plodder wrote: Sun Feb 15, 2026 11:13 am
Tristan wrote: Fri Feb 13, 2026 3:46 pm
You don’t “terrify property”. You terrify people by damaging property.
The law recognises that serious damage to property can be terrorism because of its impact on people: workers who have to flee, security staff and police who are injured, businesses and communities who are intimidated, and the wider public who are meant to get the message “this could happen to you next”.
That’s exactly what the court accepted here. It rejected the idea that large‑scale, destructive attacks with sledgehammers and covert tactics are “non‑violent”, because they create a real risk of injury and panic, and are designed to intimidate and coerce. That’s why serious property damage can (and did) meet the statutory definition of terrorism.
That's completely daft and defines things like ram raiding as terrorism. How else would you smash up weapons components?
The case has laid bare that the real reason the government was doing this is to defend the parts of the Israeli defence industry located here from disruptive and damaging protest, not to prevent real terrorism as commonly understood.
The government's independent terrorist legislation reviewer, Jonathan Hall KC, interviewed on Radio 4, was surprised the government lost the case, because a previous government in about 2019 tweaked the definition of terrorism to make it broad. And they ought to be able to proscribe them under this legislation. But as counter-balance to that broad definition, the government introduced the possibility of appealing against a proscription. Hall thought this ability to appeal was a silly idea (so trespassing into policy rather than law), as you need to be decisive when dealing with terrorists. But we can understand why it is there, when an awful lot of everyday criminality, like ram raiding as you mention, is now defined as terrorism. And of course, we aren't dealing with commonly understood terrorists where decisive action is essential.
Governments often tell us, we need broad definitions so people don't creep around them. But trust us, we won't abuse that broad definition, we will use the powers proportionately. Whenever you hear a government tell you that, you know they are lying, because broad powers always end up being used broadly. Which is just what has happened here.
I think many people, including judges, appreciate that just because precisely 3 incidents can arguably be called terrorism, out of the very many things PA has done, that doesn't mean we are dealing with a terrorist organisation in the normal sense, because the definition of terrorism is broadly taken. As the appeal court judges mentioned, Palestine Action uses criminal actions to promote its point of view. The appeal court took the view that the criminal law was sufficient to control criminal actions. Whilst just 3 of Palestine Actions potentially crossed the line into terrorism, because of the broad framing, the criminal law was sufficient to address those also. That is why it to the court it was disproportionate. Mr Hall felt that if they had done it right, the government ought to have be able to assert its ban, because legally it is sufficient, whatever the morality.
And Hall had a "moral reason" why it was appropriate for PA to be prescribed (again trespassing into policy). And that was because PA's supporters provide funds, and those funds are used for supporting criminal actions. Hall pointed out that it is only proscription as a terrorist organisation that puts in place a control on their funding. So Hall is seems to be saying that it is right to proscribe them as a terrorist organisation, even if we don't really think they are terrorists, because they worthy of being proscribed for wider reasons.
Well I'm not very impressed with that argument either.
But I will be unsurprised if the government manages to get its ducks in a row and get what it wants in some higher court. As it also did with Shabina Begum.
