Forget the millionaires – it’s when creatives feel unwelcome in the UK that we have a serious problem

Go into any British bookshops in the coming months, and you may notice a glaring stock gap. Star novelist Sally Rooney, who found fame with her achingly concise romance novels, Conversations with Friends, Normal People, Beautiful World, Where Are You, and Intermezzo will no longer be able to sell her books in the UK due to her support of Palestine Action, which was controversially deemed a terrorist organisation by the government last year.

The news, announced in a statement by Rooney this week, was a long time coming. Regardless, it hit like a gut punch for her fans, while critics scoffed at the “predictable” consequences of her defiant actions.

Last August, the author wrote an op-ed for The Irish Times pledging her support and royalties to Palestine Action. “As a result, the fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence. After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK,” Rooney said.

“I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”

A conviction under the 2006 Terrorism Act carries a maximum punishment of 14 years in prison. Since the proscription last summer, more than 2,250 people have been formally charged under terror laws for peacefully protesting the ban, including an 81-year-old woman.

In the wake of Rooney’s departure from British bookshelves, shop owners from all over the country were reported to be “shocked” and “in support” of the author. “Sally Rooney has been a consistent bestseller here,” Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves Bookshop, who now has one copy of each of the author’s titles in stock despite trying to gather more copies, told The Bookseller.

Bradshaw dubbed the absence of Rooney’s novels “untenable” in the long term. “Readers want to read her books and booksellers want to sell her books. Something has to give,” he added of the deadlock. “We hope with the changed attitude in government, this nonsense will end.”

Meanwhile, Alex Call of Swindon’s Bert’s Books said: “I am surprised that a publisher could theoretically be prosecuted for giving an author money owed to them – when the books themselves are not breaking any laws. I think the government need to have a word with themselves, frankly.”

There’s been an almost frenzied focus on the so-called millionaire exodus of the UK. Despite the Tax Justice Network’s debunking that shows fewer than 1 per cent of millionaires migrate from the UK in any given year – and no credible evidence that tax is a decisive factor – policy change is routinely pandered to the rich in a bid to keep the wealthy where they are.

However, there’s been no such consideration of the hoards of brilliant minds, who were outraged after the government used its terrorist powers against Palestine Action for “serious damage to property”, rather than threats of violence, for the first time in its history last year.

A total of 52 scholars, including Judith Butler, Angela Davis, Avi Shlaim and Naomi Klein, signed a letter declaring the action was a restriction on fundamental freedoms. “We remind the UK government that its own most urgent priorities should already be determined by its binding obligation ‘to prevent and to punish’ genocide,” it read.

That September, Rooney skipped a trip to London to accept a Sky Arts Award for her novel Intermezzo, over fears she would face arrest.

When a hearing took place this spring to determine whether the Palestine Action ban was lawful, Rooney, Tariq Ali and China Miéville were among writers who came together to defy the ban, alongside musicians Brian Eno and Nadine Shah, and Matt Black, a founder of Ninja Tune records, alongside 124 other prominent figures. Still, Andy Burnham showing no signs of liberating the Labour policy from Keir Starmer’s absent grasp.

In the wake of Rooney’s consequential departure, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has since taken to social media to read excerpts of the author’s Normal People aloud to his followers. “I do not want anyone in the UK to miss out on her wonderful writing,” he says. “I hope others will read further sections of the book so that people do not lose out on the joy of reading her works.”

It is not a surprise that the UK has lost access to Sally Rooney’s writing. She is an author who has long put her money – and actions – where her mouth is. The bigger question is, who’s next? Britain stands to lose works of philosophy, historical fiction, fantasy and poetry, should other appalled writers follow in Rooney’s defiantly principled footsteps.

As Patrick Corrigan, head of nations and regions at Amnesty UK, questioned online in the wake of the news: “If a great Irish writer’s books can no longer be published in the UK because she stands with Palestine, the question isn’t what law might Sally Rooney have broken, it’s what sort of country has Britain become.”