39: Supporting the Filton 25 w/ Lisa Matthews

Episode 39: Supporting the Filton 25 with Lisa Matthews Matthew Remski / Lisa Matthews --- Hello, everyone. My name is Matthew Remski. This is Antifascist Dad Podcast episode 39, supporting the Filton 25 with Lisa Matthews. You know, I wrote an entire book about parenting and antifascism, but I feel a little bit like an imposter because I've never come close to being in your situation. I can imagine it, though, knowing who our kids are. What advice would you give me if I were someday standing where you are now? Lisa Matthews: Well, I hope you never will be, because I hope the government stops doing this to our children. But I think we have to be prepared for more of this, because young people just aren't prepared to put up with what's happening. They aren't prepared to see this terrible future that is being given to them. And I think part of it is about really leaning into the support networks that are there. The support campaign around the Filton families has just been incredible. As I've mentioned, friends and family and our broader community have been astonishing. They've been unendingly supportive — their love, their care, their offers of support, their anger on our behalf is really what's kept us going. And then I think it's about trying to balance these two things: on the one hand, we feel despair, we feel anger, we feel trauma. Our lives will never be the same again. And we are allowed to feel those feelings and to somehow manage them, but trying to remember that we're part of something so much bigger, that there's a meaning to what we're going through. Matthew Remski: That's Lisa Matthews, the mother of Finn Collins. Finn is one of the Filton 25, who have been charged collectively with aggravated burglary, criminal damage, and violent disorder for a direct action taken in August 2024 against an Elbit Systems facility that supplied drones to the IDF to kill people in Gaza. Finn will be facing his group's trial in February of next year. The second group trial is now on after the first group was convicted and given brutal sentences. These trials are the peak expression of the UK's crackdown on Palestine Action, and they are unfolding as Trump's Department of Justice is trying to crush ICE protesters, and as Mark Carney's government here in Canada forces tech companies to build backdoors for surveillance and to store all Canadians' metadata for twelve months, all while they pass legislation to increasingly criminalize pro-Palestinian protest. My conversation with Lisa is coming up. For housekeeping: you can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name. I'm at YouTube and TikTok as antifascistdad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast, where supporters can get early access to a second episode every week. Often it's a follow-up on the first. This week it's a follow-up on something my guest Lisa describes today about the absolute cluster of how the Filton 25 case is being adjudicated. It's about who gets to speak. And remember, if you can't afford to support the show, those Patreon episodes all eventually get unlocked. Also, as always in the show notes, you'll find a link to order my book Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. In the early hours of 6 August 2024, six activists — Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers, and Jordan Devlin — all associated with Palestine Action, breached the Elbit Systems facility at Aztec West, Filton, near Bristol. Elbit Systems is Israel's largest private defence contractor and a major NATO supplier, manufacturing armed drones, surveillance systems, and precision weapons and munitions supplied to militaries worldwide, including the IDF. Their facilities in the UK allow Elbit to bid for Ministry of Defence contracts as a domestic supplier rather than a foreign vendor. This bypasses restrictions on foreign arms procurement. At the time of the break-in, Elbit was reportedly close to winning a two-billion-pound Ministry of Defence contract for military training systems. And just the month before, the Lancet published a letter by epidemiologists estimating that direct and indirect deaths in the Gaza genocide totalled 186,000. Palestine Action was founded by Huda Ammori, daughter of a Palestinian father and Iraqi mother, and Richard Barnard, a long-term left-wing activist. The organisation describes itself as committed to ending global participation in Israel's genocidal and apartheid regime, and from the outset they've taken direct action against Elbit Systems. The first incident was on 30 July 2020, when activists broke into and spray-painted the corporation's London headquarters. Between 2020 and 2022, Palestine Action targeted Elbit's Ferranti site in Oldham. Subsequent actions targeted UAV Tactical Systems in Leicester, Thales UK in Glasgow — causing over one million pounds in damage — the BBC's headquarters, and Leonardo Aerospace and Lockheed Martin facilities. In June 2025, activists breached RAF Brize Norton, the UK's largest airbase, spraying military aircraft with red paint. So then, August 6: clad in orange boiler suits evoking those worn by prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, the six drove a decommissioned prison van through the perimeter fence and a shipping door on the building, and used sledgehammers to destroy drones, computers, and manufacturing equipment, causing an alleged 1.2 million pounds in damage before security and police arrived. One officer attempting an arrest reported suffering a spinal injury after allegedly being struck with a sledgehammer by Samuel Corner, whose defence argued that he was trying to defend his comrade amidst smoke and flares in a chaotic event in which the security guards had initiated the violent contact. When the six were brought to trial, the first jury acquitted them all of aggravated burglary and three of them of violent disorder, and remained hung on the remaining charges. The Crown retried the case on criminal damage and violent disorder. Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin were acquitted again, but the others were convicted and sentenced under a terrorism provision that the judge had not disclosed to the jury. Head and Kamio were sentenced to five years, Rajwani four years and eight months, and Samuel Corner was sentenced to seven years and eight months — the longer sentence for grievous bodily harm without intent. Now, my title notes the Filton 25, but so far I've been speaking only about the six arrested that night. In two waves of subsequent arrests — November 2024 and July 2025 — an additional nineteen suspects were arrested and charged alongside the original six. Finn Collins, my guest's son, was arrested in that July sweep. The Crown has not disclosed how the nineteen were tracked down or what their alleged roles were. They will disclose that at trial. But they have all been charged identically via something called joint enterprise with criminal damage and violent disorder. The charges, I repeat, are identical, regardless of their alleged individual roles. Originally they were also charged with aggravated burglary, but this was dropped in February 2026 after the Crown couldn't sustain it. The charge implies that the sledgehammers they carried in to sabotage equipment were equivalent to offensive arms that could have been used to injure or kill security. The nineteen are still facing criminal damage and violent disorder, and will be tried in four separate rounds, with the last scheduled for February 2027. And that last one is the trial Finn and Lisa and their supporters are waiting for. As you'll hear in our conversation, there are serious questions about whether any of these trials meet standards of fairness. For instance: the judge in the first trial secretly ruled the actions were terroristic before trial without telling the jury. He ruled that the defendants couldn't describe their intentions or views or offer their lawful excuse for their actions. He banned terms like genocide and war crimes from court. He imposed reporting restrictions concealing these measures from the public. He refused bail to hunger-striking prisoners. And he prosecuted a defence barrister for his closing speech, in which the barrister pointed out some of these irregularities. Trial documents confirmed that equipment destroyed in the Filton raid included Magni X drones and multiple Thor drones in Legion X and Helios configurations. These are quadcopter drones that have been key weapons used in Gaza for surveillance, targeting, and killing. Palestine Action claims to have forced Elbit Systems out of multiple UK sites, cancelled billions in Ministry of Defence contracts, driven Barclays to divest from Elbit, and caused Elbit's Filton facility to close entirely. The breach at RAF Brize Norton demonstrated that civilian activists could penetrate Britain's largest airbase. And then there's the matter of public support. The government's designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation — alongside ISIS and al-Qaeda — has started to radicalise mainstream opinion. Pensioners, students, workers, and religious communities have publicly identified with the group, with over 40,000 signing petitions opposing related surveillance legislation. Here's my conversation with Lisa Matthews, who lives with Finn and Finn's dad Michael in London, and has worked in migrant and refugee rights for many years. Lisa Matthews, welcome to Antifascist Dad. Thank you so much for taking the time. Lisa Matthews: Thanks for having me. Matthew Remski: Can you tell us a little bit about Finn — when did he know he was concerned with injustice in the world? And when was that evident to you? Lisa Matthews: Yeah, so Finn's 21 now. Before all of this happened, he was working as a fashion model. He's about 6 foot 3, so 1.9 metres. So I feel very short all the time when I'm with him. But his concern about injustice started from a really early age. He attended demonstrations at a young age. He went to one when the Prime Minister of Britain was David Cameron, with a sign that said David Cameron is a sausage. He's always been very concerned about poverty, about homelessness. He made YouTube videos when he was younger about the price of rents in London and about all the people who have to sleep on the streets. He grew up worried about climate change, about racism, and he made a bit of a splash in the local press when he was young because he fundraised for lip balms for homeless people, because he was so worried about how uncomfortable they must be when they're sleeping on the streets. So in his own weird little ways, he's always been very concerned about other people. Matthew Remski: Was the genocide in Gaza an open topic of conversation and concern in your family? Lisa Matthews: Yes, absolutely. We talked about it all the time. We're a political family. I guess, to us, we found it very strange, the idea that some families wouldn't be talking about it all the time. We couldn't really see how we could be living through this, watching it on our phones for years, and for it not to be a topic of conversation. And we've all been involved with Palestine solidarity in one way or another. We were all very concerned and distressed about what was happening, and Finn was very distressed about what he saw Israel was doing in Gaza and the lack of action — indeed, the complicity of the British government in what was happening. Matthew Remski: Now, you describe this being a matter of concern within your family and not knowing why everybody else wasn't concerned. Did that extend to your own network, your own sort of parent neighbourhood? Was this also something that was isolating for you, or did you have friends and compatriots who you could share with? Lisa Matthews: A lot of people around me are also concerned about it. I think we kind of form a community that's based on having those shared values of internationalism, of an understanding of the historical role of the British government in wars and genocides and oppression and the kind of continued role. So I think it can be quite a dividing issue — you think you know people, you think you know what they think, and then this issue comes up and you realise that you don't think the same. But I think you kind of seek those people out who do agree with you. And I think a lot of people I work with, a lot of my friends, a lot of the community kept saying, how are we meant to be carrying on as if everything is normal when this is happening? The world is not okay, things are not okay, and yet we're expected to turn up, go to work, pretend, ask people how their weekends were as if there's nothing else going on in the background. So I think it can feel very disorienting if you're talking