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Under the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution, the rule of Parliament is supreme. Parliament can, as a matter constitutional theory, enact any law it wants. It is not constrained by treaties signed by the United Kingdom Government as under English law international treaties do not have direct domestic effect. The only reason the European Convention on Human Rights applies in English courts and tribunals is because it was made part of English domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998. That Act could be repealed by Parliament at any time.
A further aspect of the supremacy of Parliament is that Parliament is free to define anything in any way it wants. Statutes usually include a section on definition and interpretation, and definitions in statutes range from the common-sense and seemingly obvious, through the complex and confusing, to those which flagrantly depart from the normally accepted meaning of the word they define. An obvious example of the last category is Section 6 of the Interpretation Act 1978, which provides that ‘in any Act, unless the contrary intention appears, words importing the masculine gender include the feminine’. ‘He’ in a statute therefore means ‘he or she’.
There is no constitutional limit on the absurdity of a definition which may be enacted by Parliament. It is true that one of the canons of statutory construction applied by the courts when appropriate is that of construction to avoid absurdity. But that canon only comes into play if the wording of statute is unclear or ambiguous. If the meaning of the statute is clear the courts must apply it in accordance with its clear meaning, however absurd or unjust the result.
So if Parliament enacts that for legal purposes all dogs are to be referred to as cats it is fully entitled to do so. If it enacts that all dogs are deemed to be pink elephants it is likewise entitled to do. And if it chooses to define certain kinds of conduct as terrorism, even if they have never been considered before to be terrorism in the ordinary use of the word, it is constitutionally entitled to do so. As Chamberlain J put it in his judgment on interim relief in Palestine Action’s current challenge to its proscription ([2025] EWHC 1708 (Admin)):
‘It may be noted that action [defined as terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000] can constitute terrorism if it involves serious damage to property even if it does not involve violence against any person or endanger life or create a risk to health or safety. In this respect it may fairly be observed that the statutory concept is wider than the colloquial meaning of the term .’ (emphasis added)
Sometimes the effects of an absurdity in a statute remain obscure because they only affect very few people or situations. Sometimes the absurdity may be harmless. But sometimes it can be very serious. I believe the recent proscription of Palestine Action by way of an order made by the Home Secretary under the Terrorism Act 2000 falls into the latter category.
At the time of writing the legal challenge to the proscription is in progress (R(Amori) v Secretary of State for Home Department). On 30 July 2025 Chamberlain J granted permission for judicial review of the decision to proscribe on two grounds, its possible chilling effect on free speech, and the failure to consult Palestine Action before proscribing it.
The permission hearing involved consideration by the court of some closed materials relied on by the Government, with the assistance of a Special Advocate. However it is important to note that to date the only evidence that has been publicly cited by the Government in court or elsewhere, in seeking to justify categorising Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, is the much publicised action of four apparent Palestine Action members or supporters in breaking into the Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire and spraying red paint on some of the aircraft.
Trespassing on a military base is an offence under by-laws. It carries a maximum sentence of a £5,000 fine. Vandalising an aircraft by spraying red paint on it is criminal damage under s 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment. Four people suspected of carrying out the criminal damage at Brize Norton are currently in custody and awaiting trial. There has no suggestion that there is any gap in the existing criminal law which prevents them being tried. The damage those people are accused of doing was very serious. It is alleged that they sprayed red paint into the turbines of jet aircraft causing damage to the aircraft engines which will cost £7 million to repair. However, it is an abuse of language to call what they are accused of doing terrorism. Until Parliament declared serious criminal damage to be terrorism, a person convicted of criminal damage could have successfully sued anyone who called them a terrorist for defamation.
What Palestine Action appear to be doing is commonly known as direct action protest, a form of civil disobedience with a long history, famously adopted by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s most famous action, the Salt March to Dandi, culminated in an attempted mass trespass into a government-owned Salt Works. The attempt was undoubtedly illegal, but no-one has ever suggested it was terrorism.
