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Facts do matter Cyril. You just picked a very curious place to start your crusade, not least because we don't know the actual cost so basing it on reports at the time is a not unreasonable thing to do in the circumstances.Originally Posted by cyril evans awaydays
As stated, I look forward to you doing this consistently.
As I recall your "gold standard" for consistency is that for some types of protest people need to understand the "underlying causes" and for others they need to be condemned unreservedly because of the damage and disruption they cause, regardless of merit.
Not sure what you are implying now, but there is an accusatory tone with you today. I'll clarify:
Understanding underlying causes for issues is always good. Even if something is wholly bad, evil, whatever. Understanding why it happened is critical to making it less likely to happen again. Understanding why some people are opposed to Israel at the moment (and Hamas) is not hard in this instance.
Protest is critical and a key part of any democracy. I've been on perhaps a dozen matches on topics as diverse as the war in Iraq to the colour of our clubs shirts myself. We don't have to agree with the cause but the right to do it is important.
Stepping over into violence, criminal damage etc cannot be acceptable, not when we have democratic processes in place and a right to protest (it is inevitably different where these outlets don't exist). These would be dealt with in the overwhelming majority of cases by criminal (not terrorist) laws.
When that violence / criminal damage is orchestrated against the states armed forces and is done so to try and alter government policy to that groups thinking, it's not hard to see how this can lead to the group being proscribed. This is irrespective of whether you believe in the groups core message or understand the underlying causes.
The threshold is clearly when something steps into being violent or criminal then it is no longer peaceful. And when it steps into an orchestrated and planned series of violent actions against the state it could be, and seemingly is in this case, crossing a line leading to the group being proscribed.
Do you disagree with much of that?
Violent application of red paint?
What about this group of 'terrorists' who are planning to break the law in rural Dorset? The crime of trespass - like those Palestine Action monsters!
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ners-shut-path
In your words: 'when something steps into being violent or criminal then it is no longer peaceful' so I hope for full condemnation of this violent plan to have a picnic, sing songs and carry out a writing workshop.
But that's the point James,
I used the term "underlying causes" deliberately because that was what you used to discuss the bahaviour of the people involved in the Southport riots. You clarified that as meaning that people had had enough of the levels of immigration which brought them out onto the streets as some for of explanation of their subsequent behaviour.
Yet here we are with a different set of "underlying causes" where you believe people's behaviour is inexcusable.
I can't help you with your blind spots other than to point them out!
Kier Starmer 2003 v Kier Starmer 2025:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/i...hem-terrorists
Two days before the missiles started raining down on Baghdad in March 2003, Josh Richards packed a mixture of petrol and washing-up liquid into his rucksack and headed off to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. His plan was to set fire to the wheels of a B-52 USAF bomber to prevent it from joining in the imminent shock and awe.
He was caught before he could act, but he was not the only person planning a last-ditch attempt to hinder a war which many considered illegal. A few days earlier, Margaret Jones and Paul Milling had cut their way into the same airbase and damaged a number of fuel tankers and bomb trailers. Another two men in their thirties, Phil Pritchard and Toby Olditch, armed themselves with paint, nuts and bolts with the intention of damaging the bombers‘ engines.
Today this group of five would be labelled terrorists....
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The protestors lawyered up and their briefs decided on an original defence—arguing that their actions were justified, morally and legally, because they were aimed at preventing a greater evil—ie the war in Iraq and its probable consequences. They were, in short, willing to commit crimes in order to prevent greater crimes.
Among the barristers who came up with this intriguing defence was a rising star of the human rights bar, Keir Starmer QC. He argued the case on behalf of Josh Richards, first at the Court of Appeal in June 2004 and then again before the House of Lords in March 2006. The presiding judge, Lord Bingham, went out of his way to praise the “erudition” involved.
