One law for them and one law for us?
Posted by admin978 on June 25, 2023 · Leave a Comment
A recent decision by the Crown Prosecution Service raises serious questions as to whether ‘anti-terrorist’ law in the UK is being enforced in a partisan manner, or whether there is one law for those perceived to be on the radical left, and another for those perceived to be on the radical right.
Press reports this week suggest that far leftists seem to have got away with defying the UK’s Terrorism Act, Schedule 7 – the same law that has been repeatedly used against H&D, most recently to detain our European correspondent Isabel Peralta and seize her phone and computer.
On Friday 23rd June, the CPS and the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police announced there would be no further action against Ernest Moret, a publisher who works as foreign rights manager for the Paris firm La Fabrique.
Moret was detained at St Pancras station under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, on the evening of 17th April 2023 after travelling by Eurostar from Paris (as reported in H&D two months ago). He was en route to the London Book Fair, where his firm was working in close collaboration with another far-left publisher, London-based Verso Books.
He allegedly refused to provide UK police with the pin code for his mobile phone, leading to his arrest and transfer to a London police station where he was held until the following day, “on suspicion of wilfully obstructing a Schedule 7 examination”.
Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 entitles UK police and border control officers to question anyone entering the country at any airport, seaport, or in this case rail terminal (classed as a “port of entry”). Those arriving (even if they are UK citizens) can be detained for up to six hours without any reason being given and without any evidence or specific suspicion against them.
Since this six-hour period begins when the interrogation starts, then in practice the detention period can be longer (as one can be kept for some time before questioning).
Those detained are required to answer whatever questions are asked of them, and do not have the customary right to silence. They are obliged to hand over their possessions and provide any passwords, pin numbers etc needed for officers to be able to access electronic devices.
Any refusal to answer, or refusal to provide such access codes is regarded as an offence under the Terrorism Act.
Officers do not need to show any reasonable grounds for detaining and questioning someone under Schedule 7. Although the rationale behind the law is to allow officers to obtain information relevant to anti-terrorist investigations, there is no implication that those detained are themselves terrorists or sympathetic to terrorism.
A joint statement by La Fabrique and Verso wilfully ignored this legal reality, claiming that Moret’s participation in leftwing protests in France against President Macron, had been cited “as a justification” for his detention and questioning. No such “justification” is necessary under Schedule 7, but Moret’s employers seem to believe that the far left is exempt from laws that apply to the rest of us, especially to the so-called ‘far right’.
H&D has always argued that nationalists should avoid unnecessary confrontations with the police. We have always maintained that (outside the specific context of Northern Ireland) paramilitary activity and anything resembling terrorism is unjustifiable and counter-productive to the cause of racial nationalism.
Accordingly, we have consistently argued that if detained under Schedule 7, then whatever we might think about the disproportionate and arbitrary powers conveyed by that law, nationalists should accept that this is (for now) UK law and we should cooperate with those enforcing it.
H&D’s editor Mark Cotterill has been detained twice at Manchester Airport under Schedule 7, once when returning from Cancun, Mexico, and once when returning from Adelaide, Australia. Assistant editor Peter Rushton was detained at London Stansted Airport in 2019 after returning from Düsseldorf. And most recently, in September last year our European correspondent Isabel Peralta was detained at Manchester Airport on arrival from Madrid. (click here to view an interview with Isabel about this Schedule 7 detention)
The latter case was especially serious, since not content with an interrogation lasting almost six hours, the authorities retained Isabel’s phone and computer for almost a week.
H&D is now writing to the Metropolitan Police and to the UK’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, seeking clarification of the Moret case. Naturally we know no more about the circumstances of his arrest (and his later release) than what has appeared in press reports and police statements, but these raise troubling questions which must be answered if nationalists are to retain confidence in the impartiality of the police, and if we are to continue to recommend compliance with police investigations.
Background note:
Verso was founded in 1970 as New Left Books, and throughout its history the firm has specialised in works by Marxist authors. It is especially associated with the so-called ‘Frankfurt School’ of Marxist theorists.
Ernest Moret’s employer La Fabrique was founded in 1998 by the left-wing French Jewish author Éric Hazan. It has published several controversial extreme leftist texts including The Coming Insurrection, written by a so-called “Invisible Committee” and calling for a revolutionary uprising. Moret’s employer Hazan was investigated by French anti-terrorist police seeking to confirm that the author of The Coming Insurrection was in fact Julien Coupat, who was arrested in 2008 for “direction of a terrorist organisation” in connection with the organised sabotage of French railway lines.
Information leading to Coupat’s arrest (and subsequent court cases that ended in legal chaos and acquittals) was supplied to French police by Mark Kennedy, an undercover English police officer who had infliltrated Coupat’s organisation. Kennedy’s actions as a police spy are themselves now among many such undercover operations being examined by an official enquiry.
In other words, whatever Ernest Moret has or hasn’t done, the UK authorities knew that his employer La Fabrique was closely connected to someone who was the focus of a very long-running investigation into politically-motivated criminal activity. And they knew that this anarchism (predating Moret’s involvement with La Fabrique) had also involved people in England.
Nothing published in H&D has ever been the subject of criminal charges, and we have never published any article that recommends criminal behaviour. Outside the specific context of Northern Ireland, we have never endorsed paramilitary activity. It is quite clear that the questioning of Mark Cotterill, Peter Rushton and Isabel Peralta under Schedule 7 was in each case a “fishing expedition” for political intelligence, conducted in the latter case as a favour for the German authorities, and had no connection to any actual or suspected terrorist activity or any other offences against UK law.
