Security ... think about it!
In late autumn 1974, the Irish Republican Army began a bombing campaign in England. In October bombs exploded in two pubs in Guildford, killing 5 people and injuring 65 others. Some six weeks later two more bombs exploded in pubs in Birmingham. Twenty one people were killed and nearly two hundred were injured. Few would disagree that all the incidents were acts of terror. Following the Birmingham bombings, the British Government rushed through Parliament the Prevention of Terrorism Act, providing new powers to the police, port officials and the Secretary of State, and radically curtailing people’s civil liberties. Four people were subsequently convicted for the Guildford bombings and six people for the Birmingham bombings. All had been interrogated and abused over many days before they signed confessions. After spending 14 and 16 years respectively in prison for crimes they did not commit, with their lives ruined, the convictions against them were quashed and they were all released. These ten people had experienced terror at the hands of the police, followed by the terror of wrongful conviction and imprisonment. The boundary line between the prevention of terrorism and the terror of prevention had become blurred, illustrating only too well the difficulties of trying to answer the question: what is terrorism?