Gandhi’s non-violent techniques have been adopted by American anti-nuclear protesters who have several times illegally entered the boatyard at Groton, Connecticut, where nuclear submarines are built, and climbed on the submarines and in some cases poured paint on them. There have been similar protests or attempted protests over the years in the UK at the Greenham Common airbase where Trident missiles were kept, and at the British nuclear submarine base at the Holy Loch. People have been prosecuted and imprisoned in connection with these protests but again it has not been suggested that what they did was terrorism.
The effects of being labelled as a terrorist are devastating. Quite apart from the criminal law, the job prospects and ability to travel of anyone so labelled will be severely restricted. No teacher will pass their compulsory disclosure and barring check if they have been found to be a supporter of a terrorist organisation.
This label has been placed on members of Palestine Action just when support for Palestine Action’s declared aim, of stopping what it sees as gross breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza, seems bound to grow, in view of the horrifying scenes of suffering in Gaza seen on British television every night through the summer months of 2025. At the same time the proscription of Palestine Action has an oppressive chilling effect on protesters who express similar sentiments to Palestine Action by way of support for Palestinians, an end to the war in Gaza, or an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. So long as the proscription of Palestine Action remains in force persons publicly expressing those view are now liable to face arrest, police questioning or restrictions on their activities as being ‘suspected supporters’ of Palestine Action. Many people will be inhibited in expressing perfectly legitimate and peaceful views for fear of encountering such suspicion.
Examples of restrictions on people because of being suspected of being Palestine Action supporters have been put before the High Court in the current legal challenge. They include the following:
At the date of writing the outcome of that legal challenge is not known. The legal decision may turn on points of law far removed from the underlying issues. However there can be no doubt that a decision to proscribe a non-violent organisation articulating widely shared concerns is a dangerous attack on free speech and freedom to protest, which is likely to cause sustained injustice to peaceful supporters of that organisation or its aims, who will as a consequence be designated terrorist supporters.
Paul Harris SC is a member of Doughty Street Chambers and of Cornwall Street Chambers. He was the founding Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee and of the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor and was Chair of the Hong Kong Bar. He is the author of Freedom’s Banner: How peaceful demonstrations have changed the world (Crux Publishing: 2022).
Under the United Kingdom’s unwritten constitution, the rule of Parliament is supreme. Parliament can, as a matter constitutional theory, enact any law it wants. It is not constrained by treaties signed by the United Kingdom Government as under English law international treaties do not have direct domestic effect. The only reason the European Convention on Human Rights applies in English courts and tribunals is because it was made part of English domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998. That Act could be repealed by Parliament at any time.
A further aspect of the supremacy of Parliament is that Parliament is free to define anything in any way it wants. Statutes usually include a section on definition and interpretation, and definitions in statutes range from the common-sense and seemingly obvious, through the complex and confusing, to those which flagrantly depart from the normally accepted meaning of the word they define. An obvious example of the last category is Section 6 of the Interpretation Act 1978, which provides that ‘in any Act, unless the contrary intention appears, words importing the masculine gender include the feminine’. ‘He’ in a statute therefore means ‘he or she’.
There is no constitutional limit on the absurdity of a definition which may be enacted by Parliament. It is true that one of the canons of statutory construction applied by the courts when appropriate is that of construction to avoid absurdity. But that canon only comes into play if the wording of statute is unclear or ambiguous. If the meaning of the statute is clear the courts must apply it in accordance with its clear meaning, however absurd or unjust the result.
So if Parliament enacts that for legal purposes all dogs are to be referred to as cats it is fully entitled to do so. If it enacts that all dogs are deemed to be pink elephants it is likewise entitled to do. And if it chooses to define certain kinds of conduct as terrorism, even if they have never been considered before to be terrorism in the ordinary use of the word, it is constitutionally entitled to do so. As Chamberlain J put it in his judgment on interim relief in Palestine Action’s current challenge to its proscription ([2025] EWHC 1708 (Admin)):
‘It may be noted that action [defined as terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000] can constitute terrorism if it involves serious damage to property even if it does not involve violence against any person or endanger life or create a risk to health or safety. In this respect it may fairly be observed that the statutory concept is wider than the colloquial meaning of the term .’ (emphasis added)
Sometimes the effects of an absurdity in a statute remain obscure because they only affect very few people or situations. Sometimes the absurdity may be harmless. But sometimes it can be very serious. I believe the recent proscription of Palestine Action by way of an order made by the Home Secretary under the Terrorism Act 2000 falls into the latter category.
