by Ruby Cline, Telegraph
Proscribed group’s ‘sinister’ sessions held days after Ann Widdecombe’s violent death
alestine Action has advertised training days encouraging potential terrorists to “work out with a hammer” instead of carrying flags.
The proscribed group’s training sessions took place days after it emerged that Ann Widdecombe, a former MP, had died in an alleged hammer attack.
The weekly sessions are for activists who intend to take part in “direct action”, a term often used to describe both legal and illegal protest tactics.
A poster advertising the training reads: “Arms tired of waving flags? Workout with a hammer! Direct action training available!”
Elsewhere, the group shared flyers offering a two-hour session teaching “an overview of the historical colonisation of Palestine” and “an overview of legal consequences” of direct action.
Baron Walney, the former Government independent adviser on political violence and disruption, told The Telegraph: “It is contemptuous for these far-Left extremists to claim they are non-violent when they continue to incite supporters with sinister hammer imagery, even after the shocking news that Ann Widdecombe died after multiple hammer blows to the head.
“It took five years for the UK government to act against Palestine Action, after a campaign in which [an activist] smashed a policewoman’s spine with a sledgehammer, intimidated thousands of working people and attacked sites critically important to defending the UK from hostile states.”