Banner Man
They said we were free. Free to speak, free to march, free to resist. But when speech offends power, when marching disrupts capital, and when resistance becomes organised, they start drawing lines around your rights. Shrinking them. Weaponising them.
Until silence is the only thing left legal.
A flag in the wrong hands becomes a weapon. A chant becomes incitement. A cardboard sign is reclassified as a threat. The state doesn’t ban freedom all at once. It slices it into ribbons, one law at a time.
History shows: when governments outlaw protest, it is not to keep people safe, it is to keep them obedient. When they criminalise truth, it is not to prevent violence, it is to prevent accountability.
If peaceful protest is no longer allowed, then only one option remains
Chapter 1: The arrest
Red spray paint pooled like fresh blood at the base of the bathtub, the words CEASEFIRE NOW PALESTINE NEEDS ACTION ghosted across the cotton sheet, each letter still bleeding. The ‘C’ had started to run, a fat crimson tear staining the sink’s white enamel. That, apparently, was the clincher. Not the words. Not the message. Not even the gathering of a few dozen students and pensioners in the rain where he’d stood silently in front of the banner with a placard. No, it was the dripping paint and the fact that he’d held it up in the heart of Leeds city centre that made him terror-adjacent.
They came for him just after lunch, boots on tarmac, five of 'em. No knock. No chat. Just straight in. They busted open the door which came off its hinges. He’d have let them in if they’d knocked.
"You're Nicholas Shaw?"
"Yeah. What's this about?"
"You're under arrest under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act. You do not have to say anything—"
Bang. Cuffed. A punch in the kidneys. Inside the van, silence. Outside, the rain fell in sheets, hissing against the roof like a crowd of whispers. He watched it streak down the window, fat, clear lines tracking down the scratched Perspex. He imagined they wanted him to cry, he imagined that’s what they did. Tears in the van, a broken man for the file. He’d never been in trouble with the police. Never put a foot wrong. But you don’t need to anymore do you?
He blinked hard. No tears today. Not for them Two nights in Holbeck nick. Fluorescent lights that never shut off. Lukewarm tea that tasted of bleach. The constant grind of keys and the clank of metal trays. His solicitor, some Legal Aid kid from Sheffield who looked like he still lived with his mum, came in wearing a badly fitted suit and stinking of Lynx Africa and hard truths.
“You’re looking at a fourteen stretch, mate. Terrorism, incitement, resisting. Whole thing stinks'.
They’d gone through his flat. Trashed it. Taken his laptop. His books. His hoodie with the Palestinian flag patch. They even took the kids’ badge he’d been given at a Gaza vigil, a green felt heart.
“Radical material,” the detective had said, not even blinking. The headlines wrote themselves.
LOCAL MAN IN TERROR PLOT
PRO-HAMAS EXTREMIST ARRESTED IN LEEDS
CEASEFIRE DEMAND LINKED TO VIOLENT IDEOLOGY
No one asked what the banner was really for. No one cared.
So they remanded him in custody. No trial, just a committal where he gave his name. No bail. He lost his job at the call centre the day after, some wanker from HR left a voicemail reading out the policy on reputational risk.
His girlfriend? Chloe, yes she’d gone too. Took the dog and moved back to her sister’s in Ilkley. wrote a note “Sorry, I can’t do this. Hope you understand. I’ve got my own life to think about.” All things considered, he couldn’t blame her.
They moved him from Holbeck to Armley. Armley was a different world. Grey and brutal. He sat on his bunk in prison, staring at the brickwork. Daydreaming about firebombing the Daily Mail offices. They’d called him a ‘leftist sympathiser with links to extremist Palestinian groups’. He’d been on one peaceful march and he didn’t even have a passport. And the boy who’d never done anything more contraversial than apple scrumping was no arsonist.
The prison kitchen’s the best place to be. You kept you head down, peeled carrots for twelve hours a day with a kitchen crew of dead-eyed men, some who’d done christ knows what and some who just looked like they might. One of them asked if he was “Bin Laden’s nephew.” Another called him “Keffiyeh Ken.”
Then, two days before the hearing, he vanished. It wasn’t planned but he saw his chance. Slipped out like steam through a crack in the system. A laundry truck. A confused guard. A change of clothes left in a bin. He didn’t even plan it. The opportunity was there, and he took it. No alarms. No shouting. No one noticed till soup time. He slipped into the back of a laundry van and out into Leeds like a ghost. A ghost in a grey tracksuit smelling of gravy and bleach.
But now he was on the run. Cold. Hungry. Alone. No phone. No ID. No plan. But he had a name in his head. A voice he hadn’t heard in years but felt that he was the one person he could trust.
First night on the run, he slept in a shed in Meanwood. Froze his bollocks off. Second night, he made the call. Ricky Firth, If anyone would help, he would. Even though he knew any help would come at a price. There’s not a lot to do when you’re out of options.
