Sally Rooney cannot receive royalties from her UK book sales. Not because her publisher dropped her, not because readers stopped buying her books, but because she publicly supported Palestine Action — a group the UK proscribed under the Terrorism Act in July last year, placing it alongside al-Qaida and Boko Haram. Under that same law, providing money to the group, or to someone who might provide money to it, carries a maximum 14-year sentence. So Rooney's royalties sit frozen, unreachable to her without legal jeopardy. Chris Haughton, Ireland's children's literature laureate whose books have sold millions worldwide, has responded with a move that is simultaneously principled and deliberately ridiculous: he will donate his own UK royalties to Rooney. Nicola Davies, children's laureate for Wales and author of The Day War Came — a book about a child refugee whose sales have been boosted by the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine — will donate her half-year royalties from that specific title. The point is not the money. The point is the absurdity. Haughton has twice been arrested for holding placards allegedly supporting Palestine Action. His alleged offence carries a maximum six-month sentence. He is explicit about his position: Palestine Action is, in his view, "the most effective organisation in the UK that has had some success in stopping arms going to a genocide." He frames his support not as political gesture but as a matter of freedom of expression — the foundational value, he argues, that authors are professionally obligated to defend. Davies makes the geographic case bluntly. Gaza, she notes, is smaller than the Welsh county of Flintshire. She frames the choice as a consistency test: she cannot credibly stand up for the children of Wales while staying silent about the children of Gaza. Her donation from The Day War Came has an obvious symbolic logic — a book about a child refugee, boosted in sales by the very conflicts it addresses, now funding solidarity with an author whose income was suspended for objecting to one of those conflicts. The legal architecture here is genuinely strange. Rooney, whose books include Normal People and Conversations with Friends, did not give money to Palestine Action. She said she would give proceeds from her sales to them. That prospective statement, under the proscription regime, was sufficient to create the legal exposure that made receiving her own royalties untenable. What Haughton and Davies are doing — donating their royalties to Rooney, not to Palestine Action — occupies a different legal position, though one they are navigating with full awareness of the stakes. At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Andy Burnham was asked whether the ban would be reviewed in light of Rooney's situation. He declined to comment substantively, citing the Supreme Court case scheduled for 4 and 5 November, which will hear a legal challenge to the proscription on grounds that it disproportionately interferes with rights to freedom of expression and protest. The government's position, per Burnham, is that the proscription "followed a rigorous and evidence-based process" endorsed by parliament. The Supreme Court will decide whether that process was constitutionally proportionate. What is actually being tested here is not whether Palestine Action is dangerous. It is whether the Terrorism Act's proscription mechanism can be used in ways that functionally silence political speech well beyond the act of violence — reaching authors, placard-holders, and royalty payments. Haughton's framing — "making a mockery of the law" — is the correct one. The absurdity is the argument.
