The following blog post is a critque of the transphobic current visible within the Palestine movement. It critiques both the actions of Laura Pidcock and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in particluar, as well as the wider movement in general.
The attached image shows the “TRANS FOR PALESTINE” banner outside the Palestine Solidarity encampment on Newcastle University campus. The banner was subsequently torn and repaired two separate times within the month. – May 2024
The following is a brief commentary on eight interviews carried out from October to December of 2025. At the time of publication, it is two years since the general upsurge of the so-called ‘Student Intifada’ and its spread from the United States to the United Kingdom. These interviews seek to explore the experience of the ‘Student Intifada’ in the North East of England, primarily Newcastle, which began following the Zionist Entity’s mass slaughter in Gaza and escalated to an encampment on May Day 2024. The interviewees are, generally speaking, old comrades of mine from those days. This is a methodological flaw as it has limited the pool of interviewees to people I know personally. The interviewees, and anyone else mentioned in their interviews, have had their names changed for reasons of anonymity. These interviews are intended to do a number of things. Firstly, to preserve the experience of the encampment, as those who were in their first year of university during the encampment are now coming to the end of their third year. Campus is then almost entirely empty of the cohort who lived the encampment, and as such it is important to keep a record of an experience that only lives in the most fleeting, fragile form – the digital. Secondly, to examine the encampment from a wider vantage point, rather than from solely my vantage point as my previous piece, The Necessity of Factionalism, does. Finally, to provide a close look at the student as a class and to understand the students’ revolutionary potential – or lack thereof. This last one is something that will need much more elaboration: a ‘student question’ with its own exploration and answers. These interviews, and the conclusions we can glean, should help in the process of understanding just how much we can call it a ‘Student Intifada’. In other words, can call that wave of protest a revolutionary uprising against Imperialism or must we call it as it might be – the bleeding-heart bleeding once more? This piece should serve as an introduction to a full reading of the interviews, which should allow for a more detailed analysis of the political and class composition of the ‘Student Intifada’. These are the initial set of questions I went into the interviews with, though I did ask follow-up questions as can be seen in the transcripts.
In reading these interviews I think it would be good to keep a handful of things in mind. The first and foremost of these, in my opinion, is that we must make an effort to uplift and support women in the sphere of revolutionary politics. I say this not in a paternalistic tone but rather that men need to shut up and pick up some rubbish once in a while. The pattern you will no doubt notice in reading the interviews is that at the encampment, it was generally the women who were left to the basic maintenance of the encampment. In short, the basic tasks of reproducing the encampment as a space were conducted by women. If we truly want to build a new world, there are the practical elements: yes, we cannot have a revolution if we can’t even wash the dishes as Comrade 5 puts it. However, more importantly, if you stand for the abolition of the present state of things, you must make an active effort to ungender labour. The invisible or uncredited labour of women facilitated the resistance at al-Shifa hall and other direct actions, it fed everyone I interviewed. As part of abolishing the present state of things, we must bring that labour into the light and perform it all together. We owe it to the women of our movement to work harder to dismantle old social relations. It is also important to keep in mind the vital necessity of criticism/self-criticism and furthermore of ideological struggle. Far too many of the issues of the encampment can be summed up as: people didn’t want to have that talk or people weren’t willing to just hash it out. You will always need the struggle session and to shy away from struggle, ideological or the direct fight with capital, is a kind of liberalism that must be choked to death. Lastly, a word on the title: this is a quote from my ninth interview that we had trouble getting from the interviewee as it was recorded on their phone. As a result, I have not been able to transcribe and present it with the rest of the interviews. This is a real shame as, as you can no doubt tell from the title, it was full of passion and sharp insight. The title is intended to show the strength of those immense convictions that ran through the encampment as a whole and, further than that, the willingness to take international solidarity as far as you can go with it. Though, this also marks an unmistakeable irony; we achieved neither victory nor martyrdom nor very much at all but we are going on nevertheless.
A Luta Continua,
– Comrade Steve.
Monday the 23rd of March was the beginning of a week of action against Rafael in Newcastle. The Armstrong Works, a factory complex owned by Israeli-state owned weapons company Rafael Defence Systems, has been the target of local action since May of 2023. The week of action has been much the same as previous periods targeting the factory. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the factory was blockaded in the early morning, a tactic that has been in use since 2023 as well. The week was finished with a march from The Beacon on Westgate Road to the factory.
The blockades were perhaps the most effective of the two actions that took place that week. This is because they are part of a longer campaign of disruption targeted at the factory. They have a definite effect in that they directly affect the financial viability of the factory. The longer the factory’s workers have to wait outside, the longer they are paid for no work. This also prevents goods from coming and going from the factory which delays sale and has a negative impact on the financial viability of the factory and, moreover, of the companies who do work with the factory. The blockades only get more effective the more often they are done and the more people join them as the capacity for the factory to make profit and weapons for the Zionist Entity is diminished. See the Instagram page Geordies Block Genocide for more on this.
The march was a different story however. The mood on the ground was primed to engage with less liberal chants than previous marches. Though this was offset in some respects by a large contingent from the Green Party which has just recently voted not to condemn Zionism as a form of racism at their spring conference. This represents a wider issue for the militant left, the Greens pose as a grassroots alternative to ‘normal’ politics but are just more of the same except with a capacity to absorb support from the left as well as the centre. Remember that a socialist in government is not a socialist minister but rather a bourgeois minister coloured red, or green in this case. An instance that can sum up the Greens participation in the march, and certainly the wider movement,is that they took pictures with their banner at the start and then by the end were nowhere to be seen.
Something of particular note ought to be the willingness to engage with the chant: ‘One struggle! One fight! Workers of the world unite!’. This does not mean anything just yet but it is worth paying attention to.
Furthermore, this was one of the least well-attended marches to Rafael since the escalation of the Zionist Entity’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Only 18 months ago nearly twice as many local people turned out from across the north east, including from Durham. This may, as the RCG believe, be the result of a lack of democratic planning, though this does not seem to wholly to be the case as we have seen large turn out under deeply undemocratic practices, see the Shutdown Rafael Campaign (SDR). So, what did happen? It seems to have been a lack of very old-fashioned tactics. Leaflets were given out, yes. But door knocking and postering were lacking. The final problem was that local arch-transphobe Laura Pidcock was a scheduled speaker. It was bad, she was heckled and finished her speech by soliciting donations for Declassified UK.
In short, there is always more to be done. A march must be treated like the big event it is meant to be. We need to be making use of every tactic to ensure large turnout, not just social media and leafletting. Further, action against Rafael ought to break from the dead-in-the-water People Against Rafael campaign as it seems mostly to be a distraction from the actual tangible work of Palestine solidarity and anti-imperialism in the north east. That being said, cross-organisational planning for an event like this is paramount – no one group locally has the resources or time to conduct the campaign of awareness necessary for a march to be successful. Lastly, we should not be coordinating with the police at all, who tried to make us walk on the pavement at the beginning of the march; we should just march regardless next time.
The following is Comrade Steve’s personal account and analysis of the 2024 Newcastle University Palestine Solidarity Encampment. Also included are three appendices containing images of the encampment.