That night he made the national telly. Not just Look North or some late-night local bulletin. BBC1 Prime time. A still of his face, mugshot lighting, hoodie zipped up, eyes dead centre of the frame like some kind of serial killer. The voiceover was grim and serious, the kind they saved for terror threats and missing white girls.
“This man, Nicholas Shaw, is considered dangerous and should not be approached” Chief Constable Darren Myles of West Yorkshire Police described him as a ‘radicalised individual with links to extremist networks.’
Radicalised. He laughed when he saw it. In the Britain that that shitbag Starmer had created, having a bit of an issue about soldiers shooting starving kids in a food queue apparently made you a radical. A dry, mirthless cough in the back of a Wetherspoons toilet, the only place he dared to sit and watch it on someone else’s phone. They’d taken a banner. A placard. A protest. And they’d turned it into a manhunt. Myles stood there in front of a podium, flanked by flags and flanked by fear. Clean suit. Thick set. The kind of copper who never walked a beat but climbed the ladder by stepping on necks.
“This is not just protest,” Myles had said, eyes scanning the press pack like he was hunting for applause. “This is incitement. This is extremism. This is the new face of domestic terror.”
They even pulled a quote from some think tank in London, ‘Security Insight UK’ run by an ex-MI5 spook and funded by weapons manufacturers in Tufton Street.
“Evidence suggests that groups using pro-ceasefire messaging are sometimes a gateway into radical activity,” the expert had droned.
It was like he was saying wanting to ‘stop the bombing’ was a first step to building bombs. Fucking nonsense.
He sat in that pub cubicle, heart punching through his ribs, as the narrative wrote itself.
Fugitive. Terror-linked. Domestic threat
No mention of Gaza. No mention of Brize Norton or the bomb planes. No mention of the child they pulled from the rubble last week, the one he’d seen in that viral clip, eyes glassed with dust. Just the usual script. Brown man + politics = security threat. No mention of people crying in a food queue next to relatives murdered by the fucking IDF. The very reason he was on that protest in the first place. He knew the script.
He just didn’t know he’d be in it.
Now his face was plastered across motorways, bus stops, push notifications. Even his mum had called from a private number, shaken voice.
“They said you’ve gone mad, love. What’s happening? Just come in. Let them talk to you.”
He’d hung up.
There was no going back now. No lawyer. No courtroom. No fair hearing. They wanted a scalp. And if they got him, it wouldn’t be justice. It’d be a message.
Chapter 2: Ricky Firth.
Schoolyard legend. Ricky used to rob mopeds and set fire to them behind the co-op. Now he ran some dodgy security firm that mostly just sold coke to city centre bouncers and paid off a few bent coppers. Nick hadn’t spoken to him in years but this felt like exactly the man he needed to see.
“Nick Shaw? The Gaza lad? Shit, yeah, I seen you on the telly. You look proper mental.”
Nick didn’t laugh.
“I need help. They’re gonna bury me, Rick.”
“Yeah, alright. Come down to the lock-up. I’ll sort you out.”
The lock-up was in Beeston. Usual shithole: mattresses, stolen TVs, a blacked-out Beemer in the corner, and three lads in tracksuits playing FIFA while someone chopped lines on the back of a pizza box. Ricky came over, arms wide, gold chain swinging. Still had that same dumb grin and tattooed knuckles.
“You owe me,” Nick said. “You bullied the shit out of me at school”
“Yeah, and you grassed me up for nicking Miss Harris’s purse.”
Nick shrugged. “Fair.”
“You still believe in all that Palestine shit?”
Nick looked him dead in the eye.
“I believe in justice, I believe what Irael is doing is wrong and I’m not a fucking terrorist.”
Ricky scratched his chin.
“Alright. You can kip here. But you’re gonna have to earn your keep. There’s a job going down Saturday. Big one. You in?”
Nick didn’t ask what kind. He didn’t need to. His choices were gone. He just nodded.
Saturday came like a storm cloud.
Nick sat in the lock-up’s grimy corner, hoodie up, heart pounding. Ricky handed him a burner phone, some cash, and a Lidl bag with fresh clothes. Trackies, Air Max, balaclava.
“Work gear,” he called it. “We’re hitting a safehouse in Bramley. Albanians. Cash, gear, a few toys. Nothing personal. In and out, ten minutes. You’re just the lookout. Don’t fuck it up.”
Nick said nothing. He felt sick. He hadn’t held a weapon in his life, unless you count a spatula. But this was the only game in town now. The state branded him a terrorist for holding a fucking banner, what difference did a bit of proper crime make?
Meanwhile, the country was watching. BBC Breakfast ran his mugshot next to shots of bricks through MP’s windows and Palestine Action scaling Elbit factories. ‘Nicholas Shaw: Radicalised Activist or National Threat?’
TalkRADIO were calling him The Banner Bomber.
