On 2 December 1999, Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw announced sweeping changes to existing prevention of terrorism laws to be introduced in this session of Parliament. This is one more example of the Labour government grasping more powers for the state at the expense of civil liberties—not a surprise for a party that has been the prime architect of much of the special powers legislation used by the British state over the last hundred years.
The new Terrorism Act will replace the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Temporary Provisions) and the Emergency Provisions Act governing the north of Ireland. It will make permanent the ‘draconian’ measures infringing civil liberties which were previously justified on the grounds of a ‘temporary emergency’ in Ireland. The new law will give terrorism ‘a more modern definition’ (Home Office Press Statement). For ‘modern,’ read wider and more globally authoritarian:
- Terrorism will now include ‘ideological’ and ‘religious’ motivation as well as the standard ‘political’ aims;
- This new definition will apply to domestic activities as well as to Irish and international terrorism;
- The state will be able to proscribe (ie ban) organisations said to be concerned in international and domestic terrorism as well as Irish terrorism;
- There will be a new ‘and carefully prescribed offence’ of inciting terrorist acts abroad from within the UK.
To understand these refinements and their real aim, it is worth looking at the way the previous Prevention of Terrorism Act worked and what it was used for.
In fact emergency or special powers have existed in Ireland without a break since the 19th century. The climate created by exceptional laws, depriving sections of the population of basic rights, was a major contribution to the situation in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s—the emergence of a civil rights movement and the renewal of the armed republican struggle, when demands for equality were savagely repressed and internment introduced.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act (Temporary Provisions) was introduced in response to the Guildford and Woolwich bombs and, in particular, the Birmingham pub bombs on 21 November 1974. First introduced in Parliament on 27 November, by 9:35 am on 29 November, the Act had received Royal Assent as a bloodthirsty House of Commons pulled out the stops—no one opposed the new law. Described by the then Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins as ‘draconian,’ the Act proscribed the IRA, making membership and support a criminal offence, instituted a system of internal exile in the UK where people of Irish origin could be expelled from the ‘mainland’ or banned from travelling to Britain, and increased police powers to arrest without warrant and to detain in custody for up to seven days on the word of a politician—the Home Secretary.
Every year, the PTA was voted on in the Commons, ostensibly as an ‘unfortunate’ necessity to deal with an emergency, and therefore a temporary situation. Extra powers for the police and army were introduced to the north of Ireland itself, alongside special provisions for no-jury trials (Diplock courts). Even when these special powers were challenged in the European Court and ruled to be a breach of human rights, Britain derogated (claimed that the law did not apply) on the grounds of an existing emergency. Over the 26 years since the PTA was first introduced, Britain’s treatment of the Irish, including anyone who supported the Irish cause, became the testing ground for the infringement of civil rights generally. The introduction of paramilitary policing, plastic bullets, the tightening of public order law, the widening of police powers to search, arrest, and conduct surveillance, and the removal of the right to silence were all tested first on the Irish.
In reality, the PTA was not used to combat terrorism—existing police powers were certainly sufficient. What the PTA did was put the Irish—all the Irish and their supporters—beyond the pale. It provided the climate for intimidation and harassment, for false arrest, manufactured evidence and confessions, grave miscarriages of justice, and the brutal treatment of prisoners. In the first seven years of its operation, 5,251 people were arrested under the PTA. Of these, 88 percent were neither charged with an offence nor excluded from Britain. Only 85 people were charged under the Act, and 69 of these were found guilty. The PTA was simply a means of repression and was successful in ensuring that, in Britain, support for the Irish struggle was stifled, especially among Labour supporters and sections of the British socialist left.
In this light, it is easier to see why the Labour government wants a more ‘modern’ Terrorist Act. It has abandoned the notion of an ‘emergency’ situation in favour of permanent draconian powers to deal with certain categories of ‘criminal’ less deserving of rights, apparently, than simple murderers or bank robbers. These will include animal rights activists, environmental activists, J18/Reclaim the Streets activists, ‘Muslim fundamentalists,’ and indeed any organisation or individual which seriously threatens the status quo. Labour is tooling up to police the crisis as it always does, with repression. With its history of support for the PTA, Jack Straw shouldn’t face any troublesome opposition from within the Labour Party.
That said, there is one little local difficulty concerning the new ‘carefully prescribed’ offence of inciting terrorist acts abroad from within the UK. Under its new definition, all acts of violence to further a political, religious, or ideological end are considered terrorism. What if a group of exiles in Britain (and their supporters) attempts to win public support, including financial support, to violently overthrow an entirely oppressive regime in their own country? This regime is so oppressive that even the Labour Party opposes it a little (but not in practice). Let’s pretend that the best-known political prisoner in this oppressed nation is the leader of the rebel army, imprisoned for ‘terrorism,’ and is called Nelson Mandela. Would ANC members and their supporters in exile be imprisoned in Britain under these new terrorism laws? Even the trickiest social-democratic rewriting of the ANC’s history (and there has been some!) could not claim that the ANC opposed violence. The apartheid regime consistently argued that the ANC and PAC were terrorists; with this new Terrorist Bill on the statute book, Labour would have to agree with them.
Carol Brickley
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 153, FEBRUARY/MARCH 2000
