Swedish academic says he has been barred from UK over panel with Palestine Action co-founder

A Swedish climate academic has said he was barred from entering the UK because he was due to appear on a panel alongside a co-founder of Palestine Action, the group proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Britain.

Andreas Malm told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he received a letter from the Home Office stating his presence was "not conducive to the public good", without further explanation. He said he could not "see any other explanation" for the refusal than his planned appearance with Huda Ammori at a London event organised by the left-wing magazine Tribune.

The Home Office said it did not comment on individual cases.

Malm is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Lund University in Sweden. His published work includes the 2021 book How to Blow up a Pipeline and The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth, released in 2025.

The academic said he had asked the Home Office to set out its reasoning and described the decision as a "severe restriction on the free exchange of ideas". He stressed that he is not a member of Palestine Action, has never publicly endorsed the group and has given it no financial support.

"The only link to Palestine Action is her as a person," he said, accusing the UK government of assigning "guilt by association".

Malm acknowledged that he had previously described the Hamas-led attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage, as "fundamentally an act of liberation". He made the comments during a talk in December 2023 in which he also condemned the "deplorable" killing of civilians, and said it was possible those remarks lay behind the Home Office decision.

He argued, however, that his views had been public for a long time, including when he was last permitted into the UK to give a talk in May. "I don't expect the British state to agree with me on Palestine or climate or anything. What I expect the British state to do is to continue to let me enter the country and to discuss with colleagues, with people who disagree with me, as I have done for years," he said.

The case comes as the UK Supreme Court prepares to review the ban on Palestine Action under terrorism legislation, an appeal the Home Office has said it will robustly contest. More than 3,700 people are believed to have been arrested in the UK over alleged support for the group, and about 2,500 have been charged, though none have gone to trial while the legal challenge to the proscription continues.

The government has broad discretion to block foreign nationals from entering the UK when their presence is judged a risk to society. In April, 11 people described by then-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer as "far-right agitators" were banned ahead of a rally led by Tommy Robinson, and Kanye West was denied entry the same month after a backlash over his planned set at London's Wireless Festival following a string of antisemitic, racist and pro-Nazi comments. In June, left-wing commentators Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur said their visas had been revoked before planned appearances in London and Oxford, allegedly "for criticising Israel".