The Sun ran with From Call Centre to Call to Jihad
Nick laughed when he saw it. He was catholic and didn’t even own a Quran.
The police weren't laughing. DI Helen Pearce, Counter Terrorism Command, stood grim-faced at the press conference.
“This individual is considered dangerous and may be seeking to engage with extremist networks. We urge the public to remain vigilant.”
Vigilant. Like some ex-Gaza protester with athlete’s foot and a limp was about to start blowing up shopping centres. They hit up his mum’s in Yeadon. Took her phone. Showed her stills from CCTV in Armley. She cried on Calendar News and asked him to “Do the right thing.”
Rick’s little job went sideways, obviously.
Nick did the lookout bit. Properly. Kept his eyes peeled, foot on the pedal, car running. Then Ricky and the lads came charging back to the motor, red-faced, shouting.
"Fucking dogs, man! They were waiting! It was a sting!"
Nick didn’t wait to argue. He hit the pedal and took off down the ring road like it was Wacky Races. Two unmarked cars gave chase. One had its lights off. The other clipped a lamp post.
They ditched the car in Bramley, torched it, and legged it. Ricky punched him in the shoulder, laughing like a maniac.
“You’ve got skills, Gaza boy! Who knew?”
Nick just nodded. But inside, he was rotting. Each step further from who he was.
By Sunday, the manhunt was full tilt. Nick’s face was everywhere. Posters at bus stops. Drones scanning the suburbs. Facebook pages filled with gammon screaming for his head on a spike. Even Chloe got roped into it. She went on GB News and said he was “Always political but never violent,” then burst into tears when they showed footage of him running from the cops.
The government saw a golden chance. The Home Secretary was already trial-ballooning a new ‘Domestic Extremism’ bill. Suella-lite stuff: no banners, no masks, no shouting at MPs. Nick was the poster boy for authoritarian crackdown. A northern lad framed up and fed to the wolves.
But something inside him snapped.
It happened Tuesday morning. Ricky offered him another job. “Softer this time. Just roughing someone up. Some lad owes us for gear.”
Nick looked at him, then looked at himself in the cracked mirror by the toilet. Shaved head. Stubble. Bruised knuckles. Grey bags under eyes. He looked like the thugs he used to laugh at on documentaries. The kind of guy Chloe would cross the street to avoid.
“Not doing it,” he said. Ricky’s face dropped.
“Sorry?”
“You heard me. I’m not your muscle.”
“You’re living on my time, you little fuck. You think you can just walk away?”
“I think I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
He left that night, under cover of rain. Took Ricks burner and took a knife. Just in case. Slept rough under a bridge in Hunslet and made a plan.
He’d had enough. If they wanted a terrorist, maybe it was time to give them a message worth fearing. Not bombs. Not bullets. But truth.
Chapter 3: The fourth Estate
He texted the journo at The Yorkshire Post. One of the few who hadn’t been parroting the government line.
“You want a scoop? Meet me at the canal by Crown Point at 5am. Bring a camera. I’m not armed. I’m not violent. But I’m not hiding anymore.”
The message went. He lit a fag with shaking hands. Somewhere above, a police helicopter whirred past. Nick looked up at the sky.
“Come on then you cunts. Let’s finish this.”
Nick couldn’t sleep. His mind drifted, unwelcome, uncontrollable, back to that day. It had been freezing. January. The kind of cold that gets into your bones, your teeth, your soul. They’d marched from Millennium Square down the Headrow, banners raised, chants echoing through the streets like hymns for the dead. Nick wasn’t alone. He was stood shoulder to shoulder with The Jewish Bloc, his mates from Leeds Uni, kids with badges and slogans pinned to their coats:
NOT IN OUR NAME
NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE
FROM THE GHETTO TO GAZA, WE STAND WITH THE OPPRESSED
They were quiet. Dignified. Passionate. Not one of them had so much as picked up a stone. It wasn’t that kind of protest. It was peaceful. It was legal. Nick’s placard just said:
ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
Big black capitals. Nothing else.
But then the lines of riot cops closed in.
The excuse was ‘preventative arrest’ The real reason? The Jewish Bloc made the wrong people uncomfortable. Jews not playing along. Jews standing with Palestine. One of the coppers shoved Avi to the ground. Knee in his back. The lad was 5'5" and asthmatic. Screamed out in Hebrew and English. Another was pinned face-down in front of Primark. Cameras out. Screams rising. Nick froze.
And then he ran.
Instinct. Not guilt. Not shame. Just the animal drive to survive.
He bolted down the side street behind WH Smiths, heart in his throat, sweat pouring. Made it home by dark. Deleted his socials. Switched off his phone. A week later, the media got hold of the doctored footage. A grainy clip. Nick in a black hoodie, running down the road. Cut with unrelated shots of bottles being thrown. One still of him mid-stride, mouth open, face contorted, looked like he was screaming, rioting, frothing with hate. Except he wasn’t. He was terrified.
