When the UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, they likely didn’t foresee a bookshop extinction event for Normal People. And yet, that is where we are.
Last week, Sally Rooney’s publisher Faber announced that they would no longer be supplying Rooney’s books in the UK, due to terrorism legislation. This stems back to Rooney, who is Irish, saying she supports Palestine Action and would donate proceeds from her book sales to the group, which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK in July 2025 under the Terror Act. Funding or supporting a terrorist organisation can carry a 14-year prison sentence.
Which rather caused a headache for Faber. They’re now unable to pass along Rooney’s UK royalties for fear of being held criminally liable for funding terrorism, albeit indirectly. 14 years in prison is nothing to be sniffed at.
“To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher,” Faber said in a statement—and so, in agreement with Rooney, they have stopped supplying her books in the UK. Right now, almost all editions of Rooney’s novels are unavailable on the Waterstones website, presumably because the bookseller has already worked through its remaining stock.
Rooney’s books are not about terrorism, or Palestine Action, or indeed anything particularly political. They’re not technically banned, and it’s perfectly legal for bookshops to sell what stock they have left. They are still peppered around charity shops, available from libraries and orderable at the click of a button from other countries—Palestine Action is not proscribed in Ireland, where Rooney lives.
But book censorship is not always so black and white. In an indirect way, these books have been restricted; Faber are in an impossible position, and have ended up self-censoring to avoid being on the wrong side of the law.
Bookshops in Ireland have reported a surge in Rooney orders from UK readers. You wonder: is this even legal? The section of the legislation that has tangled up Faber states: “A person commits an offence if he provides money… and knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.”
If the indirect funding from Faber to Rooney to Palestine Action is risky enough, couldn’t a UK reader ordering a Rooney book from Ireland be held liable too? If someone reasonably believes that the endpoint of buying Conversations with Friends could be the funding of an organisation classed as terrorist, it doesn’t seem that great a leap that this legislation applies to them too, however unlikely it is that it would be applied.
I’m not proposing that counter-terrorism police are about to storm village book clubs, but on a very technical level, isn’t this what the law says? We might be in the bizarre situation where going to Ireland, stealing a Rooney book and bringing it home is legally (although not morally) safer than paying for it—at least then you’d just be a thief and not a terrorist.
And this is the problem. The ruling has caused so much uncertainty and can seemingly be extended to cover so much, that people are afraid of what they can legally say and do.
The Rooney debacle is not the first time that the Palestine Action ruling has had unintended consequences. Journalists have been tripping over themselves on how they’re allowed to cover the proscription, and whether questioning the decision amounts to supporting terrorism. When an issue is too legally complicated to tackle, fewer publications will take on the challenge.
Some have risen to it. The New World magazine published an edition with the coverline “Sign of the Times” alongside a picture of a placard stating, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.”
Soon afterwards, a student popped into WH Smith’s at Kings Cross Station, saw the magazine, and thought it would be a safe bet to hold it up at the pro-Palestine protest he was about to attend. Instead, he was carted away by police. If it was against the law for the student to hold up that front page, was the front page itself illegal? The line, in the eyes of the law, is extremely blurry.
Private Eye, too, published a Palestine Action-themed cartoon that highlighted the hypocrisy of the proscription by comparing “spraying military planes with paint” to “shooting Palestinians queuing for food”. A retired teacher took a print-out of the cartoon to a protest—and was arrested.
Earlier this month, multiple journalists were arrested under anti-terror laws while covering a protest in Leicestershire. They were reportedly swept up in arrests under the section of the Terrorism Act that makes it illegal to show support for a proscribed organisation through clothing or other items.
The National Union of Journalists put out a statement saying: “Covering Palestine Action protests and taking photographs or videos of the group’s placards does not in itself constitute support for the group.”
This is not to mention the huge number of people who have been arrested for peacefully protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action. Initially, this proscription of the group by the home secretary was ruled unlawful by the High Court in February, before that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in June. The matter is now due to go to the Supreme Court.
Here is yet another technicality: can people challenge the principle of the proscription and remain within the law, whether or not they support Palestine Action as a group? Protesting the principle does not automatically signal support. Many people stand firmly against the group’s actions, while also not agreeing that the terrorism threshold has been met, or wanting more clarity. The British public has questions, but we have become too afraid to ask them. Seeing journalists and elderly folks with placards being arrested does have rather a strong self-censoring effect.
And when books with great artistic merit are effectively censored, alarm bells must ring. We need to ask not only what is lost when our literary access is restricted, but also what this is a symptom of, what deeper problems this reveals, as is always the case with the casualties of culture wars. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think a 14-year prison sentence is a reasonable outcome from the sale of a book.
