It was only after Miles Pickering arrived at Scotland Yard following his arrest that the police realised they had got things embarrassingly wrong.
The T-shirt worn by the Brighton engineer did not express support for a proscribed terrorist group, instead the words on it read “Plasticine Action” and inside the letter “o” was an image of the stop-motion character Morph giving two thumbs up.
Speaking to the Guardian, Pickering admitted it was designed to be an easy mistake to make, appearing to look like the logo of Palestine Action, the protest group banned under terrorism legislation last month, but text underneath the logo reads: “We oppose AI-generated animation.”
The arrest happened – one of 532 that day – at a protest in Parliament Square in London on 9 August, after a police officer glanced at his top.
“I’m like: ‘Well, there you go, Plasticine Action.’ He looked down and he said: ‘Right, you’re nicked.’ And I thought: ‘Oh, here we go,’” said Pickering.
Outside the Met police headquarters at what essentially was a pop-up booking suite made from two gazebos dealing with the large volume of arrested people, a large group of protesters cheered as people were brought in by officers.
“They were all cheering us, and I was cheekily pointing to my T-shirt and going ‘Plasticine Action!’ to everyone, so they were taking photos of me, and everyone was laughing at how silly it was that I was getting arrested for being a plasticine terrorist,” Pickering said.
He had been arrested under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which makes it an offence to wear anything supporting a proscribed organisation. A senior officer asked the arresting officer if he could arrest Pickering under section 12, which could have brought a more serious charge of supporting a proscribed group.
“[The arresting officer] said: ‘No, I can’t.’ And they said: ‘Why not?’ He said: ‘Because he hasn’t got Palestine Action written on him. He’s got Plasticine Action written on him.’”
About five minutes later, the arresting officer approached him again. “He said: ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.’ I said: ‘What’s the good news?’ He said: ‘I’m de-arresting you.’
“And I said: ‘What’s the bad news?’ He said: ‘It’s going to be really embarrassing for me.’ And then I walked free, while all the real heroes are the people that are actually getting arrested.”
Pickering has made copies of the T-shirt, which he is selling to raise money for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. It has sold in 28 countries already and was the 14th most popular T-shirt sold on Amazon UK on Friday.
“So there’s people getting on this one, because it kind of works, doesn’t it?” he said. “It’s like we are just going to mock you for your ridiculous decision to proscribe a protest group. It’s just so important that our rights to protest do not get diminished.”
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He said he expected there to be a number of people wearing the shirts on 6 September at the next organised protest against the ban on Palestine Action, and that he had been advised by the police that it could still be an arrestable offence.
“How ridiculous is this?” he said, adding: “But if 1,000 people wander around the Palestinian march wearing a T-shirt that says Plasticine Action with a picture of Morph, what are they going to do?”
In June, a Leeds man was arrested for holding up a printed out version of a joke from Private Eye, an incident that the satirical magazine’s editor, Ian Hislop, called “mind-boggling”.
Pickering said that although he did care about AI ruining the animation industry, he was passionate about protesting for Gaza, and had seen support for the cause swell over this time.
He said he felt the tide of public opinion was turning, with more national news organisations showing images and video of the famine Israel was inflicting on the people of Gaza. “There’s no justification for it, and we all know it. I do think we’re winning. We’re going to win this battle, and Palestine will ultimately – as we’ve been shouting at people for so long – be free.”