“KNOWN ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATOR LINKED TO DEMONSTRATION CHAOS”
That was The Telegraph.
“MAN SEEN THROWING OBJECTS AT POLICE – POSSIBLY A HAMAS SYMPATHISER”
That was GB News.
The original footage never saw light. The freelance journalist who shot it, Amira something, put it online. But it was quickly flagged, demonetised, shadow-banned. Algorithms can’t tell the truth when the state says otherwise. And so the story was written. Nick Shaw: brick-thrower, radical, risk to public order. All for standing still with a cardboard sign next to a rabbi’s daughter. Back under the bridge Nick wiped his face with his sleeve. He hadn’t cried since he was a kid. Didn’t plan to start now. But the rage sat there, hard and bitter, like acid in his chest. He hadn’t done anything wrong. None of them had.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a scrap of cardboard. Just a bit he’d torn off a pizza box. He wrote three words on it, over and over, in thick black Sharpie.
ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
He folded it carefully. Slid it into his inside pocket like a relic. A reminder. If they wanted a monster, they were going to have to make one.
5:08am. Leeds canal. Fog hanging low like a veil of piss and smoke. Nick stood by the bollard at Crown Point, hood up, fingers freezing. No coppers. No drones. Just the sound of water slapping the wall and a fox rummaging in a bin nearby.
She came out the shadows like a phantom. Long coat. Hair up. Camera bag across her shoulder. One eye on the canal, the other on Nick.
“You Nick Shaw?”
“Depends who’s asking.”
“Amira Simmons. Freelance.”
He clocked her badge, press pass, laminated, slightly cracked. She kept her hands out of her pockets, showing she wasn’t a cop. But she still looked like she was ready to leg it if needed. “You the one who filmed the protest?”
“Yeah. Original footage. Yours included.”
Nick’s breath misted in the air. “Why’d they twist it?”
“They didn’t twist it. They buried it. Then someone gave them a doctored cut. From there, well, narrative wins over truth.”
He nodded. He already knew.
“I need it out there,” he said. “The truth.”
She looked him up and down. “And then what? You think one clip on Twitter is gonna change anything? They’ve made you into the poster boy for political suppression. That doesn’t get undone by a shaky video with 23 likes and a warning label.”
“Then help me do more.”
She shook her head. Fast. Firm. “No. I shouldn’t even be here. You don’t get it, they’re watching everything. They’re charging Jewish protesters as antisemitic terrorists. Me? I’m one interview away from being labelled ‘sympathetic to violent extremism.’ If they know I’ve spoken to you, I’m done. They’ll ruin me, my work, my family.”
Nick stepped closer, his voice low.
“They’re going to bury me, Amira.”
Her eyes flicked down. Sympathy, but not surrender.
“Then don’t give them the body.”
She handed him a burner SIM.
Slipped it into his hoodie pocket without another word. “Don’t go home. Don’t go to friends. Don’t go to London. And get the fuck out of Leeds. Tonight.”
And just like that,she vanished back into the mist.
6:05am. Nick sat on the back of the No 60 bus to Keighley, soaked to the bone, hoodie clinging to him like guilt. The driver hadn’t even looked at him. A few pensioners at the front. Two lads in trackies talking about drill tunes. Nobody knew. Nobody cared.
Chapter 4: Shabina
He got off at Shipley. There was nowhere else to go. Rapidly running out of cash. No phone signal. Nowhere to sleep. He wandered for hours, aimless, cracked, starving. Just walking, hands in pockets, afraid to stop. And then he saw it. A Terraced house. Window lit by a soft yellow lamp. And there, hung above the radiator, a battered Palestine flag. Faded. Dusty. Real. No slogan. No corporate hashtag. Just quiet resistance. He didn’t even think. He walked straight up and knocked.
A pause. Footsteps.
The door opened a crack. A woman in her 60s. Headscarf. Eyes sharp. Wary. Nick spoke before she could.
“I’m not here to rob you. I’m not a threat. I’m the lad they’re looking for.”
She said nothing.
“I held a sign. That’s all I did. Now they’re calling me a terrorist. I’ve got nowhere else. Please.” Still nothing.
Then, slowly, she opened the door wider. “You hungry?”
He nodded.
“Shoes off. Come in.”
The house was warm. Worn but welcoming. Old books. Kettle hissing. Quran on the shelf next to a photo of her and two grandkids. She brought him soup, thick, spicy, homemade and didn’t speak till he’d eaten every drop.
“My name’s Shabina,” she said. He looked up.
“Nick.”
“I saw you on the news,” she said, calm. “Then I saw the original video. The one they deleted.” He swallowed. “Then you know I didn’t do anything.”
She nodded.
“That’s why they’re after you.”
