There has been a scandalous media blackout of the pro-Palestine prisoners’ hunger strike, even in the face of support from international pro-Palestine groups and the real risk of death. Tonight, it has been reported that one of the hunger strikers is in ‘imminent danger’, and is in need of serious medical attention. An honourable exception to the media blackout has been The National newspaper, which published a very slightly edited version of this article by SSP national trade union organiser, Richie Venton, on Tuesday 17 December 2025.
Eight young pro-Palestine activists on hunger strike in Britain are in imminent danger of dying, but the Labour government is refusing to lift a finger to prevent such an outrageous outcome.
As of today [17 Dec 2025], two of the eight have gone without food for 45 days. Five of them have been hospitalised – without their next of kin even being notified – and the prison authorities have reportedly blocked the hospitals from giving their families and lawyers the chance to speak to them or get medical updates, after previously ignoring all calls and emails when they were first hospitalised.
These are political prisoners being treated like terrorists.
Six of them are part of the Filton 24, who were arrested – in August 2024 – for allegedly damaging weapons inside the Israeli Elbit Systems arms factory in Bristol. The other two are accused of ‘criminal damage’ after a group entered the Brize Norton RAF base in Oxfordshire – in June 2025 – and spray-painted two RAF Voyager aircraft.
The prisoners’ demands
The demands of the hunger strikers are for release on bail; fair trials; full disclosure of materials such as any communications between British and Israeli officials, UK police, the Attorney General and Elbit Systems about policing of Palestine protests; unbanning of Palestine Action; and closure of Elbit Systems factories.
The Filton and Brize Norton actions were protests at the Labour governments’ complicity and active involvement in genocide – both in supplying arms and reconnaissance equipment to the Israeli state and use of the RAF to help their slaughter of innocents, babies included.
One of the hunger strikers, Kamran Ahmed, a young car mechanic, was arrested in a dawn raid in November 2024 – a full eight months before Palestine Action was proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’ by the increasingly authoritarian UK Labour government – who are up to their oxters in support for the state terrorists of Netanyahu et al.
Ahmed’s trial date is set for next June 2026, which means he’d be in jail for 20 months on remand. He’s not the only one held for over a year already, without being convicted of anything.
He has already been hospitalised twice, his weight dropping from 74kg to 64kg, with dangerously high levels of ketones.
‘I know nothing about this’, says Lammy
After Labour’s Deputy Prime Minister and Justice Secretary, David Lammy, ignored all pleas for a meeting from family members, lawyers and MPs, Ahmed’s sister confronted him at a Christmas event with a letter expressing concern at the danger of her brother dying. Lammy blustered “I know nothing about this”, later asking her, “In the UK?”!
Yes, in the UK, Mr Lammy – a state with a long, filthy history of torture, repression and suppression of protests, including a willingness to let prisoners die rather than negotiate a settlement.
Torture of the Suffragettes
A British state which in the early 1900s jailed Suffragettes rather than grant women the right to vote, treated them like common criminals rather than the political prisoners they patently were – and then force-fed the women when they resorted to a hunger strike to achieve political prisoner status.
This notorious torture technique included male doctors and prison warders violently restraining the women, holding them down on the floor or prison bed, ramming a rubber tube up their nose or down their throat, with a steel gag in their mouth, breaking their teeth and cutting their gums – in some cases accidently inserting the tube into their lungs, triggering pneumonia.
This monstrous torture was authorised, between 1909 and 1914, by a Liberal Party government. Yes, in the UK, the mother of all ‘liberal’ democracies!
The Palestine-supporting prisoners and their families report they’ve faced systematic abuse in jail, including solitary confinement, denial of access to books, letters and phone calls. They’ve been treated like convicted terrorists without even being charged with being terrorists.
An act of desperation
These young prisoners’ decision to go on hunger strike is an act of desperation in the face of Labour government intransigence, as it upholds its support for Netanyahu’s blood-soaked regime over the rights of its own citizens – including the right to protest.
As the legal team for the eight wrote to government ministers: “There is a real and increasingly likely prospect that young British citizens will die in prison, having never even been convicted of an offence.”
And the danger, on top, is that they could die in obscurity, without widespread public knowledge, with a blanket of silence thrown over the events by the likes of the BBC and most other media outlets.
The Pentonville Five, 1972
This is certainly an urgent humanitarian issue for the lives of the hunger strikers, whose only ‘crimes’ have been to take direct action against the killing machine. But it’s also a danger to all our rights to protest, to resist government crimes and policies, a threat to the rights of workers who dare to defy Labour’s anti-union laws or austerity measures; the right to organise and fight back.
Far-fetched, you might ask? Hardly! After all, some of the hunger strikers are being held in Pentonville prison, the very place where five dockers’ shop stewards – the Pentonville Five – were jailed in July 1972 for daring to ignore a court order banning them from picketing a container depot during the dockers’ strike in defence of jobs. They were only released when a
movement from below of organised union activists, shop stewards and convenors forced the TUC into supporting the call for a general strike.
Don’t stand by and let them die!
The potentially powerful trade union bodies of the organised working class need to urgently raise their voice – alongside those of human rights groups, Palestine solidarity campaigns, the Scottish Socialist Party and others.
They must urgently demand an immediate release on bail of these prisoners, the dropping of the charges against them, the unbanning of Palestine Action – and implementation of the agreed policies of the trade union movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against an Israeli state which is still murdering Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, contrary to all the mood music about a ceasefire.
Don’t stand by whilst the Labour government lets these young political prisoners die!