to people who haven't got that as a kind of constant framework. And I think it's inevitable that whilst you recognise you have to carry on talking to people who don't share that view — because otherwise we'll never change people's minds — you seek that kind of comfort and nourishment from the people who see the world in the same way that you do. Matthew Remski: I ask the generational question because I think I have a good sense of what my own thirteen-year-old — we have a ten-year-old as well — but the thirteen-year-old's social sort of set is like and what they speak about and how they commiserate on particular political issues. However, in the neighbourhood it's not guaranteed at all that if you stop with somebody in the park with the dog or something like that, you're going to be able to be assured you're on the same page. And so it's like we live in these layers — layers of connection and disconnection. A lot of connections formed online with people who share similar views on Gaza. But then in the actual world, in the neighbourhood, it is really hit and miss. And I think that has a real chilling effect. Lisa Matthews: It does. And I guess in my very local geographical neighbourhood it's not so much of a worry — I live in London, you see Palestinian flags all around. Obviously there are people with different views as well. So around here you see parents have chalked out messages of solidarity on the street after something's happened. But where I come from is a very different place. And I certainly think about what I'm wearing when I go back there and what T-shirts I'm wearing, if I'm wearing a keffiyeh. But I think you can still find a point of connection. I don't really blame people for having these views because we are fed a particular framework by governments and by the media. But I think once you do talk to people, it's challenging because we've been conditioned to believe a certain thing. It's been quite interesting that because of what's happened to my family, because of what's happened to Finn, I have received a lot of sympathy and support from people I wouldn't have expected it from. I've written about my experience as a parent, and friends of my parents have read those pieces and have got in touch to say how moving it was. And I would never have expected that kind of support and solidarity. But it just shows that human familial connection is understood by everybody. And I just want us to be able to build that human connection with people who don't look like us or are living in other countries, so that these things aren't possible. Matthew Remski: That's a great story. And I guess I just want to ask, numbers wise, are there more stories of positive connection than, you know, stories of maybe you lost friends or people became alienated because suddenly your son is embroiled in this thing? Lisa Matthews: No, I definitely have had people reaching out that I haven't spoken to for a long time. People have said, I don't know what to say. I said, well, I don't know what to say either. This is a situation none of us imagine being in. What is there to say? There is nothing to say, but people have really tried. And I think I've been quite open and vocal about it from the point at which we could. We kind of had to keep things quiet to start with whilst we knew what Finn wanted. And once I've been able to be more open about it, the connections have been amazing. People are horrified by the actions of the British government. They cannot believe what is happening to young people. Sometimes people feel like something's quite distant and they don't really want to address it. But when you talk about this is how it's affecting my family, people are shocked, people are appalled. Matthew Remski: It's kind of incredible because I don't imagine that Finn would have been able to foresee that particular impact. But that's there, and that is secondary and perhaps even as important as any other impact. Lisa Matthews: Absolutely. And I just don't want anyone to go through what we've gone through. But there are these incredible positives. The support and solidarity shown is incredible. The families of the Filton 25 have received letters from people in Gaza expressing their support. It's absolutely astonishing that people in that situation hear about what's happening here and express their sympathy and support. It's really beautiful. Matthew Remski: And I imagine the letters are coming on scraps of paper, written with broken pencils. Lisa Matthews: Yes, written by hand. People are in varied situations at varied times. At times people can't write a letter, but one individual who wrote a letter had been up all night outside a hospital because his family member was there. He was desperate to sleep, but he made sure he wrote this letter and sent it to a family member of one of the Filton Four who's been imprisoned. Matthew Remski: So the broader story behind the events of 6 August 2024 is the criminalisation of Palestine Action. Can you tell us a little bit about what that network and their supporters are like, what they're committed to? Lisa Matthews: Well, if we're talking about the Filton case specifically, which Finn is part of as one of the Filton 25, it's important to stress that when the actions were taken at Filton, the Elbit factory outside of Bristol, Palestine Action was not a criminalised organisation. It was not a proscribed organisation. So they took action — or were alleged to have taken action — to stop a genocide, to disrupt the flow of arms, as part of a network that was not criminalised, that was not banned at that point. Despite that, the activists who took part in actions attributed to Palestine Action, even before the proscription where they were labelled as a terrorist group, have been treated totally differently from other prisoners. They've been held in prison on remand without trial, far in excess of the legal maximums. They've been in very harsh conditions, and they've basically had the conditions placed on them as terror suspects, even though the organisation, the group, was not proscribed or criminalised at that time. Matthew Remski: So this is all applied retroactively — somehow through some mechanism that sounds like it's impossible. Lisa Matthews: They have managed to use terror powers to arrest the Filton activists. And indeed some of the Filton 6, the first group, have described being