He stayed on the sofa. One night, then another. Shabina said he could help out with chores, keep his head down. No phones. No noise. Her son came round once, looked at Nick sideways, but said nothing. The grandkids giggled when he helped fix the broken gate. For a moment, he felt human again.
But the storm wasn’t far behind. One morning, Shabina handed him a letter. No stamp. Just 'For Nick' scrawled across the front. Someone had pushed it through the door in the night.
You’re not safe here. They’re watching this house now too. If you stay, you’ll take her down with you. Don’t be selfish.
No signature. Just a Leeds postcode scrawled underneath. Shipley was no longer safe. And Leeds was calling him back.
Chapter 5: The boys behind the wire
The postcode took him to a battered Victorian four storey back to Back in Chapeltown. No doorbell. No house number. Just a sticker above the letterbox: BRITISH BOOTS OFF IRISH STREETS Nick hesitated, then knocked.
The door swung open fast.
“You Nick?”
The voice was sharp, nasal, Northern Irish. The kind of tone that could cut glass. The man behind it looked like a scarecrow in a tracksuit, tall, lanky, pale as milk, with fiery red hair and arms thin as broom handles.
“I’m Keiron,” he said. “Come in before the drones start singing.”
The house was colder than Shabinas but louder. Three lads inside mid-20s to 30s, all with Belfast accents, buzzcuts, and attitude. There were flags on the walls: Tricolours, a Che Guevara print, and one battered old banner that just said END INTERNMENT – NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE. Nick stood awkwardly in the hallway while they sized him up. One of them, Danny, shoved a mug of tea into his hand.
“You’re the Gaza lad, right? Banner boy?”
“That’s me,” Nick muttered. “Apparently.”
Keiron pointed to the sofa. “You can crash there. Two nights. No questions, no heat. If we get a sniff of blue lights, you're out.”
“Understood.”
“No phones. No names outside. And if you see someone in the street with a mic or a camera, you keep walking.”
That night, they sat him down in the front room. Curtains drawn. Weed smoke thick in the air. A battered laptop on the table, hooked up to speakers. Kieron leaned forward, lighting a roll-up.
“You think the Brits are just doing this to Palestine?” he asked, eyes glinting. Nick said nothing.
“Watch.”
They played him grainy videos. Black-and-white newsreels. RUC officers batoning teenagers. Soldiers raiding homes in Belfast in the 70s. Men in balaclavas at funerals, flanked by kids with stones and tears. Prison footage. Strip searches. Dirty protests. Bobby Sands in gaol, his face turning to bone. Then it flipped. Amateur footage. 1993. 2004. 2016. Paramilitary patrols. Commemorations. Young lads in Derry still shouting Tiocfaidh ár lá while riot vans rolled past.
Nick’s face was pale. “This is still happening?”
Kieron nodded slowly.
“The methods change. The state doesn’t.”
Then came the music. Ballads. Rebel songs. Old cassette rips of the Wolfe Tones, Christy Moore, Irish Brigade. The speakers cracked as voices rang out:
“You may torture the man, you may crucify / But you'll never destroy the people's cry...”
They sang along. Proud. Unapologetic. Eyes closed like they were in church. Nick sat back, overwhelmed. It wasn’t nostalgia. It wasn’t a history lesson. It was a call to arms.
Later, he found himself alone in the kitchen with Kieron, sharing a can of cheap lager.
“You ever fight back, Nick?”
“Only with words.”
Keiron smiled.
“Words are good. But sometimes, the state’s not listening.”
Nick looked out the window. “What happens after my two nights?” Kieron shrugged.
“That’s up to you.”
Nick turned. “You lot… you still active?”
Kieron didn’t answer straight away. He cracked another can. His voice dropped low. “We don’t run guns anymore. We don’t blow up post offices. But the war never ended, mate. They just got better PR.”
Nick took a long sip.
“I’m done hiding.”
Kieron’s grin widened.
“Then maybe it’s time you started learning how to fight.”
The next morning, they took him to a lock-up near Harehills. Not weapons but books. Boxes of literature banned in prisons, leaflets on British imperialism, old Sinn Féin newsletters, and something handwritten titled ‘Community Resistance Networks’ They handed him a burner phone. A USB stick.
“We’ve got a project for you,” said Danny. “You’ve got a voice. They’ve already made you famous. Might as well make it count.”
Nick looked down at the screen. Encrypted messenger. Anonymous handle. The first message already loaded: “Target confirmed. Contact in 48 hours.” He didn’t flinch. He was in.
The days passed in Chapeltown like smoke, thick, slow, hard to breathe. Nick kept his head down. Ate when he could. Slept in snatches. Watched the lads work, never openly, never loudly, but always with purpose. Encrypted calls. Package drops. Meetings at community centres disguised as ‘heritage events’ No guns. No bombs. This wasn’t the '70s. This was a new resistance. Smart. Quiet. Viral. But the state had changed too. It didn’t need rubber bullets anymore. It had algorithms.
