Poeple standing outside pearson engineering in newcastle
Protest scene with banners and signs about legal battles and opposing certain policies, with people gathered on a street. Overlaid text in the foreground lists points about supporting legal actions and opposing government criminalization.

WE SAY: STOP THE BAN ON PAL ACTION

Food & Solidarity was started by neighbours in Newcastle’s West End.

There is a weapons manufacturer right here, on Scotswood Road in Newcastle: Pearson Engineering/Armstrong Works is owned by Rafael, an Israeli arms company. Rafael manufactures parts for missiles and explosives that have killed thousands of Palestinians and aid workers - such as the World Food Kitchen charity workers killed in Gaza in 2024. Over 55,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, and more than 100,000 injured. Gaza now has more child amputees than anywhere in the world.  In March, UNICEF reported that 130 Palestinian children had been killed in attacks on Gaza in just one day, ‘the largest single-day child death toll in the last year’.

Pal Action, a national group, has organised action here in Newcastle, trying to stop weapons made in your communities being used in war crimes.

Now, the UK Government wants to BAN PAL ACTION: making support or membership illegal. This is an attack on the right to stand for justice for Palestine: there is no such plan to proscribe groups that rightly organised to stop manufacturers supplying weapons for Saudi Arabia’s genocide in Yemen. 

Why we stand with Pal Action against this: 

→ Weapons made on Scotswood Road fuel atrocities.

→ Banning Pal Action criminalises moral courage.

→ We have seen this proposed ban leading to people being scared to engage with solidarity work.
We stand with Pal Action and the ‘Scotswood Three’: our friends and neighbours facing trial for taking a stand.

ACT NOW!

  1. SIGN URGENTLY - Demand the Home Secretary STOPS THE BAN! Protect the right to oppose weapons manufacturing here or elsewhere in the UK

  2. SUPPORT THE ‘SCOTSWOOD THREE': Help our neighbours fight legal charges.

  3. BACK PAL ACTION’S UK-WIDE LEGAL BATTLE: Stop the government criminalising solidarity.

Your city shouldn’t supply weapons for genocide! Your neighbours shouldn’t be treated as criminals for saying so! Don’t let compassion become a crime!

STAND FOR YOUR COMMUNITY, STAND WITH PAL ACTION!