Enemies of the State: Proscription Powers and Their Use in the United Kingdom (original) (raw)
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Enemies of the State:Proscription powers and their use in the U.K
2014
This article assesses the use of proscription powers as a tool for countering terrorism, using the United Kingdom as a case study. The article begins with a brief overview of the United Kingdom’s current proscription regime. It then situates this in historical context, noting the significant recent increase in proscribed groups and the predominance of ‘Islamist’ organisations therein. The article then critiques proscription on four principal grounds. First, in terms of the challenges of identifying and designating proscribed groups. Second, we highlight the considerable domestic and transnational politicking that surrounds proscription decisions. Third, we assess the normative importance of protecting scope for political resistance and freedoms of expression and organisation. And, fourth, we question the efficacy of proscription as a counter-terrorism tool. The article concludes by arguing that proscription’s place in contemporary security politics should be heavily safeguarded give...
The Proscription or Listing of Terrorist Organisations
Terrorism and Political Violence, 2018
This article serves as an introduction to this Special Issue on the banning or proscription of terrorist organisations around the world. It begins by arguing for greater attention to proscription powers because of their contemporary ubiquity, considerable historical lineage, implications for political life, and ambiguous effectiveness. Following an overview of the Issue’s questions and ambitions, the article discusses five themes: key moments of continuity and change within proscription regimes around the world; the significance of domestic political and legal contexts and institutions; the value of this power in countering terrorism and beyond; a range of prominent criticisms of proscription, including around civil liberties; and the significance of language and other symbolic practices in the justification and extension of proscription powers. We conclude by sketching the arguments and contributions of the subsequent articles in this Issue.
Proscription is principally deployed as a means to (i) signal government’s disapproval of the ideas of an organisation deemed to be involved in terrorism, and (ii) empower policing and security agencies to dismantle the organisation’s capacity to further those ideas by confiscating resources, financial or otherwise, and prohibiting membership of the association. Yet, while there is a long history of the use of proscription powers in Australia and elsewhere, the legal and policy rationale for banning terrorist organisations has not kept pace with the evolving dimensions of international migration, domestic extremism, and political violence. In this submission, we put forward an alternative framework of proscription that seeks to mitigate some of the concerns that have been raised regarding the transparency, appropriateness and ‘heavy-handedness’ of current proscription powers. It is our view that proscription should be just one of a raft of instruments to tackle extremist violence associated with organisations. It is well-understood that extremism is an area of some subjectivity, particularly with regard to legal definitions of terrorism and organisation and the practical implications for proscription that follow. The framework put forward here seeks to provide government with a range of instruments that enhance the ability of government to (i) clarify whether an organisation is, in fact, oriented towards undertaking or supporting extremist violence; (ii) determine what sanction, if any, is appropriate; (iii) diminish the capacity of organisations to use or support the use of violence.
Terrorism and Political Violence
This article serves as an introduction to this Special Issue on the banning or proscription of terrorist organisations around the world. It begins by arguing for greater attention to proscription powers because of their contemporary ubiquity, considerable historical lineage, implications for political life, and ambiguous effectiveness. Following an overview of the Issue's questions and ambitions, the article discusses five themes: key moments of continuity and change within proscription regimes around the world; the significance of domestic political and legal contexts and institutions; the value of this power in countering terrorism and beyond; a range of prominent criticisms of proscription, including around civil liberties; and the significance of language and other symbolic practices in the justification and extension of proscription powers. We conclude by sketching the arguments and contributions of the subsequent articles in this Issue.
A recent wave of scholarship has drawn attention to the need for further engagement with the role of ‘the audience’ in securitization ‘games’. This article contributes to this discussion both theoretically and empirically, by exploring the types of question an audience may ask of a securitizing actor before a securitizing act meets with success or failure. To do this, it offers a discursive analysis of all twenty-seven UK Parliamentary debates on the extension of proscription powers to additional terrorist organisations between 2002 and 2014. We argue, first, that these are characterised by a wide range of questions relating to the timing, criteria, mechanics, consequences and exclusions of proscription. And, second, that these questions function as demands upon the executive to variously justify, explain, clarify, elaborate and defend decisions to extend the UK’s list of designated groups. Taking these questions seriously, we suggest, therefore allows insight into a variety of ways in which audiences might participate in security politics that are not adequately captured by notions of consent or resistance, or success or failure. This has empirical and theoretical value for understanding proscription, Parliamentary discourse, and securitization alike.