in prison — because they were arrested inside the factory on the night of the action — and having people come to their cell door, and they thought they were going to get bailed, when in fact they were being re-arrested using these terror powers. And that was still while Palestine Action was not a proscribed organisation. So there's been a very dangerous — from a democracy and people's point of view, but very convenient from the government's point of view — conflation of these two things. And really the Filton case has been very important to the government to bolster their case against Palestine Action. The two have been used to feed into each other to create this circular argument about supposed terror connections. Matthew Remski: So one point of order — when you say that they're re-arrested, is that because procedurally, if they were not arrested originally under the terror charges, they have to be released and then re-arrested under the proper nomenclature so that they can force through this particular vision? Lisa Matthews: Yeah, there's very different treatment for people who are arrested under terror powers. You can be held for longer, you have fewer rights, your access to things is much lower. So yes, it's to enable them to use much more severe treatment and to have much harsher conditions against these prisoners. Matthew Remski: But they have to discharge the prior arrest, I suppose? Lisa Matthews: That's what supersedes it. Matthew Remski: It supersedes it. Incredible. Lisa Matthews: It's because it's given this prestige kind of counter-terror powers. So it supersedes lots of human rights law, it supersedes prison law, it supersedes criminal law. So it really is — it gives the government a free hand to act in these very extreme ways, to put aside the rule of law and to treat people exceptionally, and to make it very hard to challenge that treatment. Matthew Remski: So one aspect of this retroactive application is that had Finn and the Filton 25 known that Palestine Action was a proscribed group under the current laws, they might have taken different actions at the time. Lisa Matthews: Yes, it wasn't a proscribed group at the time. The Filton 6 who have been through a trial have argued that their actions were lawful because they should have had a legal defence — because they were trying to prevent a genocide. They committed property damage to stop the damage of others' property and to stop the loss of life. But they were never given that option. Finn was in prison already when the news broke that Palestine Action had been proscribed, had been criminalised. But you still see people taking action now whilst the group is proscribed, and you see a much wider range of people taking action. I'm sure people will have seen all kinds of people from all walks of life going out onto the streets holding up signs expressing support for Palestine Action. And I have to be careful how I phrase this, because there isn't free speech in the UK to talk about Palestine Action, so I have to be a little bit delicate about which words I use. But people have gone out with protests, they've sat down with a sign to raise awareness of how dangerous it is to equate direct action with terrorism, and how dangerous it is to threaten people with potentially fourteen years in prison for simply holding up a sign to say they support a group. And it shows how ridiculous that law is. You see pensioners, you see young people, you see people from all religions, all occupations, taking this action to support a group that many of these people may never have heard of before the group was criminalised. Matthew Remski: Just to be very specific — you're sitting in London, and I'm imagining that your particular restriction is that if you were to quote what is on the sign, that is the problem. That's what you're avoiding in this conversation. Lisa Matthews: Yes. Potentially that could be misconstrued as me showing support for that group. Matthew Remski: I hope that we're being very clear that you're not holding a sign in this interview or quoting from it. Lisa Matthews: Yes. Matthew Remski: Incredible. Okay, can you walk us through what happened to Finn when he was arrested, what he was charged with, and where things currently stand? Lisa Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Finn was arrested July last year, so we're coming up to the anniversary of when Finn was arrested. He was arrested at the same time as five other people who are part of Trial 4. The Filton 25 are being tried across four different trials, and Finn was charged with the same three charges that all of the 25 were charged with — even though the prosecution, the state, do not allege, and are not trying to say, that all 25 did all three things. They don't think they committed the same acts. But under a very controversial aspect of British law, which has been at times successfully challenged, called joint enterprise, they can all be charged with the same offences, even if they're not believed to have actually committed those offences. To start with, all 24 at that time were charged with aggravated burglary — an extremely serious offence with a very long minimum sentence — along with criminal damage and violent disorder. There was then the trial of the first six of the Filton 25, who were the six arrested inside the factory on the night of the action. The jury in that trial could not reach a verdict. They refused to convict the six of a single offence. Matthew Remski: Wow. Lisa Matthews: And they acquitted all six of that most serious charge of aggravated burglary. So then the government had a choice. They could have moved on, but they decided to retry those six on all the charges they hadn't been acquitted of — the charges that didn't include aggravated burglary. But the rest of the defendants also had the aggravated burglary charge dropped. So now they are all facing the same charges of criminal damage and violent disorder. And after that first trial — the hung jury, where the jury couldn't reach verdicts, refused to convict almost all, apart from one defendant, Sam — all the defendants were released on bail. Most of them had been in prison by that point for eighteen months without a conviction, which is three times the legal limit to hold someone in prison without a conviction. And when Finn was released, he'd been in prison for seven months. Now, Finn's