On 8 July 2026, the British state added another weapon to its arsenal of domestic repression. Rushed through both Houses of Parliament, the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026 is now law. Masked by the chauvinistic rhetoric of ‘countering hostile foreign actors’, this piece of legislation is a vicious escalation of the ruling class’s campaign to crush anti-imperialist dissent, criminalise solidarity, and fortify the infra-structure of a British police state. The Act has already been used to ‘designate’ the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a ‘threat to national security’. One person has already been arrested and charged under this legislation.
Introduced by Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and heavily backed by the intelligence apparatus of MI5, the new law strengthens the already authoritarian National Security Act 2023. It gives the Home Secretary unprecedented, unilateral power to designate any foreign organisation or political movement as a threat to the ‘safety or interests’ of British imperialism. The Act creates offences of ‘supporting a designated body’ (s17A), assisting a designated body (s17B) and obtaining material benefits from a designated body (s17C). Crucially, it mirrors the brutal proscription powers of the Terrorism Act (TA) 2000, with these new sweeping criminal offences carrying prison terms of up to 14 years.
Angela Eagle, Security Minister under Keir Starmer’s government, told Parliament that the threats the Act is designed to counter ‘come predominantly, though not exclu-sively, from three countries: Russia, China and Iran’. However, while these are the initial targets, the Act gives the British state a blank cheque to designate the organisations of any oppressed nation or liberation movement which in the future dares to defend its sovereignty against the predatory interests of British imperialism. The Home Secretary can simply slap on a ‘designated threat’ label and anyone living in Britain who displays a flag, speaks in defence of a designated body’s right to resist or organises a solidarity demonstration will face up to a decade and a half in prison. The Act not only mirrors the existing TA 2000 but is unsettlingly similar to the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list – raising the spectre that countries like Cuba and Venezuela, already targeted by the US, could be the next targets for British government ‘designation’.
The National Security Act (NSA) forms part of the incessant drive to war being prosecuted by the Labour government. As the United States ramps up its attacks on Iran, Britain engages gleefully in the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to intensify war with Russia, and both nations fear a rising China that will challenge its interests in the Pacific. By ramping up repression against individuals claimed to be supporting these states, the British government is ensuring the forced compliance of the working class in its imperialist endeavours.
The supposed foreign threat to the British public is not the only target. The Act also takes aim at anti-imperialists in Britain, providing yet another pretext for attacking the movement in solidarity with Palestine and against British and US imperialist support for the Zionist genocide – on the grounds of supposed links with Iran. It also serves to limit the ability of anti-war groups in Britain, weak as they may be, to show any meaningful opposition for the British-backed US war on Iran. Zionists and Iranian monarchists have been begging for years for the IRGC to be proscribed and now finally have their way, with the British state not pausing for breath before exercising its new weapon against supposed supporters of the Iranian military.
The threats the NSA poses to democratic rights in Britain have been highlighted even by some of the most reactionary figures in the British state including Jonathan Hall KC, the British government’s current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Independent Review-er of State Threats Legislation, who has said that that ‘if a humanitarian agency is operating in an area controlled by a designated body which has been expressly named by the Secretary of State, this fact alone may unnerve trustees and banks’.
The passing of the NSA exposes the utter fraud of ‘British democracy’. Whether under Tory or Labour management, the capitalist state remains what Marx and Lenin described as an instrument of class rule, an apparatus of violence used by the bourgeoisie to suppress the working class.
The Labour government has once again proven itself to be thoroughly reactionary as it pioneers new methods of authoritarianism to protect the interests of British finance capital. Even the remainder of the impotent parliamentary ‘Labour left’ in the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) of MPs failed to oppose the Act in its entirety, with not a single SCG MP voting against it in its final stages.
We must refuse to be intimidated by the expanding web of draconian legislation. Security acts, protest bans, and judicial terror cannot resolve the fundamental contradictions of a moribund capitalist system. The only effective response to the ruling class’s offensive is the building of an independent, revolutionary anti-imperialist movement rooted in the working class.
Defend democratic rights!
Smash the British police state!
Jacob O’Neill
