Jury Says Not Guilty But Politicians Say Otherwise

Politicians and pundits attacking the Filton 24 acquittals are actively undermining the right to a fair trial while 18 related cases are still live. Right, so a jury has just acquitted six Palestine Action activists in a UK courtroom, but the verdict itself isn’t the real story. What matters is what happened next. Politicians, pundits, and media figures didn’t just criticise the outcome, they rewrote it. They asserted guilt after acquittal, treated allegations as facts after the fact, and openly questioned whether juries should even be trusted when they don’t deliver the “right” result, as the current right wing Labour government still plots an end to default trial by jury. That reaction has real and dangerous consequences for all of us. There are eighteen other defendants from the same case still waiting for trial, and one of the acquitted defendants now faces the possibility of retrial over an alleged sledgehammer attack. The presumption of innocence doesn’t survive very long when public voices from across the political and punditry sector are loudly announcing who they think should be convicted and why, the right to a free and fair trial as is all of our human right be damned. So this isn’t about whether you like the protest or not. It’s about whether the right to a fair trial still functions once powerful voices start in chorus deciding it’s inconvenient when they don’t like the result. Because if verdicts only count when the state wins, then juries aren’t a safeguard anymore. They’re an obstacle. And that is a problem that won’t stay confined to one case. Right, so a jury at Woolwich Crown Court has acquitted six Palestine Action protesters of aggravated burglary after a break-in at an Elbit Systems factory in Filton in August 2024, and that decision has already triggered a chain of consequences that endanger the remaining Filton cases still to come.