Palestine Action protestors know no shame, but the punishment does not fit the crime - Nigel Nelson

And their supporters lost any sympathy I might have had for them when they turned out to protest so soon after the Manchester synagogue atrocity.

The organisers should have called their demos off out of respect for grieving British Jews, as Keir Starmer and Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley urged them to do. Taking to the streets did not enhance their cause but damaged it.

But as I have also said, to equate Palestine Action with al-Qaeda, ISIS or Hamas, as our existing terror laws do, seems over the top. The High Court will decide whether it is next month.

A grading system for terror groups based on the degree of harm they are likely to cause would also enable more appropriate punishments to be dished out to their supporters.

And perhaps not just appropriate but innovative. The elderly vicars clearly believed breaking the law was a conscience issue. But conscience has consequences. And as vicars know better than most, there are penalties for that.

Just look at the 12 apostles. Peter was crucified upside down, James was beheaded with a sword, the other James was thrown off a cliff, and Bartholomew was skinned alive by Turkish brigands.

I’m not suggesting our vicars should share those fates, and such sentences are outside the remit of British courts anyway, thank God. But if there were a sliding scale for terrorist proscription, there would be a sliding scale of punishment for backers, too.

Fines might not cut it, because the vicars’ consciences would probably mean they wouldn’t pay them, and they would end up in the clink anyway.

So, what about something more suitable to really stretch those consciences? Community punishments, say, but of a thoroughly Christian kind, which involve getting down and dirty with the sick, poor and destitute like medieval mendicant friars.

That would really put the vicars in a quandary. Their earthly consciences would dictate that they should refuse to accept those sentences as well.

But that would mean turning their backs on the chance it gave them late in life to do God’s good work. Tricky position to reconcile with their consciences.

The freedom to protest is a cherished British right. Which is why the government resisted calls for an outright ban, though current legislation would have made one difficult anyway.

But now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is toying with changes to the 1986 Public Order Act to put more restrictions on demos, such as not allowing them to be held repeatedly in the same place.

Before authoritarians cheer, take note that this could also apply to protests outside asylum hotels. Not much point shouting the odds over migrant accommodation if you have to do it in front of a Weatherspoon several miles away instead.

But protestors must also accept that rights carry with them responsibilities. And no responsible person should feel anything but compassion for the Manchester families ripped apart by tragedy last week or for the wider Jewish community.

To take to the streets so soon afterwards was not just insensitive but unforgivable. And if the 488 demonstrators arrested in London on Saturday are now repenting at leisure, then so they should.

If there are any vicars among them, they should be repenting and asking for forgiveness, too.