They’d finally banned peaceful protest once and for all two weeks earlier.
The Public Order (Protection from Extremism) Act 2025.
Rammed through Parliament under emergency powers after a couple of paint bombs hit Elbit Systems HQ in Bristol. Palestine Action claimed it, no injuries, just red paint and a broken window. But that was all the excuse they needed. Overnight, ‘intent to disrupt’ became a criminal offence. No placards. No sit-ins. No marches without a police-approved ‘neutrality licence’ Any slogan deemed ‘intimidating or inciteful’ a phrase so vague it might as well have included the word ‘boo’ was grounds for arrest. Mentioning Israel or the IDF, Go directly to Jail do not pass go.
Shabina had called him the night the bill passed. Whispered, scared. “They raided the mosque. Took phones. Questioned the Imam. Said the Palestinian flag was a hostile symbol.” Her voice cracked with urgency. Th-They questioned the children. My grandson asked me if Palestine was a bad word.”
Nick sat motionless in a safehouse loft in Burley, barefoot on the wood floor, staring into the cold dawn. He listened as the last shreds of freedom crumbled like ash. Nick had felt it in his chest, like a stone dropped in a well.
“They’re not even pretending anymore,” he said quietly to Kieron later that morning.
“They haven’t pretended since Thatcher. We just stopped noticing,” Kieron replied.
At the Chapeltown house, Keiron sat across from him, rolling a cig. “They always said, ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.’ But now they make sure everything you do looks like a crime.” Nick nodded, jaw clenched. “First it’s Palestine. Then the unions. Then climate. Then you can’t hold a sign unless it says ‘God Save the fucking King.’”
He looked up. Fire in his eyes. “I stood in the street side by side with Jews supporting Palestinian rights. I held a cardboard sign. I ran because they knelt on my friend’s spine like Rodney fucking King. And now they want to put me in a concrete box for a decade?”
Kieron exhaled slowly. “This country’s got one rule: you can do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t threaten their power.”
Nick leaned forward.
“So what do we do when they’ve outlawed protest?”
Kieron didn’t hesitate. “You resist. Loud or quiet. Peaceful or not. And you make it cost. You make it count".
The burner buzzed. A message.
“Message drop. Millennium Square. 2pm. Use fire route. Black hoodie.”
Nick stared at it. His hands didn’t shake. Not anymore. Kieron looked him dead in the eye.
“You ready to stop asking and start taking?”
Nick stood.
“They banned asking. So fuck ‘em”
He walked into the city centre like a ghost. Hoodie up. Bag strapped tight across his back. No placard this time. No crowd. No chants. Just silence and concrete. He ducked into the fire escape alley beside the art gallery. Found the drainpipe. Reached behind it. There it was. Sealed envelope. Inside: phone SIM, disposable mask, £40 cash. And a single photograph.
Oliver Manning MP. Minister for Public Safety. This was the cunt who’d signed off the protest ban. The same man who’d once posed for selfies in front of Elbit Systems, grinning, engorged from all the Israel Lobby ‘donations’. Nick stared at the photo, then folded it twice, tight, and slid it into his sock.
He thought about how his life had changed because of them. He wasn’t a terrorist. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. But when you criminalise dissent… When you kneel on the necks of Jewish protesters whilst protecting murderers… When you lock people away for cardboard signs…When you take every peaceful option off the table…You leave people one choice. He wasn’t going to bomb a building. He wasn’t going to shoot a politician. But he was going to send a message. One the country couldn’t ignore.
That night, in a safehouse in Harehills, Nick recorded a video on the encrypted burner. No mask. No aliases. Just his face. Tired. Clear. Calm.
“My name is Nicholas Shaw. I was arrested for carrying a sign. I ran because I watched the police kneel on a Jewish protester and call that law enforcement. I’ve been hunted, lied about, labelled a terrorist. And I’ve had enough.” He paused. Looked straight down the lens. “When the state bans protest, it invites resistance. You took away our words. Now you'll hear our rage.”
Click. Sent.
The footage spread through Signal groups and the internet like wildfire. The headline that followed two days later was short.
Junior Minister’s Office Vandalised in ‘Organised Anti-State Action’ No Arrests, Message Left at Scene Spray paint across the walls. Red, thick, dripping: ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
Chapter 6: In plain sight
Nick Shaw was no longer hiding. He was just getting started. After the Manning action, everything changed. The press called it ‘low-level terrorism’ and a ‘symbolic attack’ by ‘radical anti-government agitators’. No injuries, no arrests. But the paint, red and dripping, was left untouched for two days before being scrubbed at 3am by silent cleaners in hazmat suits. No one claimed it. No one needed to. People already knew. And people were getting angry.