Countering Extremism in the Name of Security: Criminalizing Alternative Politics
This analysis considers the development of counter-extremism strategy in the post-9/11 period. It seeks firstly to locate this development in the context of the evolution of 21st century security strategies and secondly to illustrate that it has a vital role in the current politics of security. Focussing on UK, Australian and U.S. security strategies the paper seeks to illustrate that a common approach to counter-extremism has emerged in recent years leading to an increased prominence of such measures in counter-terrorism strategy. The paper considers why this has occurred, what effects it has on the approach to terrorism and how it affects the dominant understanding of the politics of terrorism. The paper attempts to illustrate the integral role official counter-extremism strategy has in defining extremism and in turn locating those individuals, groups and ideas deemed extreme outside of the parameters of legitimate politics. It seeks to reveal the ways in which counter-extremism work serves to depoliticise those deemed ‘extreme’ and in turn serves to delegitimise, and in certain cases criminalise, any truly alternative politics to those that define the current regime. The analysis considers the legitimising function the extremist/moderate distinction has in relation to the current politics of security and ultimately, the paper seeks to illustrate that through the construction of the extremist, counter-extremism serves to reinforce a monopoly of legitimacy for liberalism in the current era.
U.K. Counterterrorism Law, Pre-Emption, and Politics
New Criminal Law Review: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal, 2017
Since the turn of the century, across North Atlantic countries, counterterrorism law has been an area of relentless, highly prioritized, legal production that often challenges rule of law principles. This article provides a general overview of United Kingdom counterterrorism legislation and, drawing from jurisprudence, state theory, and political philosophy, constructs an analytical framework to assess its implications for the broader shape, function, and logic of law. It starts by assessing the dynamic tension between authoritarian and democratic elements that constitutes modern law, thus setting the overall conceptual framework in which counterterrorism law pertains. It proceeds to analyze U.K. counterterrorism law, by juxtaposing it to its United States counterpart and by deciphering the key trends into which its provisions combine. Based on this account, the article considers the implications of counterterrorism law for the law-form, that is, for the articulation between legal content, logic, and institutionality. It finds that, although the content and logic of counterterrorism law are incompatible with rule of law principles, they are developed in an institutional framework adherent to the rule of law. To account for this paradox, the article concludes that counterterrorism law signals the advent of authoritarian legality, a reconfiguration of the rule of law where the latter holds its institutional shape, but comes to consist of, and be driven by, authoritarian content and purposes. The article outlines the main characteristics of authoritarian
The scope and limits of combatting violent extremism in the United Kingdom
Revista CIDOB d'Afes Internacionals, 2021
This article situates the debate on the United Kingdom’s Prevent policy in the broader framework of the global paradigm for countering violent extremism (CVE), which appeared at the end of 2015. It argues that omission of a nuanced focus on the social, cultural, economic, and political characteristics of radicalised people has led to a tendency to introduce blanket measures which, inadvertently and indirectly, have had harmful results. Moreover, although Prevent has been the fundamental element of the British government’s counterterrorist strategy since 2006, it confuses legitimate political resistance of young British Muslims with signs of violent extremism, thus giving credence to the argument that Prevent is a form of social engineering which, in the last instance, pacifies resistance by reaffirming the status quo in the country’s domestic and foreign policy.
Resisting Radicalisation: A Critical Analysis of the UK Prevent Duty
2018
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The past decade has seen the rise of a new threat, a state's own radicalised citizens committing terrorist atrocities for a global cause. To respond to this threat, successive UK governments have introduced Prevent strategies in an attempt to counter the factors that lead to radicalisation. In 2015 the Coalition Government went further, introducing a specific legal duty (s 26(1) Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015). This duty requires specified authorities to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. This article explores the requirements of the duty and its compatibility with the ECHR. Overall it is argued that rather than building on the Prevent strategies, the Prevent Duty has both accentuated the limitations of the strategies, while at the same time also creating new problems, both of which are likely to prove counter-productive and thus ultimately undermine the UK's ability to prevent terrorism.