Two RAF logistics jets were damaged at one of Britain’s most theoretically secure airfields overnight into Friday by Palestinian Action activists who were able to escape undetected.
Leftist direct action group Palestinian Action, which has been engaged in a campaign of violent sabotage of Israel-linked supply chains since the October 7th attacks, has claimed responsibility for a strike against the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force overnight. Two activists were able to infiltrate RAF Brize Norton, cause damage with paint-filled fire extinguishers and crowbars, paint a symbol on the runway and hang a Palestinian flag before leaving the area, all without being caught.
Update 1800 — Counter terror police take over investigation
Thames Valley Police have relinquished the investigation into this morning’s sabotage to the counter terrorism command, they have said.
Remarkably, over 12 hours after the infiltration of a secure airbase no arrests have been announced. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been scathing of the government’s performance and said: “Palestine Action must be proscribed as a terrorist organisation after the attack on RAF planes at Brize Norton”.
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The air base is a legally protected place in British law and is heavily guarded, leaving serious questions asked about the state of its defence given two activists on e-scooters were able to cause damage undetected. The Commanding Officer of RAF Brize Norton, Group Captain Louise Henton OBE, a career “personnel and administrative officer” deactivated her X account on Friday morning after news of the infiltration became public.
Screenshot from body worn GoPro camera shows Palestine Action activist approaching jet at RAF Brize Norton on a e-scooter / Palestine Action
The Prime Minister called the raid “disgraceful” and called on the public to support the armed forces. The Ministry of Defence is to stage a review of airfield security, reports the BBC, and is supporting Thames Valley Police who are leading the investigation.
The aircraft hit were Airbus Voyager jets [file photo, top] which, per the RAF, is the force’s “sole air-to-air refuelling (AAR) tanker and also operates as a strategic air transport… Fuel is stored in existing tanks, leaving the cabin available for up to 291 passengers and the cargo hold for freight. One Voyager is modified for long-range VIP transport but still functions as a fully capable tanker… Voyager has a flexible aeromedical configuration that includes the ability to carry up to 40 stretchers and three critical care patients.”
Footage posted by Palestinian Action as they claimed the attack showed the activists riding battery-powered scooters at speed across the airfield and between aircraft. They can be seen spraying a liquid from repurposed fire extinguishers into the engine of an aircraft. Per Palestinian Action’s own words, this act was “decommissioning two military planes” which they claimed were to be used in the “genocide… against the Palestinian people”.
The UK Defence Journal reports these aircraft are actually typically used for Operation Shader, the years-long RAF mission against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, states that while the level of damage to the jets is still being determined, “no operations or planned movements for the RAF were affected”.
Nevertheless, it is clear the West may be in a transition to war phase with leaders remaining vague on the degree to which they are or will be supporting Israeli strikes against Tehran. And that saboteurs from hard-left groups are expected to suddenly mobilise during the transition phase to reduce the British capacity to contribute to a conflict has been known to British military and intelligence planners for many decades.
Indeed, during the Cold War a major role for Britain’s internal intelligence service, commonly known as MI5, was compiling lists on both open and cryptic left-wing extremists so they could be immediately rounded up and placed under guard to prevent sabotage of Britain’s Royal Air Force and the infrastructure underpinning the ability to use it, right the way down to causing major traffic jams to prevent service personnel being recalled to their bases in an emergency.
According to declassified documents from the Cold War era, during the transition to war phase MI5 would enter “organisation-smashing mode” and some 3,000 known individuals would be swept up and placed under arrest in requisitioned holiday camps in Wales and the Isle of Man, as opponents to the Second World War had been in 1939.
It has been previously revealed that: “an MI5 file has been declassified which reveals just how sizable and elaborate the World War III internment plans became… a substantial round-up and detention of possible subversives and saboteurs who might become active during a transition to war”.
Whether the intelligence services stopped performing this function with the end of the Cold War, or if they are simply no longer very good at it is of course obscured by official secrets. But the fact remains that a diffused network of activist groups including Palestine Action have been waging a campaign of sabotage against military supply chains in the United Kingdom in support of Hamas and Palestine since the October 7 2023 attack.
Palestine Action themselves have recently boasted of sabotaging defence industry factories they say are supplying Israel and of painting a U.S. military plane that had landed at an airfield in the Republic of Ireland.
As reported in 2024 of previous raids:
Stopping British weapons and equipment exports to Israel has been an urgent priority of the hard left since the October 7th attack, with several protests and even direct actions against UK arms manufacturers in recent months. In November, a major avionics factory operated by BAE systems was blockaded by ‘Workers for a Free Palestine’ activists who asserted Israel is a “terrorist state”. The factory is understood to contribute to the F-35 project.
In June, activists protested at a factory in Glasgow, Scotland, a court hearing they caused over one million pounds of damage at the side. Sheriff John McCormick said that activists “entered the building through the roof and caused damage including to parts essential to submarines”.
In another action in June, ‘Palestine Action’ activists broke into a weapons factory in Kent, England and smashed up the shop floor with crowbars. In August, police officers were hit with sledgehammers when activists armed with other weapons including axes and whips raises a further arms factory in Bristol, which was ram-raided with a prison van and again smashed up.
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