trial isn't until next year in 2027, but there's another trial going on at the moment, and there's another trial happening in September this year. So at the moment we're just anxiously waiting to see what happens and trying to support the co-defendants who are going through trial at the moment. Matthew Remski: It really sounds like at every step of the way, procedurally, things are being bent or twisted or manipulated to the point where you really have to wonder whether there is a justice system or whether there is a political system that's exacting penalties. Lisa Matthews: Yeah. And I think it's not an exaggeration to say this was a show trial, that this is a show trial, that it's so politically motivated. There is a very long timeline of political interference from both the British and Israeli governments in this case. And the Filton 25 website has a very clear timeline of all the different incidents of interference with the case. And of course, this use of counter-terror powers, counter-terror legislation, is so convenient for the government because it means that none of the normal rules apply. So they can really throw the book at people, as we have seen elsewhere. And it's very hard to challenge when these rules are being broken, they're being bent. The severest possible punishment is happening for young people who committed property damage to stop a genocide. Matthew Remski: What can you tell us about Justice Jeremy Johnson? Lisa Matthews: Justice Johnson — we call him Injustice Johnson. Matthew Remski: You better not put that on a sign, though, Lisa. Lisa Matthews: No, probably not. I am also going to be careful in this answer. He was a barrister for many years before he was a judge, and the cases he was a barrister in, he represented the British intelligence services, the Ministry of Defence, and the police. So there's quite a clear pattern of — Matthew Remski: Not defending against them, but arguing in favour of their interest. Okay, all right. Just so we're clear. Lisa Matthews: So very clearly part of the state, part of the establishment, very comfortable in cases where proceedings happen behind closed doors — those are his particular specialism. Now, he is a judge, and I sat in court on many days where he was presiding and hearing bail applications, for example, and he actually heard bail applications for people who were on hunger strike. This was some of the Filton 24 and some other prisoners for Palestine, who were also on hunger strike to protest at their continued imprisonment, this kind of breaking of the rules, to protest the criminalisation of Palestine Action and to protest the ongoing genocide. And in these hearings, they read out medical reports where they said that the prisoners could die imminently. And he refused bail. He sat there and he refused bail, knowing that they might die any day. And I really felt like I was sitting in a court in history when a judge was about to give a death sentence — they would put a black cap on their head to pronounce that death sentence. And I thought, this is exactly what this is. He's pronouncing a death sentence. And I've tried to think probably too much about what he's thinking and feeling, why he's acting like this, why he sent these four young people back to prison when he knows the harm of prison. But I can't really come up with any explanation for that. There's obviously political reasons, but him, the human being, I just can't figure out. But anyway, he has done such a good job on this case from the government's point of view that he's been promoted to the Court of Appeal, which is a higher court. Matthew Remski: He hasn't just been impervious or had a sort of blank affect. He's also made some controversial rulings. And in the trials that have already happened, he ruled — and you touched on this before — that evidence about Elbit's role in the Gaza genocide could not be put before the jury. In other words, the defendants couldn't argue that they had what's called a lawful excuse, in which they believed they were preventing a greater harm than they were causing. So how did you react to that ruling? Was it a surprise to you? Was there a huge learning curve about all of this stuff? And what does that mean for Finn's trial — that the basic reason why he's there is inadmissible? Lisa Matthews: Well, I think most people would agree that it's not fair to not be able to explain to a jury why you might have taken an action. The jury have to make a decision about whether or not a legal defence is satisfactory or not, whether it is acceptable. But in this case, they weren't even allowed to hear that legal defence. In some ways it was unexpected because it's a very extreme thing to do, and it is very clearly going to weight the case in a particular direction. But it's also the direction of travel we've seen for some time for cases that are seen as political. We've seen it with climate change activists, we've seen it with other Palestine activists, that judges have increasingly been directing what legal defences can be given — which is a very big encroachment on the rule of law and on the right of the jury to make up their own minds. It's basically a judge making it clear that they don't want the jury to make up their own minds. And there have been quite a few cases, a few quite recently, where people have taken action in support of Palestine that have involved alleged criminal damage. They've been able to give that legal defence and the jury have acquitted them, have found them not guilty. So it's clear why in this case the judge made this ruling. But it also had a huge impact. It's so important. It's a fundamental part of the legal system, to be able to explain why you might have taken an action, what your motivation might have been. That is your defence. There's no point in having a defence if you're not able to give that reason. Matthew Remski: Well, also, the Crown is giving the reason. They are saying these young people have undertaken this as a terroristic act and that is their intention. And so there's already an inference of intention that comes from the Crown, and that's allowed to stand because that's embedded in the charge. So you can't actually argue against that accusation of your intention by saying, well, this is why I was here. Lisa Matthews: Yes, it's a very vicious circle. Because in the judge's sentencing of the first four, when