UK Bars Climate Author Andreas Malm Over Palestine Solidarity

The UK Home Office has barred Andreas Malm, author of How To Blow Up A Pipeline, from entering the country, ruling that his "presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good." The Guardian and Al Jazeera reported the decision on 30 October.

Malm, a Swedish academic and leading Marxist voice on climate change, was due to speak at next Wednesday's launch event for the Historical Materialism Conference, organised by Tribune magazine. His co-panelist is Huda Ammori, a co-founder of Palestine Action — the direct action group the UK classified as a terrorist organisation last year. That classification, since ruled unlawful in a separate legal challenge, forms the backdrop to the ban.

What exactly happened?

Before Malm could travel to London, the Home Office cancelled his Electronic Travel Authorisation (the UK's digital pre-clearance permit for visitors). Malm said he is "deeply dismayed at this sudden ban on travelling to the UK," a country he has visited "for decades" for research, lectures and conferences.

"I have always considered the UK a centre of the world of ideas," he said, "where differences in opinions and scientific approaches can be aired freely." He has asked the Home Office to reverse the decision.

The launch event is currently scheduled to proceed as planned. Malm will now appear via video.

Who has defended him?

The response from publishers and writers was swift and blunt.

Tribune's editors wrote: "The government seems to think that it by banning its critics from the country it can reduce people's exposure to their ideas. But the government is wrong. Those ideas will continue to circulate. We will make sure of that."

Tariq Ali of Verso, which has published many of Malm's books, said the publisher "condemns the silencing of critical voices and stands in support of writers and scholars who continue to speak out about important issues and contribute to open intellectual discourse."

Sally Rooney — who is herself barred from selling her books in the UK over her solidarity with Palestine and Palestine Action — called the move "not only an outrageous attack on a respected climate expert, but a sad and frightening act of cultural self-harm."

Why does it matter?

The ban lands on a writer whose climate scholarship crosses into direct advocacy, and it does so through immigration machinery rather than publishing channels. Malm's case now sits beside Rooney's, forming a pattern that Verso and Tribune are eager to name: critics of Israel's war in Gaza finding the UK border closed to them. The event goes ahead regardless — with Malm on a screen instead of a stage, which rather proves Tribune's point about circulating ideas.