Pro-Palestine Activists Plan Major Rally at Labour Conference Led by Prime Minister Andy Burnham

More than 3,600 people have been arrested for showing support for the banned Palestine Action group in London, United Kingdom. Protesters are planning to gather in support of Palestine Action at the first Labour Party conference Prime Minister Andy Burnham will preside over.

Sunday’s mass, silent sign-holding vigil in Liverpool, close to the conference centre, is in response to the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group, said Defend Our Juries, a rights group that organises rallies calling for the government to drop the ban. Since it was outlawed in July 2025, a civil disobedience campaign has seen more than 3,600 people arrested for showing their support for the group, often while holding signs reading, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”.

Organisers at Defend Our Juries expect further arrests, saying several hundred people are likely to attend. The protest is designed as an integrity test of the new leadership’s commitment to ending Britain’s complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing and war crimes, they said. Burnham faced further scrutiny on Friday as Declassified UK, an investigative outlet focused on foreign policy, reported that it had been denied media passes to cover the Labour conference, which runs from Sunday to Wednesday.

Compared with his predecessors, Burnham has taken a stronger stance against illegal Israeli settlements and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, announcing sanctions earlier this month. But rights groups and activists have called on Labour to suspend all arms sales to Israel in order to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and the West Bank. They also want the UK to reverse the ban on Palestine Action, whose main target is Israel’s largest weapons maker, Elbit Systems.

“If Prime Minister Burnham means what he says, that he plans to end Britain’s complicity in Israel’s horrific crimes, then he would stop the arrests of people peacefully demonstrating against the genocide and the authoritarian attempts to crush its opponents,” Defend Our Juries said.

In recent years, the Labour Party has faced waves of criticism over its positions on Israel and Palestine. Colm Murphy, a senior lecturer in British politics at Queen Mary University, told Al Jazeera that party leaders have taken gradual steps on Palestine through a slow, painful evolution. Keir Starmer previously recognized the Palestinian state, a process begun by Ed Miliband, though Starmer's legacy remains complicated by his earlier statements following the Hamas attacks of October 2023.

Joseph Willits, head of Parliamentary Affairs at the Council for Arab-British Understanding, noted that the new sanctions under Burnham’s Labour highlight the inadequacies of the previous government. The question remains whether Burnham’s Labour could reverse the ban on Palestine Action, especially after United States President Donald Trump recently outlawed the group.