Security, Identity, and British Counterterrorism Policy

281 Pages·2015·1.929 MB·English

by  Kathryn Marie Fisher (auth.)

New Security Challenges
General Editor: Stuart Croft, Professor of International Security in the
Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick,
UK, and Director of the ESRC’s New Security Challenges Programme.
The last decade demonstrated that threats to security vary greatly in their causes
and manifestations, and that they invite interest and demand responses from
the social sciences, civil society and a very broad policy community. In the past,
the avoidance of war was the primary objective, but with the end of the Cold
War the retention of military defence as the centrepiece of international secu-
rity agenda became untenable. There has been, therefore, a significant shift in
emphasis away from traditional approaches to security to a new agenda that talks
of the softer side of security, in terms of human security, economic security and
environmental security. The topical New Security Challenges series reflects this
pressing political and research agenda.
Titles include:
Natasha Underhill
COUNTERING GLOBAL TERRORISM AND INSURGENCY
Calculating the Risk of State-Failure in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
Abdul Haqq Baker
EXTREMISTS IN OUR MIDST
Confronting Terror
Robin Cameron
SUBJECTS OF SECURITY
Domestic Effects of Foreign Policy in the War on Terror
Sharyl Cross, Savo Kentera, R. Craig Nation and Radovan Vukadinovic (editors)
SHAPING SOUTH EAST EUROPE’S SECURITY COMMUNITY FOR THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Trust, Partnership, Integration
Tom Dyson and Theodore Konstadinides
EUROPEAN DEFENCE COOPERATION IN EU LAW AND IR THEORY
Håkan Edström, Janne Haaland Matlary and Magnus Petersson (editors)
NATO: THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS
Hakan Edström and Dennis Gyllensporre (editors)
PURSUING STRATEGY
NATO Operations from the Gulf War to Gaddafi
Hamed El-Said
NEW APPROACHES TO COUNTERING TERRORISM
Designing and Evaluating Counter Radicalization and De-Radicalization Programs
Philip Everts and Pierangelo Isernia
PUBLIC OPINION, TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS AND THE USE OF FORCE
Kathryn Fisher
SECURITY, IDENTITY AND BRITISH COUNTERTERRORISM POLICY
Adrian Gallagher
GENOCIDE AND ITS THREAT TO CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL ORDER
Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster
ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM
New Media and Protest in the Information Age
James Gow and Ivan Zverzhanovski
SECURITY, DEMOCRACY AND WAR CRIMES
Security Sector Transformation in Serbia
Toni Haastrup
CHARTING TRANSFORMATION THROUGH SECURITY
Contemporary EU-Africa Relations
Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti and Ben Zyla (editors)
NATO BEYOND 9/11
The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance
Carolin Hilpert
STRATEGICCULTURAL CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE FOR
SECURITY POLICY
Germany and the Bundeswehr’s Deployment to Afghanistan
Christopher Hobbs, Matthew Moran and Daniel Salisbury (editors)
OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
New Approaches and Opportunities
Paul Jackson and Peter Albrecht
RECONSTRUCTION SECURITY AFTER CONFLICT
Security Sector Reform in Sierra Leone
Janne Haaland Matlary
EUROPEAN UNION SECURITY DYNAMICS
In the New National Interest
Sebastian Mayer (editor)
NATO’s POST-COLD WAR POLITICS
The Changing Provision of Security
Michael Pugh, Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner (editors)
WHOSE PEACE? CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY
OF PEACEBUILDING
Nathan Roger
IMAGE WARFARE IN THE WAR ON TERROR
Aiden Warren and Ingvild Bode
GOVERNING THE USE-OF-FORCE IN INTERNATIONALl RELATIONS
The Post 9/11 Challenge on International Law
New Security Challenges Series
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978–0–230–00217–3 (paperback)
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Security, Identity, and
British Counterterrorism
Policy
Kathryn Marie Fisher
National Defense University
© Kathryn Marie Fisher 2015
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ISBN 978-1-349-57208-3 ISBN 978-1-137-52422-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-52422-5
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To my parents, the best teachers anyone could hope for

Contents
List of Figures ix
Preface x
Acknowledgments xii
List of Abbreviations xiv
Part I Setting the Scene
1 Counterterrorism, Identity, (In)security 3
Rationale and backdrop 6
Language and/as materiality 9
A note on approach 12
Why is Britain the focus here? 14
Claim making 16
Introductory conclusions and structure 19
2 Considering Contexts 23
Terrorism: method, rhetorical signpost, or both? 24
From some historical context to some existing
conversations 28
Confusions and consequences of identity 30
Contextualized perspective for this book 33
3 To Identify Terrorism – A Consequential Ambiguity 34
The theoretical apparatus 35
Engaging discourse and/as causality 37
Identity 38
Mechanisms 40
Starting theoretical and methodological conclusions 4 6
Part II A Story of British Counterterrorism
and Identity
4 Preserving Peace and Maintaining Order, 1968–1978 5 1
Historicizing a 1968 start 53
Beginning counterterrorism and disorder 59
Considering 1968 to 1978 70
vii
viii Contents
5 Criminalizing Terrorism, 1979–1989 72
An 1980s turn 73
Expanding configurations, counterterrorism, criminality 7 9
Approaching the 1990s 88
6 A Shifting Legal Durability, 1990–1999 91
Identity (re)constructions, 1990s movements 93
A consequential typology of othering 101
21st-century shifts 117
7 Amplifying 21st-Century Exception, 2000–2006 1 18
Legal and policy moves 120
Maintaining permanency through the “international” 1 29
From 2006 onwards 144
8 A Plateau of Exceptionality, 2007–2011 147
Positioning the recent past 149
Normalizing discourse and practice 156
Looking back from 2011 170
Part III Reflecting and Looking Ahead
9 (starting) Conclusions 175
Revisiting claim making 178
What the British case can show us 180
Contextualizing this account 182
Looking ahead 185
Appendices 188
Notes 196
References 236
Index 263
List of Figures
1.1 UK Legislation with “terrorism” in the title, 1950–2013 7
1.2 UK primary legislation with “terrorism” in the title by
decade, 1969–2011 8
4.1 Number of times “terrorist” appears during parliamentary
debate during the 20th century 5 8
5.1 “Incidents of international terrorism,” 1981–1987 7 6
6.1 Screenshot from a search of “terrorism,” UK parliamentary
debates, 1900–2000 9 8
6.2 UK cabinet paper on what “line to take” for security
forces 105
6.3 Terms of reference, Amnesty International Investigation
into the interrogation of terrorist suspects in
Northern Ireland 106
7.1 Screenshot from a search of “terrorism,” UK parliamentary
debates, 2000–2005 1 28
7.2 The “linguistic rate of terror” per page of key
counterterrorism laws, 2000–2006 129
8.1 “Arrests on suspicion of terrorism in the UK,” 2009–2010 1 50
ix