The appeal did not totally succeed, but in his judgment Lord Hoffmann articulated a humane view of how, in the UK, he believed we have traditionally regarded such acts of protest:
“Civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country," he wrote (at paragraph 89). “People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history. The suffragettes are an example which comes immediately to mind. It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate protests and demonstrations of this kind.”
Hoffman outlined the “conventions” he thought should govern such acts of civil disobedience in his “civilised community”. The law-breakers had to behave with a sense of proportion and avoid excessive damage. The law-enforcers, on the other hand, should “behave with restraint [and]… take the conscientious motives of the protesters into account”.
But now, at the behest of his government, such people are to be defined as terrorists. Forget trying to understand their conscientious motives. Lock them up and ban them. What happened?
Let‘s try some hypotheses.
The first possible explanation is that Starmer in 2004 was just operating on the “cab rank” principle. He didn‘t actually believe all that stuff he argued in the posh courts: he was just making the best case he could. But one former Doughty Street Chambers colleague told me Starmer “totally” believed in the right to protest.
Some argue he is simply a massive hypocrite. He couldn‘t care less that there‘s a yawning gulf between what he then argued and what he now advocates. Or maybe he has just changed his mind? Perhaps he had some sympathy with the Fairford cause (Iraq) and less for the Brize Norton protests (Palestine)?
Perhaps he still holds the same views he expressed 20 years ago, but has been advised it would be politically unwise to voice them. Reform is storming ahead in the polls and is demanding tough action. Now‘s not the time to out yourself as a bleeding-heart liberal. So, you can show your toughness by outlawing the very sort of people you once defended. And, while you‘re about it, tell Glastonbury to drop another “terrorist” from its bill— in this case, the Irish-language rap group Kneecap.
Or maybe he believes in nothing? That, after all, is what a significant slew of even his own backbenchers are coming to assume.
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“Yes, they should stand trial. Yes, they‘ve committed criminal damage,” Baroness Helena Kennedy, a fellow civil rights lawyer, told me. “But to label them terrorists seems extraordinary to me. It‘s going down the old Trump road, and I don‘t like it at all. There‘s a sense in which you have a US government which has no respect for the rule of law and there‘s now a kind of poison seeping into our own legal aquifer.”
As I write another four protestors have been arrested by counter-terror police in relation to action at Brize Norton. You can’t help wondering whether the concept of terrorism itself is being somewhat watered down by the Starmer government.
And you can’t help wonder at the philosophical somersaults taking place in the prime minister’s mind as he stands everything he argued for 20 years ago on its head.
There are underlying causes to both issues, and criminal actions to both. If an organised group specifically went out to damage asylum seeker accommodation and to put it out of meaningful use to try and change govt policy then I would be staggered if that group wouldn't also be proscribed.
Just like Keir and Lammy changed their minds about Trump only this time over a shorter time period.
True.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...hallenge-fails
Being a member of, or showing support for, Palestine Action will be a criminal offence from Saturday after a last-minute legal challenge to suspend the group’s proscription under anti-terrorism laws failed.
A ban on Palestine Action, which uses direct action to mainly target Israeli weapons factories in the UK and their supply chain, was voted through by parliament this week but lawyers acting for its co-founder Huda Ammori had sought to prevent it taking effect.
After a hearing at the high court on Friday, however, Mr Justice Chamberlain declined to grant her application for interim relief.
It means Palestine Action will become the first direct action protest group to be banned under the Terrorism Act, placing it in the same category as Islamic State, al-Qaida and the far-right group National Action.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...protest-rights
When Jack Straw (as Home Secretary under the first Blair government) introduced the Terrorism Act in 2000 he defined 'terrorism'.
“Terrorism involves the threat or use of serious violence for political, religious or ideological ends. It … aims to create a climate of extreme fear”
That has been used to proscribe a direct action protest group who use no violence. Yes, that is the sound of jack boots getting closer!
Any form of dissent shall be purged completely and ruthlessly.
It's almost as if being in opposition and being in government are two different things?!
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