Lunchtime on 7 December 1983 I was on a People’s Democracy stall at the Queen’s University Students’ Union when word arrived that the IRA had shot and killed Edgar Graham, a law lecturer and unionist politician, a short distance away. An injudicious application of the Marxist method led me to the conclusion that our activity shouldn’t be determined by the Provies. Some minutes later, a man identifying himself as a Daily Mail reporter arrived and started asking me questions. I told him I wouldn’t speak to his rag and that we were Marxists, not terrorists.  Edgar Graham’s murder was essentially a futile sectarian killing masquerading as armed struggle against British imperialism. It was textbook terrorism.

Say what you want about Palestine Action, but they just are not in the same league or even the same sport as left wing terrorist groups. Narodnaya Volya killed Tsar Alexander II in 1881. That was their showstopper in a career that saw Vera Zasulich shoot Fyodor Trepov, St. Petersburg’s Governor. In 1878 and 1879, they killed several government officials, including agents of the secret police and Prince Dmitry Kropotkin, Kharkov’s Governor General. Lenin’s brother Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov was executed for trying to assassinate Alexander III. Narodnaya Volya lacked neither courage nor ambition.

The same could also be said about the Socialist Revolutionaries who tried to kill Lenin. He got his revenge twice, the first time when Fanny Kaplan was executed and the second time when an awful film was made about her.

Gavrilo Princip probably didn’t intend to start World War One when he assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and he would never have guessed that eighty years later a bunch of Scottish musicians would pay him an indirect tribute in their choice of band name. If you had suggested to him that he fart around with some red paint and an electric scooter you would have been given short shrift.

Maybe it is because their army and government are so good at terrorism British lefties have been so rubbish at it. While the Brigate Rosse were looking to bring about a proletarian dictatorship in Italy by robbing banks, killing capitalists and politicians, Stoke Newington’s Angry Brigade damaged some property with a few amateur bombs before being caught within months. Joe Strummer never wore their T shirt.

How do you think former Red Army Faction people in Germany would feel about being compared to Palestine Action? Luke Haines wrote a song about them which makes their three decades of “Marxist-Leninist” bank jobs, killings and clandestine living sound positively glamorous. Not even Bruce Springsteen could come up with a song that makes zipping around an airbase on a souped up child’s toy sound romantic.

“Wendy, make sure you charge the battery properly beforehand

 I’ll get the paint and hammers for the rest of the band”.

All you have to do is look at what actual terrorists do and compare that to Palestine Action’s activities do to conclude that they are absolutely not terrorists, irrespective of what defenders and advocates of genocide say. They are self-sacrificing, heroic and represent a hope for humanity. Gavrilo Princip didn’t know he was going to start a war that would kill an estimated forty million people. Palestine Action know that is exactly what they want to stop.

There are a few social clubs in Belfast where people like Edgar Graham’s killers and their comrades relive a sanitised version of the old days. Good luck trying to persuade anyone in the Felons that Palestine Action are anything like them.