The UK government has signalled its intention to “proscribe” the protest group Palestine Action under anti-terrorism legislation. This will place it in the same legal category as Al Qaeda and Islamic State: it will be illegal to belong to the group, to show public support for it, to arrange a meeting in support for it, and so on. The difference between Palestine Action and Al Qaeda et al, as many commentators have pointed out, is that it has never committed violence against individuals or, as far as we can tell, does it have any plans to do so. It is a protest group which seems to adopt fairly typical strategies of civil disobedience. It seems to have attracted the ire of the government, though, by breaking into a military base and spraying red paint on aircraft (as a protest over the government’s support for Israel).
I am not the first to say this, but: if this is terrorism, then so too was the Greenham Common Peace movement. The women of Greenham Common also (regularly) broke into a military compound and committed criminal damage there. Their stated aim was to force the government to stop storing cruise missiles on the site. But the women of Greenham Common are not usually considered terrorists: in fact, visit the scene now and you will see a public monument to their efforts.
So, can any sense be made of the apparent claim that – quite aside from any purported threat to kill or harm or cause mass panic among civilians, none of which appear to be at stake here – mild damage to physical assets should count as terrorism, in cases where those assets are military in nature? Or is this an instance of absurd legal over-reach, intended to produce a chilling effect on anti-war protestors?
NB: Let’s keep any discussion focused on the nature of terrorism and the question of whether this is a good use of legislation please – there are plenty of opportunities to discuss the conflict(s) in the Middle East elsewhere.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
MisterMr 06.24.25 at 9:02 am
According to authoritarian regimes, terrorism = people who disagree with the regime.
Phil Edwards 06.24.25 at 10:03 am
Terrorism as defined in the 2000 Act has a three-part definition, covering act, overall motivation and immediate aim. The act can be any one of a number of completed or attempted actions; the overall motivation must be political, ideological, religious or racial [sic – I would have thought ‘political’ covered racist goals]; and the immediate aim must be to influence the government or to intimidate members of the public. The immediate aim doesn’t need to be proved if firearms or explosives were used.
A terrorist act can be one that involves ‘serious damage to property’ (Terrorism Act 2000 1(2)(b)). There’s been some argument to the effect that ‘obviously’ this doesn’t mean daubing paint on planes on lease to the RAF or temporarily shutting down Elbit Systems, but I think that’s the wrong emphasis – it’s only too easy to make the argument that damage valued at however many thousand £ should be considered ‘serious’.
The fact is, the terms in which the legislation is drafted are – by design – incredibly broad. As I wrote on Verfassungsblog a bit back, “suspicious acts and individuals qualify to be considered as ‘terrorist’ on the basis of an act of more or less speculative inference—which is itself an exercise of prosecutorial discretion”. In that article I was writing about the inclusion of ‘preparation’ offences under the heading of terrorism, but something very similar applies to the inclusion of different kinds of violence. On one hand, there’s nothing in the legislation to stop someone who hasn’t done anything illegal or harmful being convicted for preparing to commit an act of terrorism, if the prosecution presents a persuasive intelligence-backed case that this is in fact what that person was doing. On the other hand, as we’re seeing now, there’s nothing to stop someone who has committed a type of politically-motivated direct action that would never normally be considered terrorism from being prosecuted as a terrorist.
If the proscription of Pal Action goes through, it will be a very sad day for democratic politics in Britain. It’ll mean the end of direct action as a protest tactic, and it’ll reduce the compass of extra-parliamentary politics to the most orderly and well-managed protest events – and even those will be constantly policing themselves to expel disorderly elements so as to avoid being associated with them.
Chris Armstrong 06.24.25 at 10:21 am
Thanks Phil, that’s very informative. It does seem the legislation is very capacious in what could be considered terrorism. But as you say, its extension to a case like this appears entirely novel. One would think it would have been easy to prosecute PA under regular criminal damage or public order legislation, of the type used to prosecute Just Stop Oil. The decision to turn instead to terrorism legislation is extraordinary.
engels 06.24.25 at 10:32 am
Britain is experimenting with a new route to fascism, where you don’t have charismatic leaders, just bumbling Mr Brittas types.
engels 06.24.25 at 10:35 am
Btw this means you can get up to 14 years for expressing approval of Palestine Action, does it not?
