05.12.2024
Permanent state of terror
Journalists and pro-Palestine activists are being arrested on terrorism charges. The mainstream media seems to have taken a vow of silence. So has the soft left, writes Carla Roberts
Under Keir Starmer, the government’s use of the Terrorism Act 2000 has gone into overdrive. The previous Prevention of Terrorism Act was mainly aimed at Irish republicans and not really designed to deal with the rising number of groups and organisations abroad that were taking actions against their respective governments - and were being supported by an increasing number of migrant groups in Britain.
This was very clear to Tony Blair in the run-up to the ‘war on terror’. He felt that more restrictive legislation was required to criminalise opposition to the wars against Afghanistan and then Iraq, especially in the Muslim community. Dozens of groups were outlawed in a first batch in 2001, including a few rightwing British nut outfits. The main target was, however, al Qa’eda and other Islamic groups, the Tamil Tigers and the Kurdish PKK. Hezbollah was added to the list in 2019, Hamas in 2021.
The legislation has been amended a number of times over the last 24 years to suit the changing needs of the government - most recently in 2021, when section 12 (1A) was added - clearly with the specific aim of targeting pro-Palestine supporters. It reads, in full:
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.1
This is an extremely vague formulation, particularly the second part. As Tony Greenstein quite rightly pointed out at a recent Zoom meeting featuring many of those currently prosecuted under the act:2
How would you know what the effect of anything you say or write might be on other people? This section is designed to criminalise an expression of an opinion or a belief and has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. What you say about Hamas or Hezbollah might well be true, but because it is a proscribed organisation, it becomes a criminal offence.
This section has now become the main tool of the government to stop and intimidate pro-Palestinian activists. It is not being ‘misused’, but is achieving exactly what it supposed to do. Those like the Filton 10 have been held for many months, while journalists have been literally ‘terrorised’ by police - their property trashed and their electronic devices permanently confiscated, making it very difficult for them to continue earning a livelihood. A number of people have been stopped at ports of entry, “where the refusal to answer even one question can be interpreted as a terrorist crime”, as Les Levidow from the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities explained in the Zoom meeting, “All these things clearly amount to punishments without trial”.
Anybody successfully charged under section 12 (1A) could be jailed for a maximum of 14 years. This was increased from 10 years when the Counter-terrorism and Sentencing Act 2021 came into force. The government is, in effect, imposing a permanent state of terror against anyone who dissents from UK foreign policy. The anti-Semitism smear campaign of the last 10 years has been so successful that there is now hardly any opposition to the use of this legislation to criminalise dozens of pro-Palestine supporters and journalists, often for nothing more than a tweet.
As Asa Winstanley pointed out, “Not a single mainstream media outlet has reported about any of that. Not a peep from The Guardian or the BBC.” Just like during the campaign to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, most of what remains of the so-called Labour left keeps its mouth firmly shut. There has been no statement from Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy or the careerists associated with the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs. Most unions too stay well clear: “The National Union of Journalists put out a statement about my case, but only after a lot of pressure from other members,” said Winstanley.
Legal action?
The question is: what can we do to fight against this draconian anti-terror legislation? A number of speakers at the Zoom event displayed a rather touching level of illusion in bourgeois law. Peace activist Natalie Strecker, who was arrested in Jersey under similar legislation, kept referring to “international law”, which she thought was clearly on the side of the activists and should be appealed to.
She did not elaborate on who should be enforcing it, but would probably disagree with Lenin, who called the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor organisation, a “den of thieves”. Those bodies - made up of the ruling classes globally - are not on our side, notwithstanding symbolic rulings like the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
While generally making good points in the meeting, Tony Greenstein himself got a little entangled in legalistically arguing the finer points of the Terrorism Act. He argued that the way terrorism is defined means it has to involve “the use or threat of action designed to influence the government. That’s how terrorism is defined. But Israel is not the legitimate government of Gaza - it is illegally in occupation. That has just been confirmed by the International Court of Justice.” Ipso facto, Hamas cannot be a terrorist organisation.
That is, of course, nonsense, mainly because Tony ignored the rest of section 1 of the Terrorism Act. This defines terrorism as the “use or threat of action” directed not just at “the government”, but also at “an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public or the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.3
So in fact the opposite is the case: any group or organisation could be declared ‘terrorist’ under this legislation. As Les Levidow argued, “This definition is so broad as to encompass the entire history of the class struggle”. It does not take a genius to work out that our own working class organisations could be outlawed pretty damn quickly, once they become a threat to the ruling class.
Comrade Greenstein called for “the broadest possible alliance to defend our ancient democratic liberties like freedoms of speech and association. Those rights are part of British law. And if necessary we can take our cases in front of judge and jury and win our cases there.” “Ancient democratic liberties”? If Tony means the 1689 Bill of Rights, that only guaranteed free speech “in parliament”. There has been a negative right to freedom of expression in Britain under the common law, and since 1998 freedom of expression is guaranteed according to article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as applied in British law through the Human Rights Act, but this was only implemented in Britain in the year 2000.4
The current situation shows just how fragile these “ancient democratic liberties” are and how easily the government of the day can do away with them. While some activists associated with Palestine Action or Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion might have won their cases in front of a jury in recent years, the tide is very much turning and comrade Greenstein should be careful what he wishes for.
It is no surprise that the right to trial by jury has come under attack over the last few years. Judges in cases against political protestors associated with Just Stop Oil and Palestine Action have not only restricted the defences available to them, but also limited mention of the defendants’ motivations. This has led to the absurd situation where defendants are not allowed to explain that they acted in order to protest against the climate catastrophe or the genocidal campaign of the Israeli government. The retired social worker, Trudi Ann Warner, was arrested merely for holding up a poster outside a court, declaring: “Jurors you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience” (in the end, she was not charged).5
But there is an even bigger campaign underway against the principle of trial by jury. The government is currently considering scrapping jury trials for thousands of offenders “to reduce record court backlogs”. An “intermediary court”, compromising a judge and two magistrates is supposed to take over all cases “meriting no more than two-year prison sentences”.6 The more obvious answers - that perhaps the government should employ more people in the courts or consider options other than sending people into the overcrowded and horrific prison system - is, of course, not even up for debate. Clearly, this is a step in the direction of doing away with cumbersome juries altogether.