Success of Kwabena campaign shows we can all fight repression

The Justice for Kwabena campaign has proved successful

The Justice For Kwabena campaign “shows what’s possible when you look outwards and take on the state”, says campaign spokesperson Hussein Said.

Kwabena Devonish, an anti-racist from South Wales, walked free last week after a jury found her not guilty. She had been charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for a speech she gave at a Palestine solidarity march in Cardiff in November 2023.

“The jury had no appetite for a phoney terror charge—it reached a unanimous position of not guilty in under two hours,” Hussein told Socialist Worker.

“When Kwabena got charged, from the outset we knew it was essential to place the charges in the context of the wider crackdown on Palestine activists.

“Mass organisation and campaigning can influence structures of power. It can create the conditions to say this is a politically motivated assault on free speech and pro-Palestine solidarity,” Hussein explained.

Kwabena’s defence campaign was political and unapologetic in its solidarity with Palestinians. And it won broad-based support by appealing to a defence of the right to protest. 

“When the state starts a campaign against us, we need to start one back,” Hussein said.

 “Kwabena was charged for speaking at a Palestine demonstration where we’d been organising every week since 7 October. As it went on, we had been targeted more by the police with threats of protest conditions.

“It was a movement where we were getting thousands on the streets, the biggest Palestine movement in Wales.

“The state knew Kwabena was a part of that movement. So in this context, we knew it was a campaign to intimidate, threaten and target a black women.

“We had to react to that. If we didn’t, the outcome would have been bad.”

Hussein explained that the stakes were high, as charges against Kwabena risked silencing the wider movement. But the defence of Kwabena developed with the wider movement.

“Firstly, genocide was becoming a much more widely used term,” Hussein said, which strengthened the politics behind Kwabena’s defence.

“We made this point throughout the trial, that it is the British government that is complicit and the war machine in Israel and its genocide in Palestine,” Hussein explained.

“But rather than knocking on the door of Keir Starmer, they break down Kwabena’s door with seven police officers.

“At the same time, the crackdown on Palestine solidarity was becoming more and more intense. Amid Kwabena’s trial, Palestine Action was proscribed and the attacks on the Filton 24 came to be.

“And big groups such as Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Stop the War (StW). Their leaders were targeted with the charges against Ben Jamal and Chris Nineham.

“So the state was growing in confidence.”

“But as time went on, cracks in the architecture of repression started to show—and we took strength from this”.

From the movement against the Palestine Action proscription, to the defence of the Filton 24 through Prisoners For Palestine, Hussein said this “huge resistance” strengthened the entire movement.

Kwabena’s campaign had support across the Palestine movement, from the Brize Norton Five and Defend Our Juries to PSC and StW. But it went wider than that, with support from Black Lives Matter, Stand Up To Racism, and even LGBT+ solidarity groups such as We Exist.

“In other words, if you see the common thread, you can see how mass campaigning can be a route to confront the crackdown on pro-Palestine dissent,” Hussein explained.

“This can only be done if we connect all the campaigns together, and Kwabena is an example of that—she’s stronger for it, and we are all stronger for it.”