Chris Armstrong 06.24.25 at 10:40 am
@5 – I believe so, yes.
Phil 06.24.25 at 10:49 am
In a 2019 addition to the Act (which some of us hoped Labour might repeal when they got in):
A person commits an offence if the person—
(a) expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation, and
(b) in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.
“Reckless” here basically means that you don’t have to intend to encourage hearers to support the proscribed organisation; if you want to be sure of avoiding prosecution you need to make it clear that you don’t have that intention. Real 1984 stuff – which has only been made even vaguely tolerable by how sparingly the government’s used it. Until now.
NomadUK 06.24.25 at 11:31 am
Thank heaven we stopped that whackjob Corbyn from becoming PM! Really dodged a bullet there.
CP Norris 06.24.25 at 1:18 pm
Would foreigners who reshared approval of Palestine Action messages on Twitter or Blue Sky and then visited the UK be in danger of arrest?
M Caswell 06.24.25 at 1:27 pm
“It’ll mean the end of direct action as a protest tactic”
I don’t see that this follows– civil disobedience can involve getting arrested, whether or not the charge is “terrorism,” no?
Phil Edwards 06.24.25 at 4:20 pm
M. Caswell @10: when I said that the government’s (apparent) new approach to terrorism would mean the end of “direct action”, I was thinking of the kind of planned but unannounced disruptive activity which has always been part of the repertoire of protest. Often it involves property damage (which could be argued to be ‘serious’), but even when it doesn’t it may well be possible to argue that it creates “a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public”, which is another possible form of ‘terrorism’ under the Terrorism Act.
This issue has never arisen before, because no government since 2000 – when the Terrorism Act was passed – has used its powers against political protest. But it was always possible to do so, and this government seems to have decided to give it a go. As for whether protesters might still be willing to get arrested – as indeed XR and JSO activists frequently have done – all I’ll say is that terrorism sentences tend to be long; somebody willing to take a twelve-month sentence for the cause would probably think twice if they knew it was more likely to be 15 years.
RobinM 06.24.25 at 6:02 pm
I think MisterMr’s opening comment deserves repetition.
Undoubtedly, genuinely violent action does get planned and does get carried out. But look at the purportedly liberal democratic regimes now grossly expanding the notion of what contitutes unacceptable violence to include quite customaryactions which impose no significant injury on anyone or anything. It’s the same sort of approach that has been employed in designating speech of various sorts as unacceptable because it might hurt someone’s feelings—and there’s always someone or some organisation only to ready to claim that certain words caused them pain or made them fearful. (A side acknowlegement here to NomadUK’s comment.).
But back to MisterMr’s comment: he’s surely right to imply that we ought to be looking more largely at the sort of regime we live under if it so egregiously goes out of its way to threaten with severe punishment those who try to draw attention to the regime’s unacceptable actions as they see them to be. And the punishments need not actually be imposed to cause great harm to those who have to spend time and money fighting the charges against them in court.
In other words, authoritarianism is a much more widespread and complex threat than we take it to be when we focus on its most obvious exemplars. It’s a widespread metastasising cancer.
Cheer Whiz 06.24.25 at 8:19 pm
The broadness and vagueness of your Terrorism act is deliberate and useful. It allows for creative interpretation of an action to fit the broad vague definition, allowing for cruel and unusual punishment.
The Republican party in the US use this to craft anti-abortion laws, making someone who gives money or a referral or a ride an accessory to the murder of an “unborn child”.
Alex SL 06.24.25 at 10:17 pm
I was already exasperated in the early 2000s when, in reaction to ‘nine eleven’, various countries developed legislation against terrorism, specifically. Why was that necessary? Murder was already illegal. Being a member of a criminal organisation was already illegal. What was gained? While it created a surveillance state, in terms actually achieving anything against potential terrorist attacks it seemed merely symbolic. A new problem arises, so you need new laws, right? Only terrorism was nothing new, it existed in the 19th century, indiscriminate bombings included.
