Votes for Women, Bricks for Jews?
Peter Tatchell’s ill-fated analogy and the extreme left’s troubling romance with intimidation
Oh, Bravo, Peter!
You’ve finally solved history’s greatest riddle: the Women’s Social and Political Union were apparently the proto-wing of modern terrorism, indistinguishable from a crew that tips paint into RAF jet engines and hurls bricks at Jewish businesses. Of course! Why didn’t the textbooks mention that Emmeline Pankhurst also kept a stash of crowbars for late-night raids on military airfields?
Reality Check No. 1 – Targets Matter
Suffragettes (1912-14): blew up empty buildings and burned post-boxes to bad-ger a male Parliament into giving women the vote. They rang doorbells first, left notes, and bent over backwards to avoid killing anyone.
Palestine Action (2025): smashed the windows of a Jewish-owned firm in Stamford Hill, daubed it crimson, then boasted online—while the Met treated the wreckage as racially aggravated criminal damage.
Spot the difference? One confronted power; the other intimidates a minority already facing soaring antisemitic attacks.
Reality Check No. 2 – Methods Matter
On 20 June, Palestine Action operatives breached RAF Brize Norton, pumped red paint into two Voyager tanker engines, and took a crowbar to the nacelles. Even Reuters called it damage to planes, and the Home Secretary’s jaw hit the floor hard enough to schedule a proscription order the next morning.
Because nothing says “peaceful civil disobedience” like endangering flight crews and grounding Britain’s aid-lift fleet. Remind me—did the suffragettes ever try to take out the Royal Flying Corps?
Reality Check No. 3 – Motive Matters
Suffragettes: expand the franchise.
Palestine Action: “make life unbearable for Zionists” (their words), whether that means gluing themselves to factory gates or leaving Jewish neighbourhoods ankle-deep in broken glass.
Equating the two is like claiming the Salvation Army and the Sinaloa Cartel are both “supply-chain organisations.” Technically true, morally absurd.
But Wait, There’s More: The “Extreme-Left Normalisation of Aversion” Starter Pack
Redefine terror – If it’s your tribe wielding the bolt-cutters, it’s “direct action.” Everybody else? Draconian jackboots of the state.
Aim at Jews first, apologise later – When paint and glass rain down on Stamford Hill, the voguish line is “We only meant Elbit Systems, honest!” Funny how the collateral damage always spells out Hebrew names.
Cry McCarthyism – The moment the law notices, scream that democracy is dying. Never mind that Parliament wrote the Terrorism Act precisely for people who sabotage planes.
Pathos, Logos—Pick Your Poison
Picture the Jewish shopkeeper sweeping up shards while his eight-year-old asks whether the red stuff is blood. Now picture an RAF technician staring at a crimson-coated turbine, praying the solvent worked before the next mercy flight to Cyprus. Tell either of them this is a noble echo of Votes for Women and watch their faces. That’s pathos and logos in one grim tableau.
Final Thought
Peter, the suffragettes chained themselves to railings; Palestine Action chains an entire community to fear. If Labour calls that terrorism, it isn’t besmirching Pankhurst’s legacy—it’s defending the very pluralism those women fought to enter. The only thing your tweet normalises is moral myopia.
Carry on romanticising vandalism, if you must. The rest of us will keep an eye on the broken glass—and remember where we’ve seen it before.