a day ago
Proscription of organisation won't end the debate around terror laws
This proscription has sweeping consequences – not only for activists formerly associated with the group, but for anyone expressing supportive views about its activities, sceptical feelings about its proscription, or displaying logos associated with the group. All of these activities can potentially expose you to significant criminal liability and risk of punishment under the Terrorism Act.
In defence of this decision, Yvette Cooper argued that 'proscription is ideologically neutral', and that the UK Government is only 'demonstrating its zero-tolerance approach to terrorism, regardless of its form or underlying ideology'.
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This is reflected, she said, by the simultaneous bans imposed on two neo-Nazi groups, including a group describing itself as the Russian Imperial Movement and another called the Maniacs Murder Cult. But you might well think that one of these organisations is not quite like the others.
Founded in July 2020, Palestine Action describes itself as a 'grassroots, direct action network' committed to disrupting arms sales from Britain to Israel. One of the founders of the organisation, Huda Ammori, made an emergency application to the High Court last week, asking for the proscription order to be suspended. Ammori's application for interim relief failed, and as of yesterday, Palestine Action is now a proscribed terrorist organisation.
In her evidence, Ammori characterised the organisation's aims as 'to prevent serious violations of international law by Israel against the Palestinian people, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid and genocide, and the aiding, abetting and facilitation thereof by others, including corporate actors' and 'to expose and target property and premises connected to such crimes and violation'.
This disruption has most recently extended to RAF property, with the group claiming responsibility for gaining access to the Royal Air Force Base at Brize Norton last month, taking the opportunity to damage the engines and exteriors of two Voyager jets with red paint and crowbars.
The Home Secretary also cites Palestine Action's 2022 at Thales UK in Govan as justification for the proscription. A small group of activists scaled a roof wearing red overalls, unfurled banners, and set off smoke bombs at the military equipment manufacturer. They have since been convicted of public order and property offences in Glasgow Sheriff Court, without any need to mobilise the Terrorism Act at all.
Terrorism may be conventionally understood as the use of violence, especially against civilians, to pursue ideological ends, but as the High Court pointed out this week, UK law adopts a much broader definition of who can properly be classified as a terrorist.
Blair-era legislation provides that actions taken for the purpose of advancing a political cause can be sanctioned as terrorism, 'if it involves serious damage to property, even if it does not involve violence against any person or endanger life or create a risk to health or safety'.
'In this respect,' as Mr Justice Chamberlain observed on Friday, 'the statutory concept is wider than the colloquial meaning of the term.' This gap has potential consequences.
While Chamberlain emphasised that it is not the 'court's function to comment on the wisdom of the use of the power in this case,' it is difficult not to detect a degree of judicial scepticism in the reflection that the Home Secretary's decision to exercise this power 'in respect of a group such as Palestine Action may also have wider consequences for the way the public understands the concept of terrorism and for public confidence in the regime of the 2000 Act'.
This point was picked up in the evidence of Professor Ben Saul, reflecting on the international context. Saul is the Challis Chair of International Law at the University of Sydney and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism.
In his submission to the High Court, Saul pointed out that 'most responsible States globally have limited terrorism designations to extremist actors engaged in grave large scale atrocities' and 'treating 'direct action' against property interests as 'terrorism' seriously over-classifies the nature of the conduct, and is fundamentally contrary to best practice international standards on the nature and scope of terrorist acts'.
Doing so, he suggests, puts the UK 'out of step with comparable liberal democracies,' where 'mere property damage has seldom been a sufficient basis for designating groups as terrorist'. The Home Secretary – and the overwhelming number of MPs who voted on the proscription order – disagreed.
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Because it is now an offence for anyone to 'belong or profess to belong' to Palestine Action, exposing anyone who does so to a fine or prison term of up to 14 years. 'Inviting support' for the organisation is now also a criminal offence. So too is expressing any 'opinion or belief that is supportive' of Palestine Action in a way which is 'reckless' and might be interpreted as encouraging an audience to support the proscribed organisation.
As civil liberties organisations Amnesty International and Liberty pointed out in their High Court intervention this week, 'there is a real risk that advocacy for the de-proscription of Palestine Action could amount to one or more offences under the 2000 Act.'
The consequences don't end there.
The Terrorism Act and the police officers charged with enforcing it are also going to have a new interest into what you are wearing. Once an organisation has been proscribed by the British state, wearing a T-shirt, wearing a badge, or carrying a banner 'in such a way' as to 'arouse reasonable suspicion' that you support Palestine Action becomes a crime.
This restriction also extends to selfies or social media posts, picturing banners or signs which could be interpreted as sympathetic to the organisation. Under section 13 of the Act, publishing an image which arouses 'reasonable suspicion that the person is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation' can attract a prison sentence of up to six months or a fine – not to mention the wider stigmatic consequences of carrying a conviction under the Terrorism Act around with you.
Anyone who organises an event after this weekend which supports a proscribed organisation, which 'furthers its activities', or which is 'addressed by a person who belongs' to such an organisation will also now commit a terrorism offence. Section 14 of the Terrorism Act defines 'terrorist property' as including any resources of a proscribed organisation.
Contributing resources or donations to the organisation could now land you up to 14 years imprisonment, transforming what would have been a crowdfunding donation on Monday into 'fundraising for the purposes of terrorism' today.
I came to political consciousness as an adult during the 'War on Terror' of the early Noughties. I can all too clearly remember the circular debates about how the concept of terrorism should be defined in law, concerns about ambiguous definitions, government insistence that public safety and security demanded the state and law enforcement agencies should be given more and more unstructured power above and beyond the ordinary criminal law, undiscouraged by concerns about the dangers of draconian enforcement and executive overreach.
Last week's decision is guaranteed to revive these debates – but at least in terms of Palestine Action, under the long shadow of the criminal law.
