When the government abuses the law
TetleysTLDR Summary: Britain’s terror laws - the machinery of repression disguised as security
Britain’s terrorism legislation is so broad and vague that peaceful protesters, researchers, and journalists can be prosecuted as terrorists without advocating or engaging in violence.
Laws like the Terrorism Act 2000, Terrorism Act 2006, and Schedule 7 have criminalised academic work, journalistic inquiry, and civil disobedience.
Case studies show how these laws have been used to target Students downloading public documents (eg Rizwaan Sabir),Journalists’ partners (eg David Miranda) Environmental and pro-Palestinian activists (eg Palestine Action, now banned). These laws allow people to be detained without suspicion, arrested for possession of ‘useful’ documents, or targeted for wearing political symbols. If the death penalty were reintroduced, as some politicians advocate, the same laws could justify executing innocent people who dissent.
The UK is not sliding towards tyranny, it’s legislating it in plain sight. If we don’t dismantle this repressive framework, anyone who challenges state power could be next
TetleysTLDR: The article
A system that criminalises protest, academic thought, and political resistance is inching toward a legalised authoritarianism. If we don't act now, the consequences will be irreversible.
In this country, you can be branded a terrorist without ever laying a finger on a weapon. You don’t need to join a cell, plan an attack, or even advocate violence. All you need to do is challenge power. Say the wrong thing. Stand in the wrong place. Read the wrong document. Wear the wrong T-shirt.
These aren’t hypotheticals. These are documented facts. For the last two decades, successive UK governments, Labour and Conservative alike, have weaponised counter-terrorism legislation not to keep us safe, but to make dissent dangerous. The state has built a legal architecture so vast, so vague, and so politically malleable that anyone it deems inconvenient can be labelled an extremist.
And here’s the horrifying possibility we need to confront: if capital punishment is ever reintroduced, people who are clearly not terrorists could be executed by the state. For protesting. For tweeting. For researching. For resisting.
A definition that destroys democracy
The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism as any act ‘designed to influence the government’ and ‘advance a political or ideological cause’ involving damage to property, threats, or disruption.
Let that sink in.
By this logic, almost every major protest movement in history, from the Suffragettes to striking miners. could be criminalised as terrorism. No need for weapons or threats. Just purpose and disruption. Layered onto this are:
- The Terrorism Act 2006, which makes it a crime to ‘glorify’ past terrorism, no definition provided.
- Schedule 7, allowing border police to detain people without any suspicion.
- Section 58, which criminalises the possession of materials ‘likely to be useful to a terrorist’ even if you’re a journalist, student, or researcher.
This is not law for a democracy. This is law for an empire that fears the people.
When the State Picks Its Enemies
Let’s look at what this machinery has done. Not in theory, but in practice.
1. Mohammed Gul (2010)
A law student uploads videos of insurgent attacks on Western forces to YouTube, widely available, already in the public domain. He offers political commentary. He receives five years in prison. The court agrees he’s not violent but sentences him anyway. Read more
2. David Miranda (2013)
Partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, Miranda is detained at Heathrow under Schedule 7. His devices seized. Held for nine hours without cause. No crime. No charge. His offence? Transporting encrypted material related to the Snowden leaks. This was an assault on journalism. Read more
3. Rizwaan Sabir (2008)
A PhD student at Nottingham University researching terrorism downloads Al-Qaeda manuals from a government site. He is arrested, held for six days, and monitored for years. The documents he accessed were freely available in university libraries.
4. Environmental Protesters
From Extinction Rebellion to Just Stop Oil, activists have been branded as domestic extremists. People have been referred to Prevent for planning non-violent protests. The government doesn’t want to protect the planet. It wants to protect its donors.
5. Palestine Action (2024–2025)
After disrupting RAF Brize Norton and targeting Elbit arms factories, Palestine Action is proscribed as a terrorist group by the Labour government. They have never harmed a person. Their target is infrastructure complicit in war crimes. Membership or even public support is now a criminal offence. Share a tweet? Wear a badge? Attend a rally? You could be arrested. This is not counter-terrorism. This is counter-resistance.