At the time of writing the legal challenge to the proscription is in progress (R(Amori) v Secretary of State for Home Department). On 30 July 2025 Chamberlain J granted permission for judicial review of the decision to proscribe on two grounds, its possible chilling effect on free speech, and the failure to consult Palestine Action before proscribing it.
The permission hearing involved consideration by the court of some closed materials relied on by the Government, with the assistance of a Special Advocate. However it is important to note that to date the only evidence that has been publicly cited by the Government in court or elsewhere, in seeking to justify categorising Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, is the much publicised action of four apparent Palestine Action members or supporters in breaking into the Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire and spraying red paint on some of the aircraft.
Trespassing on a military base is an offence under by-laws. It carries a maximum sentence of a £5,000 fine. Vandalising an aircraft by spraying red paint on it is criminal damage under s 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, which carries a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment. Four people suspected of carrying out the criminal damage at Brize Norton are currently in custody and awaiting trial. There has no suggestion that there is any gap in the existing criminal law which prevents them being tried. The damage those people are accused of doing was very serious. It is alleged that they sprayed red paint into the turbines of jet aircraft causing damage to the aircraft engines which will cost £7 million to repair. However, it is an abuse of language to call what they are accused of doing terrorism. Until Parliament declared serious criminal damage to be terrorism, a person convicted of criminal damage could have successfully sued anyone who called them a terrorist for defamation.
What Palestine Action appear to be doing is commonly known as direct action protest, a form of civil disobedience with a long history, famously adopted by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s most famous action, the Salt March to Dandi, culminated in an attempted mass trespass into a government-owned Salt Works. The attempt was undoubtedly illegal, but no-one has ever suggested it was terrorism.
Gandhi’s non-violent techniques have been adopted by American anti-nuclear protesters who have several times illegally entered the boatyard at Groton, Connecticut, where nuclear submarines are built, and climbed on the submarines and in some cases poured paint on them. There have been similar protests or attempted protests over the years in the UK at the Greenham Common airbase where Trident missiles were kept, and at the British nuclear submarine base at the Holy Loch. People have been prosecuted and imprisoned in connection with these protests but again it has not been suggested that what they did was terrorism.
The effects of being labelled as a terrorist are devastating. Quite apart from the criminal law, the job prospects and ability to travel of anyone so labelled will be severely restricted. No teacher will pass their compulsory disclosure and barring check if they have been found to be a supporter of a terrorist organisation.
This label has been placed on members of Palestine Action just when support for Palestine Action’s declared aim, of stopping what it sees as gross breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza, seems bound to grow, in view of the horrifying scenes of suffering in Gaza seen on British television every night through the summer months of 2025. At the same time the proscription of Palestine Action has an oppressive chilling effect on protesters who express similar sentiments to Palestine Action by way of support for Palestinians, an end to the war in Gaza, or an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. So long as the proscription of Palestine Action remains in force persons publicly expressing those view are now liable to face arrest, police questioning or restrictions on their activities as being ‘suspected supporters’ of Palestine Action. Many people will be inhibited in expressing perfectly legitimate and peaceful views for fear of encountering such suspicion.
Examples of restrictions on people because of being suspected of being Palestine Action supporters have been put before the High Court in the current legal challenge. They include the following:
At the date of writing the outcome of that legal challenge is not known. The legal decision may turn on points of law far removed from the underlying issues. However there can be no doubt that a decision to proscribe a non-violent organisation articulating widely shared concerns is a dangerous attack on free speech and freedom to protest, which is likely to cause sustained injustice to peaceful supporters of that organisation or its aims, who will as a consequence be designated terrorist supporters.
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