‘For the revolutionary fugitive, the choice between fight or flight is false; a proper escape is already a counterattack.’
This weekend, HMP Wandsworth sounded the alarms in yet another embarrassment for the Prisons and Probation service. Shortly afterwards, the media reported that a ‘manhunt’ was on, with a Sky News reporting that Sean Middlebrough, a Palestine Action protestor, had ‘absconded’ from HMP Wandsworth this weekend just passed. The 32 year old protestor was one of the Filton24, a group of direct action protestors who have been held in remand without trial through the abuse of repressive anti-terror laws. In a statement to Electronic Intifada, Middlebrough laid out his reasons for becoming a fugitive escaping state repression:
“I’m not on the run. I am merely being sensible, refusing to be held as a prisoner of war of Israel, in a British prison. Outrageously, twenty three of my heroic and honorable co-defendants remain in prison following our kidnapping by counter-terrorism police. We were raided, our families detained, and guns pointed at our heads despite not being charged with any terror offenses. The UN has condemned our treatment as likely “enforced disappearance”, while my co-defendants are indefinitely detained before facing trial.
We are not terrorists. I oppose terror and tyranny in all forms. When we witness British backed genocide of the Palestinian people, it is our moral and legal duty to act against it. This is why some of my comrades in the Filton 24 are in active hunger strike for immediate bail and a fair trial; we can resist injustice wherever we are. They are the best of us, and we must rally behind their fight. While I am free, I will raise their voice beyond the prison walls, for everything that they are and they stand for – a FREE PALESTINE!“
In the article mentioned above, and in other reports by members of the Murdoch mob and their fellow reactionary rags, there are several mistakes and misrepresentations of both Middlebrough and Palestine Action. This biased coverage and shoddy work for the purpose of manufacturing consent for fascist repression is what many have come to expect from British journalism, but nevertheless we at the Aftershock feel it’s necessary to do their job for them and correct the record.
First of all, Sean Middlebrough is not charged with a plot against the London Stock Exchange. He was charged and remanded for a charge of conspiracy to cause public nuisance, for allegedly plotting to shut down the London Stock Exchange in January 2024, which led to him being remanded. He was released shortly after on bail and his charges were dropped. That was the second time he had been remanded to prison on charges that were later dropped.
Through this seemingly small mistake, journalists give themselves licence to miss out further crucial context. Middlebrough was on remand for a third time since November 2024, in connection to an action at Elbit’s weapons facility in Filton in August 2024. Himself and many others were violently raided and arrested, and during the raid his family members were also cuffed. Some of the now Filton24 were also raided at gun point. Whilst the Filton24 do not face terrorism charges, the CPS say that their charges have a “terrorism connection”, which means if convicted, the Judge can increase their sentence and they’ll continue to face harsher conditions. This is the first case in which direct action activists faced accusations of terrorism. Such a landmark case should draw attention, skepticism and critical thinking about its potential consequences and implications, but for the most part British media has been content to take the word of the state at face value.
He was facing 18 months on remand before trial, which far exceeds the six month pre-trial custody time limit. He had served nearly a year on remand by the time he was released on temporary bail and didn’t return. Whilst in prison, he was locked in a cell which was designed for one person with another cellmate. His cell was so small that he couldn’t fully extend his arms and he was locked up for 23 hours a day. All of this context is crucial for understanding why Middlebrough decided to escape, and only some of this info would be unavailable to places like Sky News.
Now that we have corrected the record, we feel it is important to talk about the significance of this act. Whilst the reports which will come out will seek to emphasise this as a trivial act of skipping bail, or as an admission of guilt (as the pigs’ old saying goes: if you’re innocent, why would you run?) we should remember that according to Middlebrough’s own words, he has not ‘absconded.’ As he says in his statement to Electronic Intifada, he is ‘not on the run,’ but has instead refused to be further incarcerated as part of a campaign to fortify British complicity with the genocide in Palestine. Much in the same way that the Filton 24 and other Palestine Action protestors are called ‘political prisoners,’ emphasising that they are persecuted because their protests and alleged crimes have run counter to the interests of British imperialism and Zionism, Middlebrough’s actions are a refusal to operate within the terms of engagement set by the British State. He does not recognise himself as having ‘absconded’ because to do so would be to say that his imprisonment has been fair and proportionate.
To do so would be to recognise the prison system as one which is a legitimate and humane response to social problems. But the historical truth of the carceral system is that it is a part of a wider apparatus of disciplining and controlling the impoverished and racialised elements of the working class through punishment and isolation. Alongside this, it continues its historical role as a means of torture and repression against activists. As a New Socialist article said earlier this year:
Inside prison, detainees are subjected to arbitrary and repressive restrictions. According to a report by Declassified UK, these have included actionist Zoe Rogers being “interrogated for seven days without charge, often in the middle of the night in a windowless cell”. Zoe “was not immediately offered a phone call” upon arrest, “and was held in the prison induction wing for six weeks.” Fatema also experienced harsh treatment, which included being “subjected to multiple random drug tests” and having all of her mail withheld. […] It becomes abundantly clear that the counter terror laws are not being used in order to charge the actionists with a specific political crime they have allegedly committed, but because the category of ‘terrorist’ deprives them of rights that prisoners are supposed to be afforded; because it opens them up to another realm of violence. In essence, they are being pushed outside of the law, all the better to hurt them.
Britain as a carceral state perpetrates this kind of cruelty on both a national and international level; nowhere are systems of control more intricate in their construction and brutal in their effects than in Palestine, where a mixture of laws from the British Mandate and contemporary technology are used in tandem to detain Palestinians without trial, then oppress and abuse them further within the entity’s prisons. Everything that Sean Middlebrough and the Filton 24 have gone through, Palestinians have gone through it and worse, and so have many racialised and colonized people around the world, in particular in the United States, which has one of the largest prison populations and even now enacts a campaign of terror against migrants and political dissidents.
The Filton 24 shares similarities with political detainees in the US; it is hard not to think of Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained by ICE and threatened with deportation for his pro-Palestine views. Others have also been targeted for similar ‘offences’. The proscription of Palestine Action feels very similar to the way Samidoun, an organisation working in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners, has been treated by Canada, Germany and the US. You could also point to how France attempted to ban Urgence Palestine. Nations across the global North are making a concentrated effort to repress their populations, in order to ensure that their geopolitical and economic interests in the Middle East are not disrupted. But whilst this is some cause for concern, there is a silver lining. By being put into this position, the current generation of prisoners and fugitives find themselves in solidarity with all those being treated the same way.
As Dylan Saba writes in Parapraxis, to escape from the clutches of the system is to put oneself in a tradition of revolutionary resistance, sharing a history with radicals like Zakaria Zubdeidi, Assata Shakur, and George Jackson. In fact, as Saba explains, the notion of ‘escape’ permeates so much of Palestinian history and culture. This ranges from the Gilboa prison break to works of art like Wisam Rafeedie’s novel The Trinity of Fundamentals, which starts with a PFLP member on the run from the occupation forces. All over the world, nation states attempt to tighten the carceral vice, and in each place revolutionaries are escaping its grip. Whilst as Khalil says, ‘Justice escapes the contours of [the US’s] immigration facilities,’ by breaking the conditions set on us by the system of racial capitalism, escaping itself can be an act of justice. As the Palestinian revolutionary Basel al-Araj said:
The beginning of every revolution is an exit, an exit from the social order that power has enshrined in the name of law, stability, public interest, and the greater good. Every social and economic authority necessarily intersects with and is an extension of political authority.
Sean Middlebrough, you have made your exit, now godspeed. May we all do the same.