“Counter-Terrorism” – an evolving threat
JVL Introduction
For a long time, terrorism was commonly understood as violent threats to ordinary people. Les Levidow writing for RS21 demonstrates how the Terrorism Act 2000 changed the parameters to define “terrorism” more broadly than before, including the threat of ‘serious damage to property’, in ways ‘designed to influence the government’ for a ‘political cause’.
Tony Benn analysed its political aims at a public meeting in 2001:
[The ‘anti-terror’ framework is] an agreement among the governments of the world that no government is to be challenged from inside with support from outside. It has little to do with ‘terrorism’. In a global economy Britain wants to trade with repressive regimes. And if they find that these regimes are complaining – that there are people in London campaigning for Kurdish rights, for Tamil rights or for Kashmiri rights – then the British government is expected to respond.
Levidow suggests that this has chilling implications requiring a unified response from movements in solidarity with liberation struggles across the world.
NWI
This article was originally published by RS21 on Sat 7 Dec 2024. Read the original here.
Palestine activists face the British state of terror
Anti-terror powers have intensified against Palestine activists and more recently against Kurdish activists, with raids, detentions, and restrictions imposed. Les Levidow uncovers the political motives behind this repression and calls for united resistance to challenge the counter-terror regime.
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For those who don’t already know, Tony Greenstein will be formally charged at Westminster Magistrates’ Court at 10am on Thursday 19 December at 10am with supporting a proscribed organisation under section 12 (1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The ‘offence’ carries a prison sentence of up to fourteen years if convicted.
Supporters are asked to gather outside the court as the hearing takes place, to send a signal of resistance against this attack on free speech on Palestine.
Good article. Agree “we are all terrorists” now.
The Labour Friends of Israel got upset about something I said online so had me arrested. Police claimed that my remarks were “malicious” to which I replied that I bore them no malice but just despiced them! We could be forgiven for thinking that the police would be better deployed.
Let’s also not forget that Israel’s detention laws are built on a foundation of the British Mandate detention laws prior to 1948. I divide my time between the Scotland and co-resistance work Palestine/Israel. As a leader of a joint Palestinian/Israeli organisation I fully expect to be detained at some point.
I have been outraged by the increasingly authoritarian actions of the UK government, restricting the right to protest and freedom of speech. It is actually worse than Israel at this point. For instance a couple of months ago several activists received draconian prison sentences.
Climate activists Roger Hallam, Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu and Cressida Gethin were found guilty of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance by blocking a motorway – for a phone call!!! In Tel Aviv blocking the main motorway through the city, the Ayalon, is almost a weekly occurrence by ‘cease-fire’ anti-government protesters. At most it is a civil offence and the police usually just shoo the activists off the road. In the UK it is a five-year prison offence!!
The article ends with the question:
– “What collective action can embolden defiance and weaken the counter-terror regime?” –
Probably a campaign to inform the general public that their freedoms are being eaten away, and rather than the activists being a ‘public nuisance’ deserving a custodial sentence, it needs to be demonstrated to the average citizen that activists are the proverbial canary in the mine shaft – alerting everyone else of the grave danger in the UK and the slide towards authoritarian rule under a thin guise of parliamentary democracy. Keep in mind that Israel also claims to be a ‘democracy’ and we all know it is anything but . .
The British working class has always been a sleeping giant, rising up when their rights are being eroded…
[cut to our limit of 300 words – admin]
The most common reaction to the 2000 Act is self-censorship, since even among those who feel that they understand what the state is attempting to do and have the confidence (and courage) to express their views, there is a reluctance to be labelled a “terrorist”.
Add to this the realisation that if during some local demonstration someone expresses the view that Israel’s genocide will not succeed in defeating the Palestinian cause, it will be a local bobby who intervenes, acting on whatever advice he or she is receiving over a live link to a local police station, then this seemingly lowkey event could greatly affect a career, detain the accused for several hours and disrupt normal life for an unknown period ahead.
During one picket of the local Barclays, a man of Asian background, not part of the rally but simply moving through the throng outside the bank, said the one word “Hamas”; he was spoken to by a policeman who had heard what he had said and he was led away to a waiting police van. Several of the protesters went to his aid but were told to back off by the police, and after several minutes of argument, also by the man himself, perhaps fearing that his treatment would be the worse for our intervention.
I don’t think he was charged, but then we didn’t know his name, so it would have been difficult to find out.
This is the land we are living in.