You Can Be Charged With Terrorism For:
- Downloading a PDF.
- Tweeting a slogan.
- Wearing the wrong symbol.
- Attending a protest.
- Refusing to unlock your phone.
Once accused:
- You can be held for 14 days without charge.
- Your name will be broadcast as a ‘terror suspect’
- Your life will be shredded by surveillance, stigma, and exclusion.
Stephen Kapos: Holocaust survivor and the face of Terrorism in this country according to our fucked up through the looking glass POS government
A Future Britain that kills its critics
And if capital punishment returns? You could hang for any of the above.
The death penalty has been abolished since 1969, but there’s a steady drumbeat on the fringes of British politics to bring it back, especially for terrorism. If Reform ever take power one of the first things they will do is reinstate it. Remember the comments from that weapons grade shitmuppet Lee Anderson about people not committing crimes again if they've been executed? But what is terrorism in Britain? It’s whatever the government says it is. This is not conjecture. It’s precedent. Under the current framework, peaceful protesters, journalists, students, and whistle-blowers could all face capital charges if the law changes by a few lines of text. With no need to prove violent intent. No need for a bomb or a plan. Just an accusation. This is how democracies die. Not with tanks in the streets, but with legislation passed in broad daylight.
Who Is Targeted?
- British Muslims, especially young men.
- Pro-Palestinian voices, increasingly criminalised.
- Environmental campaigners, labelled extremists.
- Journalists, threatened at borders.
- Children, referred to Prevent for art or poetry.
The UK Government's moral bankruptcy is laid bare when it uses counter-terrorism laws to criminalise peaceful opposition to the genocide in Gaza, arrest climate protesters for acts they haven't committed or raiding Quaker churches. Meanwhile, violent far-right slavering mobs, like those who attacked police in Epping, are treated with kid gloves. There's no talk of proscribing Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, or Tommy Robinson’s thugs, despite their clear record of violence and hate.
This is not about keeping the public safe. It's about silencing dissent and protecting a foreign apartheid regime. When activists break windows to stop bombs being dropped on children, they're branded terrorists. When fascists break bones in the name of white nationalism, they’re given media platforms. The message is clear: in Britain today, opposing violent crimes makes you a suspect, but inciting it gets you a microphone and a platform.
We are creating a system where thinking critically becomes a dangerous and subversive act. Where solidarity is criminalised. Where opposition is grounds for surveillance. This is the architecture of fear. And it’s working.
Far right thugs attacking the police in Epping. No proscribing these cunts in Starmers Britain.
We Are Sleepwalking Into Tyranny
These laws don’t keep us safe. They don’t prevent violence. They are a net cast by the state to catch dissent. And that net is tightening. If we don’t dismantle it now, if we don’t name it for what it is: authoritarian, violent, and anti-democratic, then the next person arrested for terrorism might be a teacher. A poet. A nurse. A child. Or you. In the words of the late Tony Benn: “If one meets a powerful person, ask them five questions:
- What power have you got?
- Where did you get it from?
- In whose interests do you exercise it?
- To whom are you accountable?
- And how can we get rid of you?”
It’s time we start asking these questions of those who write the laws that strip us of our freedom and put our lives at risk.
Great thinker of the left, Tony Benn. His biggest mistake was not wearing a condom the night he knocked Caroline up with Hilary
Sources & Further Reading:
Our Government is complicit in war crimes and shows us more every day that it is not fit to govern. It has crossed the Rubicon by criminalising protest: transforming civil disobedience from a democratic right into a punishable offence. This isn’t just mission creep, it’s a full-blown authoritarian pivot. From arresting climate activists before they’ve even demonstrated, to branding peaceful Palestine solidarity groups as 'extremists', the state has weaponised the law against dissent. The right to protest, once a cornerstone of democratic society, is now treated as a threat to national security. In doing so, the Government isn’t just suppressing opposition, it is rewriting the moral framework of our public life, aligning itself with foreign regimes engaged in brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing, and silencing those who dare to call it out. This is not governance: it is state-sponsored complicity in atrocity, wrapped in the language of order and control.
We need to stand up now, because soon, standing up might be enough to get you a rope around your neck.
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