Nick went to ground. Harehills, Hyde Park, Burley. Squats. Lofts. A hostel once, but he clocked a plainclothes copper eating a Greggs by reception and bolted out the back window. The Belfast lads rotated him between safehouses. He used five different names. Grew a beard. Dyed his hair. Learned how to spot surveillance vans. Started checking bin lorries for undercarriage cameras.
But it didn’t stop the nightmares. He’d wake up drenched, breath ragged, convinced the door was about to cave in. Sometimes he saw Avi again, his mate from the Jewish Bloc at the protest, being dragged across the pavement, mouth filling with blood and broken teeth. Other times, he dreamt of fire. Flashbangs. Helicopters. Steel cell doors slamming shut. He started keeping a knife under his pillow.
MI5 was watching everything now. Operation STONEGATE, the leaked codename for a new counter-dissent unit, was scooping up activists, radicals, and anyone who’d ever stood next to a Palestinian flag. No trial. No charges. Just ‘national security holds’ Nick saw names disappear from Signal chats. Entire threads wiped clean. One girl from Manchester posted a meme about Manning and vanished two hours later. Her house was ‘accidentally’ burned out. No investigation.
The silence wasn’t quiet anymore. It was strategic.
Then came the tapes. Kieron passed him a flash drive one night, wrapped in cling film and hidden inside a tin of beans. ‘Old files’ he said. “Used to be classified. Some of it’s Northern Ireland. Some’s England. Your England.” Nick didn’t think this was his England anymore. At least not the England that he recognised. He waited till everyone was asleep, then plugged it into a wiped laptop. No menu. No labels. Just folders: HUMINT, HOLDING, SPECIALIST, REDACTED. He clicked one at random. A grainy clip. CCTV from inside a police van. A teenage boy, hands cable-tied behind his back, slumped between two officers. They were laughing. One leaned in close to the boy’s ear and whispered, “No one’s gonna hear you scream, sandrat.” Then the feed cut. Another video. Night vision. Raid footage. Woman dragged out of bed in her underwear, baby crying. Her name: Fatima Al-Khan. Schoolteacher. Accused of being a courier for Palestinian charities. Nothing ever proven. Still in prison.
Then a recording. Audio only. Nick pressed play. A soft voice: female, begging. “Please. Please, I’m not political. I just... I just went to the protest.”
Another voice. Male. Calm. Crisp.
"You’re not on trial for what you did. You’re being contained for what you might do.”
Click.
Nick sat frozen for half an hour. Then he unplugged the flash drive and burned it in the sink.
He didn’t want the files. He wanted retribution.
Chapter 7: France
It was Kieron who suggested it. “France,” he said, pointing to a printed PDF. “The Nanterre network. Still active. Still pissed off. Got connections. You’d fit in.”
Nick nodded.
“I thought the French were done after the Banlieus kicked off.”
Kieron’s grin was sharp. “France is never done. They just go quiet between uprisings.”
He was on a truck by morning courtesy of a Kurdish associate: Ferry to Dieppe. No ID. Just a black backpack, burner SIM, and a letter of introduction signed only ‘Ciarán’. The French safehouse was brutal. Cold, concrete, loud with the sound of trains overhead.
The Nanterre crew were rough as hell: Algerians, Syrians, Irish diaspora, a few disillusioned French leftists. All trained. All armed. And all watching Nick.
They made him prove himself. Not with violence. With nerve. They blindfolded him and dropped him in Paris at midnight with one instruction: “Spray it.” He had one stencil. One can of paint. One hour. He hit the Louis Vuitton flagship with a single line:
“FREEDOM IS ILLEGAL NOW.”
It went viral before dawn. He earned his keep. Back in London, the government was losing its grip. The streets seethed, Civil unrest flared. Fuel spiked. Food banks overwhelmed. Rail strikes back on. The King made a speech calling for ‘national unity in these difficult times’ and had to be whisked away when a protester threw a tin of beans at his Bentley. Public trust wasn’t eroding, it had collapsed.
Chapter 8: Radicalised
And Nick? He returned to the UK with a new mission, and a new team. They were going to start making the state afraid.
Nick came home under a different name, with a different face, and a plan. He didn’t want justice. He wanted fear. The kind that creeps behind curtains and stains the walls of power.
Phase One: media subversion.
Hijack the BBC live during PMQs. Replace the platitudes with truth, unfiltered, unedited. Protest footage. Police swinging batons like clubs. Screams. Boots. Blood.
Phase Two: economic disruption.
Strike at the arteries. Data centre fires, ‘accidental’ outages. Drones over depots. Anonymous union tips. Clog the system. Make capital feel its own weight.
Phase Three: psychological warfare.
Leak the unredacted tapes. Drop the files from the bean can drive. Surveillance logs. Ministerial calls. Lies, stripped bare in the cold light of day.
Phase Four? well Phase Four was his. His alone. Not even Kieron knew. Just a single encrypted message: March 18. House of Commons. Broadcast van. No casualties. Just truth. He zipped the jacket. Gloved up. And stepped into the fire with a smile no one would ever see coming.
