The Definition of Terrorism CM 7052 - Official Documents

TERRORIST LABEL (IMITATORS)
33. There are other organisations and persons, unconnected with violent jihad and
other comparable causes, with broadly terrorist purposes and means.These include
a very small minority of extreme animal rights activists, whose capacity for causing
nuisance and sometimes serious damage and injury is undoubted and determined.
There are individuals too, such as Theodore Kaczynski the American so-called
Unabomber, and the British lone bomber David Copeland, who use terrorist tactics
and materials and from time to time can cause as much terror as large groups.
Generally the UK authorities deal with these groups and individuals under the
criminal law without the use of terrorism legislation, as asserted by Home Office
Minister Tony McNulty (see paragraph 27 above).The designation of terrorist may
even be seen by some to be a badge of office, a cachet. In dealing with any
definition, discretion and policy will always have a proper part. Put simply, what I
mean by this is that the authorities should always treat suspects within the normal
rather than special criminal laws unless their threat and structure requires
operationally that they should be regarded formally as terrorists.
34. Many examples can and have been cited of individuals who might fall
inappropriately within the current definition, if considered solely in strict legal
terms.They might include a political protester such as the suffragette Emily Wilding
Davison, who threw herself under a horse at Epsom racecourse on the 13th June
1913; or the eco-protester ‘Swampy’. Each of them arguably caused the risk of
danger to other people who might have attempted to rescue them. Another
example might be an imitator of the leading British contemporary artist Cornelia
Parker, whose work Cold Dark Matter: an Exploded View [1991] consists of the
–25–