The Palestine Hunger Striker Standing for Election

Palestine activist Amu Gib is running for council from prison. Their election would be a victory for the movement and a defeat for the government that jailed them.

Islington Independent Councillors have selected imprisoned Palestine hunger striker Amu Gib to stand in May’s local election. (Credit: amugib4liberation.)

At two meetings in the last month, members of Islington Community Independents voted to select Amu Gib, who is one of several prisoners on remand awaiting trial for alleged Palestine Action offences, to stand as a candidate in May’s local elections. Gib’s charges relate to an alleged break-in at RAF Brize Norton last year, where aircraft used to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza were vandalised. The candidate recently took part in the Prisoners for Palestine hunger strike, which ended with the government deciding not to award a £2 billion contract to the arms company, Elbit Systems UK. They were on strike for forty-nine days.

As an Islington voter, I am so proud that Gib will have the opportunity to stand in the same constituency where they went to school and college. Finsbury Park is a multi-cultural ward. Gaza is crucial to British politics — it is the cause of Labour’s turn to authoritarianism, including the proscription of Palestine Action, a policy which led directly to the unjust conditions which gave prisoners no choice but to strike.

We will use local government elections to talk about Palestine, but not that issue only. Labour is the natural party of local government. Its councillors have internalised the defeats of the 1980s, have convinced themselves that you can’t use local government to do anything more than fix potholes, or send letters to landlords complaining about damp on residents’ walls. Because Labour governs through limited ambitions, Islington council is bad at these tasks too. I’m a lawyer, for years, I used to represent tenants in court, fighting to get repairs done — Islington was no quicker at getting work done than any other council.

In Islington Community Independents, we think it’s possible to be more ambitious than that; our councillors Ilkay Cinko-Oner and Phil Graham have fought the Labour council for years to do more over SEN and divestment.

Cinko-Oner welcomed Gib’s nomination, saying, ‘Imagine what it would mean if they won. A prisoner, a hunger striker, an activist for Palestine. Someone who has volunteered in Calais with refugees facing the deadly Channel crossing. Someone who speaks out for justice.’

When they applied to stand, Gib told us, ‘Together we survived the pandemic, which showed us who we actually need in order to live. It is not the Royal Family, the rich, the City of London, the bankers. It’s the farmers, binmen, nurses, cleaners, students, transport workers, and storytellers.’

If elected, Gib will help lobby central government for more housing, better environments in schools, and help empower people to create a council in their image.

Gib is on remand (in prison while awaiting trial); they haven’t been tried or convicted of anything. The state has done to Gib what it does to so many Islington residents accused of crimes — it locks them away till trial. People accused of crimes are also other residents’ sons, sisters and partners; we used locked doors to replace the youth clubs and mental health services which Conservative and Labour governments have both cut.

No law prevents Gib from standing for the council or being elected. The legal system pretends prisoners have disappeared. But every confined person has a right to read letters from their friends and family, to have access to books from the prison library, to spend their visiting hours with the people they choose. Those are very the same rights which the prison system has taken away from pro-Palestinian prisoners.

An incarcerated person can be a councillor, can attend meetings by video link, and can speak and write on behalf of the people they represent. In Islington Community Independents, we insist on seeing Gib, and all the other Prisoners for Palestine, as full human beings.

We voted for Gib because they are a fighter. They have put their body on the line for the causes that matter to them. As a councillor, they would be tougher in representing their constituents than any rival candidate could possibly be.