Activism and BDS Beat 16 July 2025
Before the recent ban, PSC’s Ben Jamal (left) opposed Palestine Action, while Lowkey (right) supported it.
The musician and campaigner Lowkey was dropped by the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign as a patron in August 2023, The Electronic Intifada has learned.
In an email at the time, obtained by The Electronic Intifada, PSC cited Lowkey’s “lack of engagement” with the movement.
But Lowkey says that was untrue. The real reason was PSC leader Ben Jamal’s strong opposition to the group Palestine Action, Lowkey says.
Lowkey was a vocal supporter of Palestine Action at the time.
“I was asked by Ben Jamal as long ago as 2021 never to mention Palestine Action on a PSC platform,” he told The Electronic Intifada. “This was posited as a condition of my participation in events.”
A spokesperson for PSC disputed Lowkey’s “recollection of events regarding how this role came to an end.” But they confirmed that the artist had been dropped in August 2023 as part of a “process to renew our patrons list” and after “numerous attempts to contact Lowkey.”
The spokesperson strongly denied that Lowkey was dropped over Palestine Action: “It is not true that Lowkey was removed as a patron because of his support, at that time, for Palestine Action, nor was he told he could not speak at demonstrations because of it.”
He also said Lowkey was invited to speak at the Nakba Day marches in London in 2022 and 2023.
Lowkey says he still supported PSC’s grassroots events, even headlining a fundraiser for PSC in Cambridge only a few months before he was dropped. The PSC spokesperson did not deny this and a Facebook event confirming that the occasion was set for March 2023 is still online.In the 2023 email obtained by The Electronic Intifada, PSC’s then-chairperson Kamel Hawwash told Lowkey he had decided that, due to an alleged “lack of engagement” he was “no longer a patron of PSC.” He said their patrons working group had also reached the same conclusion.
In the email, dated 9 August 2023, Hawwash said he had wanted to have a discussion with Lowkey “regarding your role as PSC patron” but it had not been possible “despite repeated attempts to engage with you.”
But Lowkey says neither Hawwash nor PSC director Ben Jamal had ever called him about his patron status, despite having his phone number.
The PSC spokesperson did not dispute this, but did say that Ben Jamal had followed up Hawwash’s email with WhatsApp messages “asking Lowkey to respond to Kamel so a meeting could take place.”
After five years of private opposition by the PSC and public opposition by the Israel lobby, Palestine Action was proscribed by the British government earlier this month.
The UK now classifies Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization despite the fact that it is widely recognized as a direct action protest group. A legal challenge against the ban will be heard at the High Court in London next week.
Meanwhile, there have been two weekends of civil disobedience against the ban. Hundreds of protesters in London, Manchester and Cardiff have been arrested for holding signs reading “I oppose genocide; I support Palestine Action.”All protesters have so far been released without charge.
Soon after the idea of the ban was floated in the UK press – but before it went into law – PSC leader Ben Jamal threatened his branches with consequences for putting out their own statements against the ban.
An internal PSC memo obtained by The Electronic Intifada shows that they told their officers they would “not allow any branch to jeopardize the organization … Putting out content framed such as ‘we are all Palestine Action’ which may be legal to say now but could be illegal by next week, puts your members and followers at risk.”
Despite opposing Palestine Action for years, PSC did finally, on 23 June, put out a statement opposing the ban. But it notably did not use the (then legal) slogan “We Are All Palestine Action” that many protesters were using at the time.
In British campaign groups, “patron” is a largely symbolic role filled by public figures intended to raise the campaign’s profile. PSC’s patrons do not seem to have much input on the direction of the group.As of this writing, the PSC website currently lists only tributes to former patrons who have passed away, including the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, left-wing former minister Tony Benn, playwright Harold Pinter and the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said.
It states that, “we have recently selected a new group of patrons which will be announced soon, at which point this page will be updated.”
But copies of the web page on the Internet Archive show that, despite the 2023 email to Lowkey, he was not removed from their website until this past spring.
He was still listed on the page as recently as March 2025.
Another name on that March list was filmmaker Ken Loach.
