In 2017, we did exactly what Palestine Action did last week: we broke into an airbase. Our actions were extremely similar to theirs, and so were our aims.

Most of the Royal Saudi Air Force is manufactured right here in the UK by Britain’s merchants of death, BAE Systems. Carrying flags bearing the words of Yemenis whose lives have been destroyed by UK-made weapons, we cut through fences at BAE Warton. We were caught by security just meters from Saudi-bound fighter jets.

In our case, these jets were being sent to Saudi Arabia to be used to create what the UN called “the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe” in Yemen. In Palestine Action’s case, British planes are being sent to Cyprus and then mysteriously disappearing over the Mediterranean sea – linked, many suspect, to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

There are a few key differences between our actions and theirs. Unlike Palestine Action, we were not attacked by the Israel lobby. We were not the victims of an obsessive Islamophobic police crackdown. We are both white. Woody is a Methodist reverend: shortly after security caught us, Woody loosened the scarf from his Cambridge theological college to reveal his dog collar. The security guards that had caught us literally went, “Oh shit!”

As a result of our social position and less politicised target, we have been treated completely differently to the members of Palestine Action. We were arrested carrying a list of the serial codes of fighter jets worth over £1bn and a prepared statement explaining our intent to disarm them. Our lawyers were worried it might be the highest-value case of intent to cause criminal damage in British legal history. Their fears were short-lived: the police couldn’t wait to rush Woody out of the station, and charged us with only low-level criminal damage. A court found us not guilty.