Wed 21 October 2026:
A petition signed by more than 150 prominent writers and personalities in the UK and published on the cover of The New Statesman magazine has demanded that Sally Rooney’s books “be available to the public”.
“Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist,” it said.
The Irish author’s books are being withdrawn from the UK market over her support for Palestine Action, a proscribed group in Britain.
“Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti-terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country,” the petition said.
Faber, Rooney’s publishers, decided last week that distributing her books and paying her royalties would expose it to criminal prosecution under the UK’s Terrorism Act.
Irish author Sally Rooney has long been described as “the voice of a generation” for her best-selling novels that are ostensibly about millennial relationships but also explore deeper questions of class, gender and politics.
The move comes after Rooney — who has said she believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — announced last year she would be donating funds from the proceeds of her books to Palestine Action, which was controversially banned in the U.K. under terrorism legislation.
UK-based Palestine Action says on its website it uses “disruptive tactics” to target “corporate enablers of the Israeli military-industrial complex and seeks to make it impossible for these companies to profit from the oppression of Palestinians.”
The government also said that the group’s “activities meet the threshold of being concerned in terrorism as set out in the Terrorism Act 2000,” adding that it assessed “that Palestine Action commits and participates in acts of terrorism.”
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Free speech concerns
But critics questioned this assessment, saying it raised concerns about freedom of speech.
U.N. Human Rights Chief Volker Türk urged the U.K. government to rescind the decision, saying it “appears disproportionate and unnecessary.”
“It limits the rights of many people involved with and supportive of Palestine Action who have not themselves engaged in any underlying criminal activity but rather exercised their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association,” Türk said.
Amnesty International UK also raised concerns, saying “the UK has a deeply flawed and overly broad definition of terrorism.”
Under the U.K. law, anyone who provides financial assistance to the group could face up to 14 years in prison.
For fear of arrest, Rooney says she has stopped traveling from her home in Ireland to the U.K. to attend award ceremonies and other events since the law came into force.
But the novelist has defended her support of Palestine Action, saying in an opinion piece in The Irish Times last year: “if this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it.”
It was in that op-ed that she announced she would use the British proceeds of her work “as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can.”
