21st September 2025
Why is the general criminal law not sufficient to deal with direct action groups?
Over at Prospect I have done a couple of posts about the proscription of Palestine Action. My latest post is here, which is based on a close reading of the disclosed MI5 assessment.
Writing about this is not because I have a particular interest in or knowledge of Palestine. Like many I support the ultimate goal of a two-state solution and the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, but this is not a foreign policy blog.
For this blog the proscription of Palestine Action is of interest because of what it tells us about terrorism law (and constitutional law) of the United Kingdom. It is an important case study of how terrorism law can perhaps over-reach.
By way of background, terrorism law is a distinct body of law that provides legal powers and privileges to the state in addition to the general criminal and civil law of the land.
In essence: terrorism law is there for when the general criminal and civil law is not sufficient for dealing with certain situations.
Before 2000 terrorism law was special and explicitly temporary:
And it was on this special and temporary basis that the United Kingdom government dealt with the biggest terrorism threat of modern times: that which arose from the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland.
But in 2000 this changed and terrorism law was placed on a permanent basis with a Terrorism Act.
And since then there were many other Acts:
One might think from their titles that the “Anti-terrorism” and “Counter Terrorism” Acts would cancel out the “Terrorism” Acts, leaving us with a balance of one or two.
But no, they are cumulative.
And the legislation has effectively created a security state within a state. There have also been statutes dealing with government surveillance and so on.
Terrorism law is now vast and complex, but it also can be rigid and clumsy.
And applying it to what can be better called a “direct action” group was perhaps not a wise move.
Because when a group is proscribed it has all sorts of other legal effects – including, since 2019, the criminalising of even expressing a supportive opinion.
And this is why we have ended up with what seems an absurd spectacle of mass arrests under terrorism law for people expressing opinions in support of a direct action group, while the actual organisers of the said direct actions are being dealt with primarily under general criminal law.
It even seems the police do not know what to actually do with their mass arrestees, with accounts of extended bail periods instead of any charging decisions.
The proscription is under legal challenge, and one gets a sense from the outside that the government fear that the proscription may be quashed in part or in full. We, of course, do not have the “closed” material which only a court can see, but the “open” material is flimsy stuff. The government is certainly trying to head the case off without a substantive hearing.
And it is difficult to see how it can be proportionate to criminalise hundreds of people for expressing an opinion in support of a direct action group which even MI5 admit is mainly engaged in conduct that is not terrorism. It is also hard to see what useful is added to the general criminal law by proscription in dealing with direct action activists.
That said, the courts are generally deferent to the executive and will usually regard the Home Secretary as being better placed than a judge in assessing national security measures. On balance the proscription is likely to survive legal challenge.
But as a worked example of terrorism law in practice this proscription may have the unwelcome effect of discrediting terrorism law, and that would not be a sensible or welcome outcome.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.
More on the comments policy is here.
As I understand it (of course, I may be wrong), some of those recently arrested were proclaiming support not for the proscribed group, but for commonly held goals such as the cessation of genocidal acts in Gaza. How can this possibly be construed as terrorist action?
The point of the action was to get arrested for wearing a slogan that is both that of a proscribed group *and* a general statement of support for Palestine.
PA are not Quakers, and whether or not the proscription was right is not something I’d like to comment on. However the police were in the invidious position of either nicking everyone or demonstrating that there are levels of proscription.
Laws which place the police in an invidious position are sub-optimal.
Every sit down protest in history has put the police in an invidious position, manhandling protesters away.
I suspect that the same logic exists as for Terrorism exists for preemptively addressing groups taking certain types of criminal actions via a legally clear and streamlined process, and those arguments increase in strength in the eyes of govt in an age of subversion and hybrid warfare.
Whether that’s sufficiently strong or not I’ll leave for others: but I can certainly see why the security state would consider it a high priority.
Use of the existing anti-terror legislation is not the right instrument: if anything it has increased the problem in this case.
The extended bail periods are almost certainly the result of the counter-terrorist command having a) to do the volume of work normally lumped on the public order branch and b) the fact that each one is likely to have to go up to the CPS – I can’t see the met even considering police charges, you know they’re all going not guilty and I doubt even Westminster mags will try and hang onto them.