he made the ruling that there was a terror connection, part of his justification for that was that the actions were taken to influence the government. At times this was specified as the Israeli government, at other times it was specified as the British government. There was quite a lot of inconsistency. But he was able to use that in his sentencing as a reason to make this terror connection, because apparently trying to influence a government using property damage is terrorism. But the activists were not able to freely express why they might have taken action, why they might have committed property damage. And they were not allowed to use the words genocide, war crimes. They were not allowed to talk about Elbit in the case. So whilst this has been the direction of travel, and a lot of my work over the years has involved seeing the oppressive power of the British state and how the law can be disapplied when it comes to migrants and refugees, for example, even I was shocked. I couldn't really believe that we were in this nightmare world where you weren't allowed to say the words genocide or war crimes, when the UN can call it a genocide. But we're not allowed to say that in court. And not only that — we weren't allowed to tell people that they weren't allowed to say it. There were reporting restrictions, meaning that we weren't allowed to say publicly that those were the restrictions on the case. So it's very, very worrying. It's very worrying for the Filton case. It's very worrying for British justice. It's not a ruling that applies to the other trials. However, it is dependent on the judge of each trial, what directions they give to the jury, what directions they give to the legal teams. So it doesn't at this moment apply to Finn, but other judges could make similar rulings given this worrying precedent has taken place. Matthew Remski: I guess I don't know anything about how the judges are drawn for these cases. My assumption as we were speaking was that because the 25 are being charged collectively, Johnson would be presiding in every one. But that's not so — we don't know who is being drawn for Finn's case, is that correct? Lisa Matthews: We don't know for certain, because with this case things change every week. It was the initial intention that Judge Johnson would preside over all four trials, and he certainly seemed to want to — Matthew Remski: But he got his promotion. Lisa Matthews: He got his promotion. Matthew Remski: He might be out. Lisa Matthews: So, you know, possibly some good news for the Filton case as it is. But the judges that can currently preside over this case are from a particularly limited pool. So we don't know for certain which judge it will be. Matthew Remski: Four of the defendants were sentenced in June, and Johnson applied a terrorism connection — we've hinted at this, but just to make it clear — a terrorism connection that wasn't disclosed to the jury during the trial. So in other words, the jury had to come to its decision not knowing what the sentencing measures would include. That seems like just an insane non-disclosure that must be challengeable. Is it? Lisa Matthews: Well, it is insane. And I'd just like to read a couple of sentences that one of Britain's most eminent lawyers, Geoffrey Robertson KC, said about this situation. He said: "The Elbit Four will be labelled as terrorists because they were convicted in substance of a quasi-terrorist offence that was never charged, never put to the jury, and never proven by the prosecution. The jurors who found them guilty of criminal damage had no idea their verdict would be treated as a verdict on terrorism. The prosecution was not required to establish the terrorist connection beyond reasonable doubt or to any standard at all." Matthew Remski: That is searing. Lisa Matthews: Yeah. And this is not some kind of leftist social justice warrior lawyer. This is someone stating the facts about the state of British justice at the moment with this case. His whole article actually was in the Guardian and is linked to on the Filton 25 website. I really recommend reading it because it really does make it very clear just how extreme this is. Matthew Remski: We'll link to all of that stuff. Lisa Matthews: Great. And one of the jurors actually from the first trial of the first six — the one where they couldn't reach verdicts — has since come out publicly, because she has found this out. She didn't know at the time that there was this secret terror connection that could be ruled, and now she's found out because the reporting restrictions were dropped when the trial finished. And she's appalled. She has actually spoken publicly and said: if we had found them guilty of anything, we absolutely would have assumed that they would have walked free from the court that day, because we would have found them guilty of criminal damage, and the time they'd served in prison would absolutely be more than the time you would get for a first offence that was not a very high-level crime. And so it absolutely influences the decision a jury would make. And yet they weren't given that information. Matthew Remski: I wonder if she even has cause to sue. I mean, she was lied to, basically. She was saying, I was called into jury duty and I was lied to. And I convicted — or no, it was hung. This was the hung jury. Lisa Matthews: This was the hung. Matthew Remski: Yeah, right. Okay. So if somebody from the convicting jury comes forward and does the same thing, then it's even worse. Lisa Matthews: It's very difficult, because judges are given a lot of power, and if you don't manage to successfully challenge something within that arena of the courtroom, it can be very difficult to overturn what they do. They are very powerful. There's very little accountability apart from the different levels of court system. It's a very opaque system. And this is why you can see absolutely patterns of behaviour from certain judges. In different areas of law, you'll see barristers look at who's listed as the judge and go, wow, there's no way we're going to win this. That should never be right. What should happen is that it depends on the evidence, on what's heard in court. So we can't go back and change what the jury knew. We can't change their verdict. But it is possible to appeal the sentencing and the terror connection. And that absolutely is going to be appealed. And there