Palestine Action are not terrorists. The RAF is just grossly incompetent

Telegraph

7 hours ago

One can see why the Government is proposing to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation. That anyone could enter the RAF base at Brize Norton, one of the most significant we have, and smear red paint on planes was deeply humiliating. Once, the commanding officer of the base would have resigned immediately; the security officer would have been moved to the cookhouse, if he was lucky; and the Defence Secretary would have offered his resignation. But no-one resigns these days, so branding the intruders 'terrorists', as if they were some ruthless group trained to outwit military professionals, with death and destruction their aim, makes them sound all the more formidable, and their victims all the more helpless.
It is an unconvincing cover for the sort of grotesque incompetence that characterises our public sector and public services. That was the RAF; the next day it was the Metropolitan Police unable to prevent an epidemic of daylight robbery on the streets of the West End; the next NHS maternity services that humiliate and degrade women giving birth. What Palestine Action, however organised and bonkers and loathsome they are, did was not terrorism: it was vandalism. You might as well call football hooligans terrorists, or the groups of louts who on hot summer evenings riot because they are bored and the police upset them by seeking to restore order. Terrorism is a truly abhorrent, lethal, wicked and repulsive thing: chucking paint over planes and ridiculing the RAF and the Government in the process does not even begin to compare with it.
This devaluation of a word with a precise meaning is highly dangerous. Lord (Toby) Young, in his excellent work for the Free Speech Union, has disclosed that Prevent – the increasingly preposterous, Left-leaning body that tries to stop terrorism at its roots – has done research that suggests 'red flags' for spotting potential far-right terrorists are people who like, among other things, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, GK Chesterton's poems, The Bridge On the River Kwai, The Dam Busters and Yes, Minister. Where do I give myself up?
Many of us remember real terrorism, perpetrated by real terrorists: the Birmingham and Guildford Bombings; the Hyde Park Bombings; murders in Manchester, both by the IRA in 1992 and 1996 and, a generation later, an Islamic extremist who killed 22 at the city's Arena in 2017; the massacre on 7/7, which killed 52 innocent people in 2005; and if that's not enough, Lockerbie. I could go on. Does all that utter horror compare with exposing the pitiful security at Brize Norton and slapping paint on planes? Of course not.
This seemed to start in 2016, after the abominable murder of Jo Cox, the Labour MP, by Thomas Mair, a recluse and weirdo unknown to the authorities. He was rapidly branded a 'terrorist' by politicians when it became clear he had a deeply unhealthy obsession with the far-right and its doctrines. He was a member of no terrorist organisation. What he did was appalling, but he was no more a terrorist than any politically-motivated psychopath acting alone. Ms Cox's murder came days before the Brexit vote. Those who branded Mair a 'terrorist' (and the authorities rapidly followed suit) were surely not trying to associate him with the Brexit movement – were they?
On Friday, four people were arrested over the Brize Norton incident. If convicted, they must suffer exemplary punishment. However, I hope the Government accepts its responsibilities for such pathetic security. And I also hope that in future it reserves the term 'terrorist' for those who really merit it, rather than diluting it for idiotic troublemakers or lethal misfits.