Blurring the lines isn't firm action

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Terrorism, like some perverse form of beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The term, ‘La terreur’, was first used during the French revolution, when it was very much a state-sponsored method of terrifying a population into submission and acceptance. It underlines the fact that there is no clear, generally-accepted definition of the term – a huge advantage for politicians since it means that they can define it any way they choose. Governments tend to use the word as a catch-all for almost anything of which they disapprove, an approach which leads to Putin using the term to justify his war in Ukraine, and Sir Starmer using it to describe a few people who try and give a new coat of paint to a couple of military aircraft. Whether that latter action actually ‘terrified’ anyone is a moot point, but it doesn’t really matter; once something has been officially defined as terrorism, almost any action is apparently justified in dealing with it.

One of the more alarming aspects of the government’s decision to proscribe a single pro-Palestine organisation is the way in which the police now seem to be extending the definition of terrorism to include anyone who supports the same aims as the proscribed organisation itself. Effectively, they’ve started arresting people (and detaining them under the more stringent conditions relating to terrorism rather than the more usual conditions for other types of crime) for declaring their support for the idea of a Palestinian state, rather than only for outright support for the proscribed organisation. Maybe individual police officers have been inadequately briefed about exactly what the law does or does not permit, but it’s hard to believe that different forces in different parts of the UK would independently have come to such a similar conclusion – which suggests at least implicit encouragement from the government.

There are probably few who would quibble with the principle of proscription as a tool to deal with an organisation taking violent action causing death or injury to citizens in an attempt to force a particular change in policy (although not quibbling with the principle isn’t the same as believing that it’s an effective approach). It ought to be possible, though, in a semi-democracy like the UK to debate when and under what conditions such a sanction should be applied and to question the way in which that sanction is then policed. The government, however, seems determined to close down any such discussion.

War, with all its accompanying death and destruction, invariably ‘radicalises’ people, to use a term generally used pejoratively these days. The horrific war in Gaza is just one example. Whether it’s always the bad thing as which it is presented is another question which they don’t want to debate. The second world war radicalised a generation of people in the UK, and the immediate post-war Labour government under Clem Attlee channelled that into making some of the most significant changes the UK has ever seen. I can’t help but wonder whether the instinctive reaction of the current day Labour Party under Sir Starmer would have been, more likely, to criminalise and imprison those who had been radicalised. Few people in the UK actually support ‘real’ terrorism, but forever extending the definition of the term blurs the lines. It might look like firm action, but it is likely to make enforcement harder rather than easier.