In Order That We Can Meet Our Commitments to Grantees, Including the Al Tafawk Centre & Brighton’s Palestine House, I am asking you to contribute to Our Emergency Appeal
Debanked: How Regulations Are Hurting Innocent UK Bank Customers
Emergency Appeal THE BRIGHTON TRUST
https://chuffed.org/project/190193-emergency-appeal-the-brighton-trust
On 2nd June Santander froze the bank accounts of The Brighton Trust, a registered charity. Eight days later they contacted me to explain that they couldn’t tell me why they had frozen them.
Not only did they freeze the accounts of the Brighton Trust but they froze the accounts of Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, two personal accounts and an account belonging to my son, which I administer, via a Lasting Power of Attorney.
Last Monday, Kent Reliance or One Savings Bank also froze accounts belonging to my family and also accounts containing money belonging to the Brighton Trust. Again they refused to say why they had frozen the accounts.
In the past two years I have been debanked by Nationwide building society (which contrary to belief is an anti-Palestinian bank), HSBC and First Direct. The only conclusion I can reach is that this is because I am being prosecuted under the Terrorism Act 2000 for allegedly inviting support for a proscribed organisation, Hamas.
These are not the first attacks on the Brighton Trust. In 2022 and again in 2025, the Charity Commission has conducted investigations of the Brighton Trust. These investigations were almost certainly triggered by Zionist charities such as UK Lawyers for Israel and/or the Campaign Against Antisemitism.
The freezing of our accounts is being done under either The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) or The Terrorism Act 2000. It is most likely to be the latter however it is impossible to know for certain.
It would seem that some government agency, either the National Crime Agency or the Counter-Terror Police, is deliberately feeding false and malicious information to those I bank with informing them that I am involved in money laundering and/or terrorism financing.
I wrote to the NCA asking if they had anything to do with the bank closures and they wrote back to say they do not instruct banks as to what they do but it is clear that they do supply the misinformation that causes banks to freeze and debank people.
The use of ‘regulatory’ pretexts has been used by financial payment services such as Wise and Payoneer to completely cut off people in Gaza from their money. These are literally life and death decisions made by faceless and anonymous bureaucrats.
Banks are notoriously ‘risk averse’. They act first and ask questions later. Or rather, they don’t even bother asking questions. They either freeze or close accounts or both.
Ironically the increased use of money laundering legislation and counter-terrorism legislation has made no difference to criminal gangs but it has impacted on political groups and vulnerable people, which one suspects was the original intention.
When Nigel Farage had his accounts closed by the Royal Family’s banker, Coutts it was headline news but when ordinary people or campaigning groups have their accounts closed it is ignored.
The legal provisions are contained here.
We are not the only ones this has happened to. Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign has had £20,000 frozen by Unity Trust Bank, which is owned by the trade unions, for a year now. So has Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine. This is in addition to debanking individual Palestine solidarity activists.
Both the National Crime Agency—answerable to the Home Office—and counter terrorism police declined to answer the Guardian’s query about which agency took the decision to freeze the GMFP’s bank account.
And then there is the decision of Lloyds Bank to freeze and debank The Canary, the radical alternative news organisation. This is a straightforward political decision by corrupt bankers. The Canary isn’t racist like Farage so the BBC and the rest of the media have had nothing to say.
We don’t know whether Lloyds is going to use ‘regulatory’ reasons as the pretext to debank The Canary but it may be that direct action will cause the bank to cough up since being polite has had little effect so far.
What is happening is that legislation passed for one purpose – terrorist financing or money laundering – is being used for entirely different purposes, namely to crack down on organisations that are campaigning against the genocide in Gaza.
The Brighton Trust provides the majority of funding for the Al Tafawk Centre, a kindergarten in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine.
We went undercover to EXPOSE Israeli settlers
We also agreed earlier in the year to two year funding, £25,000 per year, towards the rent of The Old Palestine House in Brighton. All of this has been put in jeopardy by the decision of Santander.
In addition on 6 July Kent Reliance (One Savings Bank) froze £70,000 belonging to Trustees of The Brighton Trust and intended as grant aid to a number of radical community groups.
The Brighton Trust was established in 2016 as the Trust for Unpopular Causes. We have given hundreds of grants to Palestinian groups, campaigning organisations and people, as well as numerous other radical causes. See here for details of the last 3 years of grant giving.
The precedent for all this was set by the United States which has sanctioned and frozen the accounts of UN Raporteur Francesca Albanese and the judges of the International Criminal Court. We have in the Trump Administration the political equivalent of the Mafia.
US issues sanctions against UN investigator probing abuses in Gaza • FRANCE 24 English
What the NCA and the Counter-Terror Police have not done is to freeze the funds of Zionist organisations involved in sending money to illegal settlements in the West Bank. 32 charities according to Melanie Ward MP have sent £28 million to illegal West Bank settlements without so much as a murmur from the NCA or Counter-Terror Police.
Indeed the Charity Commission has approved the sending of money by Zionist charities to West Bank settlements.
We are therefore appealing for donations to fulfil existing commitments and to enable us to continue to make small grants to radical organisations as well as seeking to bring legal action against the banks and/or the state bodies involved in these attacks.
Either we confront what the state is doing now or we will allow them to continue to target activists and campaigns they don’t like, especially those connected with Palestine.
Brighton’s Old Palestine House
Politically the banks, which didn’t hesitate to come running to the State, i.e. taxpayers after the banking crash of 2007/8, need to be taken into public ownership. They were given handouts because they were ‘too big to fail’. They are too powerful. Banking is an essential requirement of modern society and the banks cannot be allowed to use their own reactionary politics to impose censorship on civil society.
Banks are too important to remain in the private sector. They are candidates for nationalisation. See
UK Labour government oversees decision to freeze bank accounts of pro-Palestinian organisations
Two UK pro-Palestine organisations have bank accounts frozen
STOP The Banks & National Crime Agency from targeting Palestine Solidarity activists
Dozens of UK groups call for unfreezing of pro-Palestine group’s bank account
Unions and charities call for pro-Palestine group to have bank account restored
Charities in England and Wales ‘donate millions to illegal Israeli settlements
