Diversity of Strategies Under Repression: Coalition Dynamics in the UK Palestine Solidarity Movement

Why do social movements intensify both mass mobilisation and direct action under conditions of growing repression—and with what consequences for coalition building and collective outcomes? Classic accounts of collective action suggest that large-scale mobilisation tends to generate a strategic bifurcation: movements either move toward institutionalisation, co-optation, and decline, or toward radicalisation and disruptive escalation. By explicitly treating strategic divergence as an actor-level dynamic within a heterogeneous movement field, this paper challenges such sequential expectations through an analysis of the UK Palestine solidarity movement after October 2023. The United Kingdom constitutes a critical case due to its historically entrenched and overlapping traditions of indirect and direct action. From suffragette militancy and labour movement mobilisation to anti-war and peace campaigning, British contentious politics has long normalised both mass protest and direct action as legitimate responses to political closure. Building on this historical embeddedness, the paper conceptualises mass marches and direct action not as opposing strategies adopted by a single movement, but as coexisting repertoires pursued by different actors embedded in partially overlapping coalitions and decentralised networks. Empirically, the paper draws on an original Protest Event Analysis (October 2023–December 2025), media coverage, and in-depth interviews with activists operating within institutional coalitions and direct-action groups. This multi-actor perspective allows the analysis to trace how distinct organisational forms—centralised coalitions, hybrid formations around university campuses, and decentralised networks—simultaneously escalated their preferred tactics under conditions of elite closure, discursive delegitimation, and intensifying repression. Rather than converging toward either institutionalisation or radicalisation, the movement field experienced parallel escalation across organisational layers, with mass mobilisation and (disruptive) direct action reinforcing one another at the level of visibility and pressure, while diverging in their strategic logics. Crucially, this parallel escalation strained coalition work. Divergent evaluations of legitimacy, risk, public resonance, and effectiveness hardened over time, complicating coordination, mutual defence under repression, and the articulation of shared strategies. These tensions reflected not merely tactical disagreements, but competing theories of change held by different actors within the broader movement. By situating Palestine solidarity alongside recent UK protest cycles—including environmental direct action, anti-deportation activism, Black Lives Matter, and higher education activism—the paper shows how similar repressive infrastructures generate distinct escalation dynamics depending on actor composition and coalition structure. It advances a relational model of protest escalation that foregrounds strategic continuity and organisational differentiation, offering a framework for understanding collective action under increasingly authoritarian conditions.