must be a strong chance, because as you say, it's very unreasonable, it isn't logical legally, and it being kept from the jury has huge significance. Matthew Remski: Well, it holds the jury in contempt, really. It says, yes, we've asked you to come to judge your peer, but we're not going to allow you to actually do that. And we're going to use you to convict your peers under false pretences. That's fatal, I think, to the system. Lisa Matthews: And if you have a jury who, as it happened in this case, don't find someone guilty of a higher charge and actually find them guilty of a lesser charge, what's the point? If a judge will then give a very high sentence because they've been able to make this terror connection, you're really undermining any of that power of the jury. Matthew Remski: This talk of a possible appeal process makes me think of legal costs, and I'm wondering whether you and the other families and everybody who's involved are going into debt at this point. Lisa Matthews: This is about the only good news I have for you in this conversation — no, because of legal aid, because of state-funded legal representation, which exists for this case and for criminal cases in Britain, which is so important because it's been taken away from other areas of law, which would mean it would be impossible for us to be pursuing this case. We wouldn't be able to pay for anything. I work in asylum law, and there is still legal aid there, but the fees are so low and the system means that people are paid in such a delayed way that loads of firms have gone bust. And so we see asylum seekers going to court, trying to navigate a complex system that has a life-and-death outcome with no legal representation. So there is still legal aid for this case. The legal aid lawyers who have been fantastic for the case are overworked and underpaid, but are doing a brilliant job. What has been very difficult is that all the defendants have lost their jobs, have lost their livelihoods, some have lost their homes, and obviously the ones in prison have lost any income. There is actually a fundraiser for the defendants, especially those in prison, if people do want to donate via the Filton actionists website. Matthew Remski: So filtonactionists.com. I imagine that you have also found solidarity with the families of the young people recently sentenced in the Prairieland ICE case in the United States. Lisa Matthews: Yeah. I found that my brain could barely even compute what was happening in that case. It's so extreme. There are a lot of echoes of the Filton case, certainly much more extreme sentences. We've been really reeling from very extreme sentences in the Filton case, but the ones in the Prairieland case are even more extreme. I am worried about governments learning from each other and using this concept of terror to be able to just put aside any normal conventions of law and to be able to enact these extreme punishments on people. And I think they're doing it in cases where people are protesting, where they're taking direct action — when this is always how we have won change throughout history. This is always how we've won our freedoms. And they're criminalising direct action because they know it's effective. There's very clever use of the concept of terror in these cases that makes it very difficult to talk about publicly. People's brains shut down. It's a scary concept. It's difficult to talk about politically. It's difficult to challenge legally. It allows all of these rules to be broken. There's just very simple ways of doing it — using the word "cell" to talk about a group of people. But "cell" sounds far more ominous. It's just a group of people, and it might be people who've never actually talked to each other before. It's really very convenient for the government. And I think we have got to find solidarity with each other, because these struggles are connected, and the governments are certainly showing solidarity with each other, so we have to keep fighting. When you read what's happening with the Prairieland case, with the Filton case, it feels like a nightmare that young people who are challenging the state's injustices are just treated with these extreme punishments. But people are still taking action. Matthew Remski: Now Starmer is just now out. I imagine that it was his pipeline of influence that elevated Injustice Johnson. Do you think that the course of things might change under Burnham? Lisa Matthews: Well, my optimistic take is that when you have a new leader, that's always an opportunity for a change in direction. My realistic take is that Burnham's record on this is not good. He has not been strong on Gaza. He was for a time a member of the group Labour Friends of Israel. He said if he were made Prime Minister, the first country he would visit would be Israel. Matthew Remski: That's a weird litmus test. I don't know if you saw — there were a number of primary debates in the States recently where that was — I think it actually came up in Mamdani's set of primaries, where all of the candidates were asked where they would visit first. And he said, I would go to Brooklyn, actually, and see what was going on there and have a hot dog or something. So incredible stuff. Lisa Matthews: And in Keir Starmer's leadership contest, actually, people were asked if they were Zionists. That was a question, as if that is particularly relevant in the context of British Labour Party politics. But unfortunately, this isn't just a history for Andy Burnham. He has just appointed his chief of staff, who was the chair of Labour Friends of Israel. So we're not seeing a great direction of travel. Matthew Remski: No. Lisa Matthews: The only thing I do have hope for is that even if he doesn't care about the Palestinian people, even if seeing a genocide happen hasn't been enough to make him want to change course, voting numbers might. We've had local elections here recently in Britain, and on the doorstep a lot of people cited Gaza, cited the genocide, as the reason they would not vote for Labour. So if he wants to win those voters back, he's got to do something differently. Matthew Remski: So how is Finn preparing for what's ahead? And how are you preparing together? And how has your relationship changed through all of this? Lisa Matthews: Well, we're all very close. I guess things like this either break you or bring you closer