As for a definition, what most reasonable people mean with the term is either violence with the intention to cause terror at least in some group of people for political or religious reasons, or indiscriminate violence against a group of people. In other words, the violence can be targeted e.g. against an individual critic or artist to silence others like them, or it could be untargeted, but it is meant to create political or religious change through fear. I would therefore exclude violence with the aim of ‘only’ murdering very specific targets (the killing of those killed is already the end in itself), and violence that is meant to create fear but is not political or religious; certainly very few people who say terrorism mean person A beating up person B because B hasn’t paid a debt they owe A.
However, under this definition, a riotous starvation protest would still fall under the scope of terrorism: the protesters are committing violence to create fear for political reasons: give us food or money, or we will set cars on fire and throw rocks into windows. This tells me that terrorism is indeed epistemically not a very useful category, because it is too broad. And I get back to asking why we need that term as part of any legislation when murder, membership in criminal organisation, vandalism, etc., are already illegal.
It is, indeed, merely a label that can be slapped onto one’s enemies. It is one of the usual irregular verbs and nouns: I am a faithful person, you are a religious extremist. The USA are pursuing their strategic geopolitical interests, China is trying to gain influence in other countries. We are supporting our vital industries, you are trying to undercut us. My allies are freedom fighters, yours are terrorists.
Mike on the Internet 06.25.25 at 2:07 am
From a “reasonably defensible definition of words” standpoint it seems like direct action against military assets is categorically not terrorism, because it doesn’t target civilians. It might be judged to be of comparable severity as attacks on civilian assets (for instance, illegally entering a commuter train depot and defacing equipment), but calling it terrorism just seems like a category error. States shouldn’t need to abuse language to make a case for harshly punishing people who trespass and vandalize military sites (however one might feel about the exculpatory value of the offenders’ motivations).
Of course, trespassing on farms (or even gaining employment on farms with false pretenses) in order to film animal abuse is also defined as terrorism in many North American jurisdictions, so I guess words don’t mean anything anymore.
nonrenormalizable 06.25.25 at 4:31 am
I’m not totally sure about the legislative history, but given some of its more extreme actions, wouldn’t the Suffragette movement be proscribed today? I’ve seen arguments that the government’s fear of the resumption of the WSPU bombing campaign after the war ended in 1918 in large part motivated the extension of the franchise to women.
Any damage done so far by Palestine Action seems not to rise to this level — though one wonders if they will be more or less successful than the Suffragettes as a result.
Tm 06.25.25 at 9:03 am
I am under no illusions about the quality of the political discourse and the mainstream media environment in UK (or elsewhere) but still I have to ask: is it possible that the courts will be okay with this? And perhaps more importantly, is this going to fly with public opinion? We have just seen that the charge against progressive candiate Zohran Mamdani of being anti-Israel has failed to convince the public in NYC. It seems to me that the pro-Israel propaganda brigade is starting to lose public opinion.
engels 06.25.25 at 5:06 pm
if this is terrorism, then so too was the Greenham Common Peace movement
I’m guessing that’s a feature not a bug.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/how-and-why-is-britain-obtaining-access-to-nuclear-gravity-bombs-f-35a
engels 06.25.25 at 5:17 pm
Ofc there’s also this (between rappers saying mean things and red paint thrown at bomber jets UK must be on red “terror” alert rn).
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/18/kneecap-rapper-charged-with-terror-offence-released-on-unconditional-bail-liam-og-o-hannaidh
wetzel-rhymes-with 06.25.25 at 10:27 pm
Terrorism acts are violent. What makes a violent action terrorist, I believe, is that the violence has an expressive dimension, meaning it delivers a message. The World Trade Center bombings were not militarily significant but they put the United States into a terrorized state. They were not an act of violence to achieve certain material advantage, but to terrorize, and so I believe this is what makes something “terrorism”. It’s violent and it’s meant to terrorize. However, in fascism I believe terrorism is the fundamental form of communication because in fascism scapegoating is the central ritual. Violence is a form of propaganda or a message of domination. In fascist phenomenology, violence is a form of expression and expressions are a form of violence. The framework in which those two may be indistinguishable is totalitarian, I think.