Contribution
My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendments 447 and 448. I also support the spirit of Amendment 450, with one reservation, which I will explain, and which maybe the Minister would have taken in any case.
As far as Amendments 447 and 448 are concerned, I have spoken in several debates about the scope of the Terrorism Act 2000 and the way it works, in particular because of the breadth of the offence under Section 12 of support for a terrorist organisation and the offence under Section 13 of wearing an article or uniform, and the publication of images, as arousing suspicion of support for a proscribed organisation. I spoke, from the point of view of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, about the unnecessarily broad scope of those sections as they stand, and in support of our amendment seeking a statement about the right of peaceable protest in this Bill.
My immediate concern arises, as it arose then, out of the arrest of some 2,700 people at peaceable protests against the proscription of Palestine Action. I take the point entirely that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, made, that we cannot dig into the minds of those protesters and work out what their motivation was and then create some kind of thought crime that covers their position. What we can do is consider what the right of peaceable protest is and what price we pay for it. It is quite clear that this is not about the rights or wrongs of the proscription of Palestine Action. In supporting these amendments, I am solely concerned, as was the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, with the right to protest and the consequences of the way that the Terrorist Act 2000 works, branding peaceable protests as an offence against that Act, and branding as terrorists protesters who have done nothing more than carry banners or publicly express the view that the proscription is wrong.
I quite agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that there is a massive distinction between the exercise of that right, however foolish those protesters, or some of them, may be and however much we may disagree with them, and branding them as terrorists and comparing them with those who are actually carrying out terrorism, which is, I suggest, not justified. It is not, of course, confined to protests in connection with Palestine Action, but the point that the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, made was also that the consequences for those who have been arrested, be they elderly retired people or students on the threshold of their career, are, in his words, wholly disproportionate. Those are words with which I entirely agree.
Some of those arrested have been charged. The charging process is nowhere near complete, and, as I understand it, the charging will go ahead so long as the proscription lives—the proscription is, of course, the subject of challenge. But if those arrests proceed inexorably to conviction then those people convicted will be branded as terrorists. As for the sickening nature of the slogans they may shout, “Globalise the intifada” to me can mean only one thing, and that is killing Jews for being Jews, and I speak as a Jew, and the phrase, “From the river to the sea”, is wholly unpleasant and has only one meaning. But for students to sit down and listen to and then repeat those slogans at a peaceable protest does not mean that they support acts of terrorism. It means, as the noble Lord said, that they are opposing, and opposing with force, some of the actions of the Israeli Government and of Israeli soldiers in Gaza, which have been, as the British Government and most western Governments have said, absolutely appalling themselves. It does not mean that they are terrorists. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, is right, as I said, that we cannot go into their minds to see what their motivation is, but we have to tailor the criminal law to actions, combined with a mental state.