Loach told The Electronic Intifada that he “ceased to be a patron at PSC in June 2024 when I was contacted by their new chair Louise Regan. It seemed to be a part of them having a younger generation of patrons.”
He said it was “not an acrimonious departure, the health problems I’ve had were already getting a grip by then and I wasn’t able to make much of a contribution.”
Loach said he had always found Lowkey “very impressive” but could not recall being consulted by PSC on the issue. “I cannot really confirm either way on whether we were consulted on his relationship with PSC,” he said.Current patron Ghada Karmi, a prominent Palestinian academic and campaigner, said that she didn’t agree with the PSC leadership’s long-standing opposition to Palestine Action.
She said it was “an understandable desire to shield the organization from accusations of illegality… I understand their nervousness about that, but it doesn’t extend to what came across to me quite often as hostility.”
As well as being one of the UK’s most respected hip-hop artists, Lowkey is an energetic Palestine solidarity campaigner and a journalist in his own right. He regularly speaks at grassroots Palestine events around the UK and overseas, and has his own podcast, The Watchdog, over at MintPress News.
The full story of how the Palestine Solidarity Campaign worked against Palestine Action from the latter group’s foundation in August 2020 has yet to be told.
But for the last five years the PSC leadership’s hostility has been an open secret within movement circles.
Scaremongering
Internal restrictions on PSC branches from giving any kind of support to Palestine Action were not always successful. Perhaps as a result, in 2021 Ben Jamal sought legal advice apparently intended to isolate Palestine Action and scare branches off from supporting them.
In a spring 2021 memo obtained by The Electronic Intifada, PSC staff detailed a recent meeting Ben Jamal had held with branch officers detailing “concerns about the activities of the group Palestine Action” and what he said were “the risks to the wider movement” caused by its direct action campaign, which he claimed risked up to 10 years in jail even for supporters.
According to the memo, Jamal had claimed that such penalties could affect “PSC branches that offered encouragement or assistance” to Palestine Action.
“These concerns are not raised because PSC, or the BDS Movement is opposed to any form of direct action,” the memo claimed. “Instead, they are raised because of the strategic and legal risks.”
Anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein called the PSC memo “irresponsible scare mongering whose primary motive is to harm PA rather than protect individual members of PSC.”
As a result of the PSC leadership’s hostility, Greenstein submitted a motion to the organization’s Annual General Meeting in March 2022 criticizing the leadership, saying that since it was founded, PSC “consistently criticized Palestine Action for its tactics and approach” but that “many PSC members and branches have, notwithstanding the advice of PSC, given support for Palestine Action.”
The motion also called for PSC to stop its campaign against Palestine Action.
The document was neutered by the PSC leadership to remove all criticism of them, before passing a vote of members at the Annual General Meeting.
PSC response
PSC’s spokesperson also said: “Lowkey was a valued patron of PSC for many years. We have a very different recollection of events regarding how this role came to an end … In March 2022, when Lowkey was under attack by pro-Israel groups, we issued a public statement in his defence and liaised with individuals and organisations with expertise in defending artists under attack …”
“We are sorry that Lowkey has not chosen to contact us directly with his concerns about how his role ended. We believe that at a moment when Palestinians confront one of the darkest moments in their history and the community of resistance in this country to that genocide is under attack, it is the task of all of us within the solidarity movement to maintain unity and focus on holding those responsible to account.”
Comments
PSC & BDS Movement
Permalink Peter Purich replied on
I support PSC & BDS Movement but Palestine has a responsibility to resist invasion - including armed resist, under UN International Law. It is logical to resist the temporary entity that - illegally - occupies Palestine. Palestine Action reminds the ruling class of UK that they have a responsibility to resist that temporary entity by following the ICJ, ICC, and UN International Law - but not armed resist. Not to mention the Hague Group (https://thehaguegroup.org/home/) or Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress (https://www.juedisch-antizioni...). Either the UK should walk out the UN for good or the UK Law is an ass!
Divide and conquer
Permalink Eric replied on
... is the best strategy to sabotage solidarity.
What's PSC's real agenda?
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