Most people, when asked what terrorism is, will say that it is the use of violence and terror to create fear among people. This is broadly the dictionary definition. The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert, in which 22 people, including many children, were killed, is a clear example.
Yet the legal definition of terrorism in Britain is far broader than this common understanding. Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 allows even “damage to property” to constitute terrorism when it is carried out for a political, religious, racial or ideological purpose and is intended to influence the government or intimidate the public. Where firearms or explosives are involved, the latter requirement does not apply.
Including politically motivated damage to property within the definition was controversial from the start. When Parliament debated the bill in 1999, animal liberation activists were among the groups MPs had in mind. Labour MP Alan Simpson warned during the debate that by defining attacks on property as terrorism, “we transform the relationship between civil protest movements and elected Parliaments and the judicial system.” The criticism did not end with Parliament.
The Supreme Court later described Section 1’s definition of terrorism as “very far-reaching”, while David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called it “remarkably broad – absurdly so in some cases”. Not every organisation whose conduct falls within that definition is proscribed. That decision rests with the government.
Proscription therefore adds a political choice: Which organisations should be banned, making membership and inviting support for them criminal offences. For example, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed Kurdish group that has fought the Turkish state for decades, is proscribed in Britain. Its Syrian offshoot, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not, because PYD-led forces became Western allies in the fight against ISIS (ISIL).
Britain proscribed Hamas’s military wing in 2001. In 2021, Home Secretary Priti Patel extended that proscription to Hamas in its entirety, including its political wing, declaring the previous distinction between the two “artificial”. Many civilian members of Hamas who had never picked up a gun were now deemed terrorists alongside its fighters.
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