March 13 2025 - 6:00pm
To call something “terrorism” is to issue the most severe form of moral condemnation. This was evident in last year’s announcement that the UK Government would treat misogyny as a form of extremist terrorism and consequently mobilize a raft of anti-terror resources to tackle it. Meanwhile, many called for the Southport murders perpetrated by Axel Rudakubana in July to be labeled as terrorism. Some on the Right wanted to pin them on Islamic terrorism, citing the fact that the killer had previously downloaded an al-Qaeda manual. On the other hand, those on the Left wanted to brand the stabbings as terrorism on the basis that the act had terrorized.
Occupying the latter category was Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who in January raised the possibility of changing terrorism law to encompass violence which was non-ideological but which “clearly intended to terrorize”, as with Rudakubana’s rampage. To state what should be obvious, neither ingredient alone makes the Southport murders an act of terror.
In response, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, has today advised that no such change in definition is necessary. Hall recommended that terror laws should not apply to non-ideological violence, saying that the “legal definition of terrorism is already wide and should not be changed any further”. He cited various practical examples of why this should be the case, including the risks of false positives and the massive strain on both resources and public expectations.
Another welcome aspect of Hall’s reasoning is that freedom of expression should be protected, and expanding the definition of terrorism would risk creating unacceptable restrictions. He provided the example of people who share conflict footage, as well as those who are fascinated by violence but never act upon it. These are not crimes, and the state must be careful about the difference between worrying activity and criminal activity. It should also be noted that the UK does not have the security infrastructure or knowledge basis on which to determine who among those obsessed with online gore would ever dream of enacting something similar in the real world.
It is true that we need a word to describe politically motivated violence as distinct from private, personal or even public violence of the non-ideological kind. Changing the definition to encompass things which plainly aren’t terrorism by the classical definition would eventually lead to the realization that we need yet another new term for, well, terrorism.
Perhaps of greater consequence is Hall’s suggestion that the Government should consider a new offense, to respond to those planning mass casualty attacks even of the non-terroristic kind. This would grant police and security services powers similar to those under the Terrorism Act to intervene, and ensure potentially length prison sentences for those doing the planning.
In the case of Rudakubana, Prevent has been accused of failing to achieve something it was never meant to do: countering non-ideological violence. It is unclear what kind of interventions could have been made had Prevent taken on the case. There aren’t exactly “intervention providers” for people obsessed with genocide in the same way there are those equipped to challenge Islamist ideology. In reality, even with Prevent involvement, there is no guarantee his atrocity could have been averted — not least because the interventions aren’t compulsory. A new offense such as that proposed by the terrorism watchdog would allow the state to imprison someone should they reach the planning stage, rather than limply offering a few mentoring sessions to compete with constant consumption of extreme violence.
At the same time, it’s unclear that any such law could have stopped Rudakubana specifically, given he was not on authorities’ radar for plotting a mass killing. When he was deemed unsuitable for a counter-terrorism program, the Southport killer should have been triaged to existing services, and at the very least he should have received more than just a slap on the wrist for the multiple occasions on which he was involved in violent altercations or found carrying weapons.
This kind of ongoing and inexplicable leniency towards the repeatedly violent few is perhaps the greatest danger to public safety. Hall’s proposed law gets to the heart of the matter: imprisonment serves not only as punishment or rehabilitation for the criminal, but also as protection for the law-abiding public from those few dangerous individuals who would do us harm, given half the chance.