MI5 classified him as DOMESTIC DISRUPTOR: TIER 3.
Tier 3 meant top surveillance, no known weapon access, but high ideological threat. They didn’t believe he’d kill. But they knew he’d change minds.
In Leeds, the state took no chances. Counter-Terror units occupied university IT suites. Activist groups were infiltrated. Signal chats died overnight. Anyone who’d stood near Nick Shaw at the protest vanished quietly into legal limbo.
Nick changed safehouses every 48 hours. Hyde Park. Burley. Harehills. He slept under loft insulation, behind boiler cupboards, even once inside a storage unit by the Ring Road. He grew a beard. Learned to pick locks. Burned burner phones in steel bins and sniffed the air for drones.
They questioned Shabina for fourteen hours. No charge. They seized her passport. Called her a “conduit.”
The next morning, Kieron handed Nick a tin of beans.
Inside it: a flash drive. On it: footage. Files. Audio tapes. RUC-era holdovers. Modern MI5 black sites. One video showed a mother being dragged from a flat as her baby screamed. Another, a boy alone in a wire cage. No trial. No contact.
A voice on one recording: “He’s not a suspect. He’s a symbol. Remove him.” Nick watched it all.
“This isn’t fear,” he whispered. “It’s clarity.”
Chapter 9: London
A slate-grey sky pressed down on London. The river moved like mercury beneath the bridge, sullen and slow. Every breath hung in the air. It was the kind of cold that seeped into your bones and stayed there. Nick sat inside the fake outside broadcast van marked SPECTRA EVENTS, parked up along Millbank like it belonged there. He wore a hi-vis vest and an old BBC lanyard clipped to his collar.
From the outside, he looked like just another tech grunt in another dull day’s work. But inside the van, it was war. Laptops buzzed with overclocked energy. Three command terminals glowed like watchful eyes. Cables coiled like snakes across the floor. A satellite spoofer hummed under the desk, locked on and primed. On one screen: FINAL_SPEECH.mp4. On another: a countdown timer: red, relentless, marking the seconds to 11:29. The moment Parliament’s public media relay would auto-switch to a trusted live feed.
Only today, the feed would be his.
Outside: the usual noise. Tourists posing in front of statues they didn’t recognise. Civil servants walking quickly in sensible shoes. Schoolchildren in high-vis tabards squealing on a field trip. A man sold roasted chestnuts from a chrome cart.
But inside that van, Nick’s hand hovered over the PLAY key. His thumb trembled, not with fear, but resolve. He knew what was coming. He had already made peace with the consequences. The truth had to come out, even if he didn’t survive it. Then came the knock.
“DOWN! POLICE! FINAL WARNING!”
The van shook with the force of boots. Red dots blinked through the reinforced windows, laser sights dancing like bloodflies.
Tactical Response Unit.
Nick didn’t flinch. He pressed PLAY. For a heartbeat, he held his breath, expecting the bullet. Then blackout.
Across Westminster, media screens flickered. The House of Commons press feed stuttered. Tourist screens. Civil service laptops. Every public display, glitched, then blank. Then Nick’s face. Tired. Raw. Honest. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. Because he hadn’t.
“My name is Nicholas Shaw. I was arrested under the Terrorism Act for standing still with a cardboard sign. I ran when they broke my friend’s spine on the pavement. I watched them erase protests. I watched them call silence ‘incitement’.”
Then came the footage.
- Avi: screaming, his body twitching as police kneeled on his back, blood soaking into the cracks of Leeds City Square.
- Shabina’s house: doors off the hinges, kids crying in a language the state had outlawed from empathy.
- A courtroom: a disembodied voice: “He’s not on trial for what he did, but for what he might do.”
Then Nick again. Closer now. A fire behind his eyes.
“You bastards criminalised protest. You banned truth. You outlawed dissent. I am not alone. I was never alone. And if I disappear, let that fact ring louder than any of your lies.”
Final shot: graffiti, sprayed in furious red across the white Portland stone of a government building. ACTION NOW FOR PALESTINE
The van doors blew open. Flashbangs. Screams. Arms around his throat. They took him. They erased the file. But they were too late: the relay had already bounced. Mirrors. Torrents. Encrypted re-ups. By the time they pulled the plug, the feed had gone global. Screens from Nairobi to Naples lit up with his face. Within hours, it was in schools, mosques, clubs, encrypted forums, smart fridges.
Nick vanished. But his message didn’t. And messages like that don’t die, because you can murder starving children in food queues, you can arm the air forces that bomb civilian tents, you can be complicit in ethnic cleansing, you can execute the messengers of truth. But you cannot and you never could, kill an idea.
And in the silence that followed, something wonderful and dangerous was born. And not a fucking moment before time. Because the bastards that caused all of this have earned it, with interest and it's time they were paid in full.
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