I agree with the meat of your post, and I wonder how many of the MPs who voted for the proscription of PA expected to see so many OAPs being arrested as a result!
I would query your last sentence: “this proscription may have the unwelcome effect of discrediting terrorism law, and that would not be a sensible or welcome outcome.”
What is so unwelcome about discrediting terrorism law? The whole of the rest of the post seems to be making the point that criminal actions can and should be dealt with under the criminal law. Terrorism is about the purpose of the criminal act and there is a strong case for saying that the legal system should not be concerned with the purpose of acts but with their results. Or am I wrong?
Those arrested were holding signs saying “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. The second sentence encapsulates the offence as PA is now a proscribed terrorist group.
The Government has rather shot itself in the foot. PA has admitted that its members committed criminal damage. Speaking as someone who was on the fringes of the lead up to the GFA, I can state quite clearly that real terrorists are in a completely different league.
I think discrediting Terrorism Law might not be a bad thing. It is often abused by the authorities, for example to justify extended detention of suspects on spurious terrorism grounds. In this case it is the wording of the proscription order that opens it up to such a wide definition. A review of the law would be welcome to prevent abuse and overreach. The fact that the courts rely on a politician’s judgement, is in itself a concern.
I would agree that discrediting Terrorism law may not be a bad thing, when it is so often abused by authorities. The outgoing head of MI6 has now confirmed that MI6 has been cooperating with HTS in Syria – proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act – for years.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/speech-by-sir-richard-moore-chief-of-sis-19-september-2025
There may be a place for terrorism laws – but not in their current form and with their huge overreach
Hi David. I would have liked to read your Prospect article, but it seems that’s behind a paywall. Just in case you didn’t know….
I understand it may only require email registration, but even if there is a paywall, then…
…pay if you want the content. Why do you assume journalism is for free?
For what it is worth, Palestine Action was not terrifying me.
Is there something not apparent motivating a person or persons in authority?
I suspect the thinking is similar to terrorism in that while everything terrorists do can be dealt with in criminal law; in practice proving specific acts in an open court is too cumbersome to take preventative action.
After the vandalism of the voyager tanker aircraft (which I understand also support the airborne early warning support for Ukraine), and their online calls for people to attack govt property as a form of protest; I imagine the security apparatus became focused on how the grey area between terrorism as we have understood it and extreme forms of protest that groups like PA are seeking to normalise could be exploited for conducting hybrid warfare.
There’s no suggestion I’ve seen that PA is a catspaw for Russia, or being manipulated by Russia without their knowledge; but enemy states (even non-sate actors) mobilising groups like this and setting them off to sabotage the UK or destabilise the country isn’t very hard to imagine these days; and the challenges in taking preventative action are similar to terrorism. “We’ve got a tool for that already…” I imagine was the thinking.
At the very least, I can imagine they’d want to try and set a strong norm that breaking into military bases is not acceptable. One can imagine how this might ultimately end in overly enthusiastic student protestors getting injured by security forces given the seriousness with which forces will start to take the risk from actual hybrid war as tensions between Russian and NATO continue to escalate.
This is the context I think makes sense of the govt action.
However he legal tool available is much broader and stronger and over-reach for even violent protest on behalf of an ideological cause that isn’t overtly of the kind terrorism is normally associated with, and it’s use seems to be pouring oil on the fire more than achieving anything useful.
The anti-terrorism laws have many undesirable dimensions, not least the failure to draw a clear distinction between political support for an organisation and operational involvement in acts of lethal violence, which would of course include financing and planning of such violence. The result is a chilling effect on even discussing conflicts involving proscribed groups, Thus, if I was still in a position to do so, I would strongly advise any student NOT to make a study of any proscribed group because of the dangers involved in tackling such a sensitive topic, as well as the practical difficulties of obtaining relevant material on the political thinking of such groups. The outcome, which is very evident in the coverage of such conflicts, is a high level of ignorance in the UK about what is happening in many places. That even includes conflicts within the UK itself e.g. in Northern Ireland. In very extreme circumstances, there might be justification for criminalising expression of political support for a terrorist group, on the grounds that it might give rise to serious disorder in the streets. That was a consideration when the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act was put in place as an emergency measure in 1974. It is scarcely relevant now. It is high time these laws were re-visited.