THE image of an 83-year-old woman priest being led away by police for having attended a peaceful protest against the ban on Palestine Action will define Keir Starmer’s Britain around the world.

It is a chilling sign of what MPs did when they backed Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s outlawing of the group under counter-terror legislation.

Police arresting dozens of people for holding up signs reading simply “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” state entirely accurately: “The group is now proscribed and expressing support for them is a criminal offence.” We must hope this visible example of how limited freedom of speech now is galvanises resistance.

Because the arrested are far closer to majority opinion in this country than the MPs who banned them. The enormous crowds, hundreds of thousands strong, who still march for Palestine 21 months into a genocide show the strength of public feeling.

The opinion polls overwhelmingly back a ceasefire and show more than half of British people support a complete arms embargo and even the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations. A representative parliament would be acting on these expressions of the people’s will: instead both government and opposition try to mask Westminster’s isolation by silencing dissenting voices.

Spinning her hysterical crackdown on advocates of direct action to MPs, Cooper presented it as completely distinct from the right to peaceful protest, which she pretends to support.

Tomorrow’s hearing at Westminster magistrate’s court, to determine a date for the trial of Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) director Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition vice-chair Chris Nineham, shows what a lie that is.

Like the prosecutions of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) general secretary Sophie Bolt and Stop the War chair Alex Kenny, the trial relates to the peaceful mass demonstration for Palestine of January 18 this year.

Unlike Palestine Action’s paint job on RAF aircraft, this did not involve any criminal damage. The accused are accused of breaching police restrictions placed on that demonstration, which authorities denied permission to march on the BBC and lay flowers in memory of the dead children of Gaza in protest at the broadcaster’s biased coverage of Israel’s war on Palestinians.

Not only were the restrictions deliberately confusing — with protesters told they might or might not be allowed to be in certain central London locations based on the time of day — but police actually opened ranks to allow demonstrators through to lay flowers, before violently arresting Nineham and scores of others.

Increasingly severe restrictions on the peace marches are justified with more lies — that the “cumulative effect” of sustained protest has somehow interfered with the right of Jewish communities to worship, though worship at synagogues has not been affected by any Palestine demonstration and no synagogue lay on the march’s route.

And the risks of falling foul of Starmer’s police state are increasing too. Government amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill propose jail sentences for the organisers of protests where some attendees are held to have breached restrictions, as well as fines of up to several thousand pounds for those found to have done so.

What we are seeing is a crackdown on the whole peace movement, and the choice to prosecute leading members of PSC, Stop the War and CND is aimed at decapitating it.

This is not despite the movement speaking for a majority of citizens: it is because of it. The government cannot win consent for its policy of aiding and abetting mass murder, so it is turning to coercion.

Our answer must be to stay on the streets, to build a movement so huge the police can’t suppress it and every MP feels its pressure.

If we do not, not only are we failing the heroic Palestinian people resisting extermination, but our own right to protest on this issue or any other risks being permanently erased.