PO382 Counter-Terrorism
The Lee Rigby report (Lord Rifkin) is fundamentally informed by counter-terrorism, for
better or for worse. Conclusion: despite the tragedy of the event, some mistakes were
made but there was no reasonable means of preventing the attack. Moreover, Lee Rigby
was one of about 500 homicides a year and 2000 deaths from traffic accidents. Why
should we expect a Minority Report ability to predict crimes before they happen? The
mindset we are in is to reasonably expect the intelligence services to anticipate, predict
and preempt the attack. But surely it is improbable to expect the same to happen with
every weapon-related homicide? The unrealistic restrictions on civil liberties that would be
required to do this make the idea implausible. Statistically, such capabilities are very
unlikely. So why are high expectations of counter-terrorism maintained?
Terrorist attacks are a challenge to the legitimacy and authority of the state (‘monopoly of
violence’), making states much more sensitive to them than to deaths caused in other
ways. Despite the relatively small scale of terrorism casualties in the UK from the 2005
bombings, IRA bombings, Dunblane massacre (relative to Kenya, Mumbai), the worry
about the ‘next big attack’ is still used to justify extension of counterterrorism powers.
Third Wave of Terrorism
Aldrich: (in line with literature) the ‘nature of terrorism’ is changing. Between the 1970s-
90s, we saw the ‘third wave’ of terrorism (IRA, ETA etc.). Broadly speaking, these were
nationalist, separatist, Marxist political groups, aiming to kill small numbers of individuals
in order to scare populations. The aim was to engineer political change through violence.
The scale of casualties was relatively light; terrorist activity was seen as terrible, but
sufficiently tolerable as to dictate a political strategy that saw a ‘watch and wait’ two-
pronged approach bloom, with long-term intelligence penetration/infiltration used in
conjunction with an attempt to draw terrorist groups towards the negotiating table.
Arguably this ‘long project’ approach was reasonably successful with the IRA and ETA
particularly.
Fourth Wave of Terrorism
Hoffman: In the 1990s, number of terrorist casualties going up at the same time as
attacks were decreasing. His explanation: the fourth wave of terrorism - less political,
more religious (globally - Islamism, Indian extremism, fundamentalist Christianity,
Buddhists in Tokyo). The purpose of religious terrorism was entirely different. It may
involve some sort of political bargaining and leverage, but the main motivation is that of
religious devotion.
Omand: framework to test ethical intervention (ethical authority, political authority,
proportionality) based on the European Convention on Human Rights, the central
language of which is ‘proportionate responses’. But in the case of increasingly destructive
religious terrorism, what is the appropriate response? This changes the nature of the
response. The long-term infiltration-dialogue approach no longer works. What is the
