our government was once again directly involved.

So I went on the local marches in Cardiff – and the bombs kept falling. I went on the national demos in London – and cities and people were still being reduced to dust. My mental health plummeted watching what was happening and feeling helpless to stop it. As much as it felt necessary to do more, it was also somewhat self-serving because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t feel like I’d done everything I could. So I moved back to London, got a job at a domestic abuse charity and tried to work out what other avenues were possible to try to stop what was happening in Gaza. I wrote to my MP, someone I knew to be sympathetic to the cause, and received only an automated response.

Then I discovered the pro-Palestine camp in Hackney, a camp set up on ground protected in the by-laws specifically for protesting. A camp that was trying to get the council to divest its pension funds from weapons manufacturers like Elbit and other complicit companies. I spent 2 months sleeping on the street at the camp by night and going to my job in the day. We stood on the pavement and encouraged people to sign our petition. We ran workshops to help inform the local community about how their council taxes were funding the horrors we were all seeing on our screens. We worked and worked to put together a proposal to help show the pension committee how feasible divestment was. And on the day of the deputation, after so much effort, the committee chairman pulled out a pre-printed statement that effectively told us that everything we’d done was pointless and that they weren’t going to listen to ordinary people like us. That we could never line the politicians’ pockets like these corporations could so our opinions were irrelevant.

Now, my motivations for joining Palestine Action are also not considered relevant evidence in this case but I can tell you that I joined during my time at the Hackney camp. I can tell you I signed up to a training day after months of campaigning and pleading and asking those in power to stop abetting Israel and housing companies like Elbit. And I can tell you that it felt like I had no other choice. No other options available because we’d tried them all. I can tell you that I signed up to do an action with Palestine Action, a group that has been trying to end British complicity in war crimes since 2020. That 4 Elbit sites have been permanently shut down by its direct actions, 4 sites connected to Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer that produces 85% of the Israeli military’s drones and land-based equipment.

When I was on the stand, I was asked why direct action is necessary and I told you that it’s because the government doesn’t listen when people like you and me “ask nicely”. They have too much invested, both politically and financially, to act on a moral basis. We tried “asking nicely” and playing by their rules and they flat out ignored us. I don’t believe that wanting to stop human suffering, to stop tens of thousands of innocent people being killed is a fringe belief. I believe it is a commonly held view that underpins what it means to live in a just and humane society. I don’t agree that just because something is deemed incorrect by those in power at this point in history means that it is the wrong thing to do. Slavery used to be legal. The apartheid in South Africa was deemed legal. Myriad evils have been legal at one point or another – but that does not make them justified.

During her closing speech, Miss Heer highlighted the sheer amount of character evidence you’ve heard in our defence cases and you might wonder, considering this, why we’ve been relatively quiet on our motivations for joining Palestine Action or signing up to the action at Filton factory? You might also wonder where, in all of this, is Elbit Systems? Where are the three security guards, who intimidated, threatened and assaulted us? Where is the member of Elbit security who initially decided what footage was relevant? Where is Witness Alpha? Why has no witness from Elbit been called to explain the impact of the action on the functioning of damaged drones and other weapons? Why is there no precise inventory of what was damaged or destroyed? You might feel it’s because they don’t want to highlight the weapons they’re making on British soil or that the narrative spun by the prosecution is incorrect. You might consider the contrast between Elbit Systems on one hand and me and my co-defendants on the other and wonder which one has been more open, honest and human with you.

So now I ask you, the jury, to remember the power you hold. Your fundamental right as jurors to decide the facts has been celebrated in the UK for centuries. Back in 1670, there was a case that definitively established the right of jury independence. Two Quakers, named William Penn and William Mead, were prosecuted for “preaching to an unlawful assembly”, which at that point boiled down to speaking to a group of more than 5 people in a way that displeased the Church of England. As Quakers, Penn and Mead had done just that and they were put on trial at the Old Bailey. At the end of the trial, the judge directed the jury to convict the defendants but the jury refused. Furious, the judge directed the jury again to convict, saying they would not be dismissed until they did, but again they refused to convict. The judge then remanded the entire jury to custody for 2 days and ordered they be denied food and water. One of the defendants apparently shouted to the jury as they were led to prison, “you are Englishmen, mind your privilege, give not away your right”, to which one of them, Edward Bushel, replied “nor shall we ever do”. After 2 days in prison, the judge again ordered the jury to convict the defendants and they again refused, returning a not guilty verdict. As a result, the judge fined the jury for contempt of court and remanded them in custody again until they paid the fines. 8 paid, 4 refused, including Bushel, who then petitioned the high court to release himself and his fellow jurors. The high court agreed, the jurors were released and the fundamental right of jury independence was established, protecting the right of a jury to return a verdict without fear of punishment. It is one of the most celebrated cases in British – and global – legal history.

So, all things considered, I ask you to hear the evidence we’ve been able to give you, hear what we’ve told you. 6 normal people speaking to 12 normal people, and to make your decisions with that in mind. Yes, some of that evidence speaks to our character, but it also speaks to the context that I mentioned at the start of my speech, context that even now I’m not allowed to fully explain to you.

When I was on the stand, I was asked if I had dismantled quadcopter drones, battle-simulators and other military equipment. And I said that I did, and that I did it whole-heartedly believing that I had a lawful excuse to do so. That belief is a fact, it’s what I believed at the time, largely thanks to the many, many previous Palestine Action trials about actions just like this one, where the jury returned a not guilty verdict on charges of criminal damage. In her closing speech, Miss Heer implied that she didn’t need to cross-examine us closely about criminal damage because it wasn’t necessary – but you may think it was because she didn’t want you to hear more detail about the weapons that we dismantled and what those weapons do. You might wonder if the reason Miss Heer didn’t cross examine me at all is because she didn’t want me to reiterate that I believed I had a lawful excuse.

There’s nothing more I can say to you than that. We may have acted as a group but I made the decision to partake as an individual because of what I believed, and each of you has an individual responsibility to make the decision you believe is right as a member of this jury. Your decision is yours alone. Regardless of the outcome of this trial, whatever you may decide about my fate, nothing will convince me that what I did was morally wrong and that’s enough to help me sleep at night. I made a decision, based on the evidence available to me, and I did what I thought was the only right option. I hope you, as the jury, feel able and free enough to do the same.

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