together. And we're certainly very close as we go through all of it day by day. Finn was in prison for seven months. Obviously our lives were turned upside down at that point. The defendants who were arrested in 2024 had an even worse time of it and were held incommunicado for weeks. They were basically kidnapped. But we also didn't know where Finn was. We didn't know what was happening for a long time. We used to visit Finn every week in prison, but you're in a visit hall with hundreds of people and security guards, visiting for an hour and a half. We managed to speak on the phone every day. And it's been something that's been quite important to us as Filton families, to keep reminding ourselves that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails don't get any of this access to their families. Their treatment is much, much worse. Not to condone any aspect of the British criminal justice system, but the Palestinians in Israeli jails are experiencing far worse. So he's been released since February. He's here with us, he's home with us. But it's only been like a kind of half freedom, really. He's got bail conditions, he has an ankle tag, he has to be in at a certain time, so he can't go anywhere. He can't really work because of those restrictions. But he's just trying to make the most of not being in prison because we don't know what the future holds. He's spending time with his girlfriend, he's getting very good at rock climbing, he's watching a lot of football. Matthew Remski: Right. Lisa Matthews: And I think we just try and get through day by day, because there's so much uncertainty around this case, so much uncertainty around the future, that it's kind of unbearable. So we just have to think about the here and now, supporting the co-defendants as much as possible. He actually wants to go and support his co-defendants who are on trial at the moment, but the police took all of his ID, so he can't get into the court to go and support them. There's just all these bureaucratic barriers that we've come up against. Matthew Remski: I mean, that's incredible, because surely the police know who he is. Lisa Matthews: Absolutely. Matthew Remski: I'm that guy, remember? Lisa Matthews: Yes. But it's been quite an issue. The police took quite a lot of stuff, so it's been difficult. But we have to keep campaigning and we have to keep supporting the co-defendants who are going through trial now and who go through trial later this year. So it's a weird limbo for him. He can't move on with his life. I don't think any of us have really processed the trauma of his arrest and his imprisonment because it still feels very alive. There's been re-arrests of lots of the defendants. It feels like there's a pattern of them being targeted for alleged breach of bail conditions that they haven't breached, for being at protests. So it feels like there's a constant threat of something happening. So, yeah, it's not a great time, but it's certainly better than when he was in prison. Matthew Remski: I just want to name the agonising split that you're describing — you have to treasure or make the most of every day because the sort of future contingencies are unbearable to think about. And yet you also have to keep that file open because you have to be prepared for it. It sounds like you have to live two lives that way. Lisa Matthews: We do. And we have to really think about how lucky we are to have Finn with us. When Ellie, Lottie, Sam, and Fatema Zainab — the Filton Four who were convicted — have just been sent back to prison with sentences of between five and eight years, it was a devastating blow. We are so worried and outraged for them and their families. And we have to appreciate that for the moment, we're very lucky. We have Finn here. We can sit and watch football, sit and watch TV together, get annoyed with each other, tell each other to shut up — in a way that we weren't able to do for seven months and may not be able to again in the future. Matthew Remski: I wrote an entire book about parenting and antifascism, but I feel a little bit like an imposter because I've never come close to being in your situation. I can imagine it, though, knowing who our kids are. What advice would you give me if I were someday standing where you are now? Lisa Matthews: Well, I hope you never will be, because I hope the government stops doing this to our children. But I think we have to be prepared for more of this, because young people just aren't prepared to put up with what's happening. They aren't prepared to see this terrible future that is being given to them. And I think part of it is about really leaning into the support networks that are there. The support campaign around the Filton families has just been incredible. As I've mentioned, friends and family and our broader community have been astonishing. They've been unendingly supportive — their love, their care, their offers of support, their anger on our behalf is really what's kept us going. And then I think it's about trying to balance these two things: on the one hand, we feel despair, we feel anger, we feel trauma. Our lives will never be the same again. And we are allowed to feel those feelings and to somehow manage them, but trying to remember that we're part of something so much bigger, that there's a meaning to what we're going through. And that meaning is about the liberation of the Palestinian people. It's about ending a genocide. It's about democracy and justice in our own countries. This is so big — sometimes so big you can feel lost in it. But we have to keep fighting because there's no other choice. Matthew Remski: Lisa Matthews, thank you so much for taking the time. And I think everybody listening to this wishes you the best of luck and support. The links and resources will be in the show notes. Lisa Matthews: Thank you so much, Matthew. Matthew Remski: And please give our best to Finn. Lisa Matthews: Will do. Matthew Remski: Once again, you'll find all the information you need to help support the Filton 25 in the show notes. Thank you again to Lisa for the time and insight. Up on Patreon now is a coda to this episode called Epistemic Injustice, after a term coined by British feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker to describe how people's credibility can be taken from them before they open their mouths. Until next time, take care of each other.