44

The Good
Terrorist
Theories of Terrorism

Terror is a state of mind which can be induced and then exploited by an

individual or group wishing to dominate any other individual or group,
or even a whole society, in order to promote a sectional interest. It is
also used by states as a tool of domestic and of foreign policy.
The Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaoping has used terror
to suppress the student democratic movement. Thousands are reported
to have been killed as students and workers were cleared by the army
from Tiananmen Square in Beijing. An historical example is 'The
Terror' which followed the French Revolution. Between 1793 and 1794
the Jacobins defended the progress of the revolution by guillotining
thousands - not just aristocrats - who were seen as a counter-
revolutionary threat.
Since 1945, politically-motivated terrorism, as distinct from a
domestic regime of terror, has become more widespread and more
international,· and is usually associated with factions challenging the
authority of states. Wilkinson (1986) defines political terrorism as
coercive intimidation, 'the systematic use of murder and destruction
and the threat of murder and destruction in order to terrorise individu-
als, groups, communities or governments into conceding to the ter-
rorists' political demands'. The essential ingredient of terrorism in the
age of mass communications is not so much that thousands should be
killed as that they should be terrified.
Political terrorism takes various forms. Wilkinson divides these into
repressive terrorism, which is used by states to suppress dissenting
groups or individuals as in China; sub-revolutionary terrorism, which
seeks legal or political change short of revolution (for example, the
Animal Liberation Front); and revolutionary terrorism, which seeks
substantial political change. This may be broadly ideological, as in the
anti-capitalist (especially anti-American) activities of Action Directe in

132

P. McNeill, Society Today 2

© Macmillan Publishers Limited 1991
 THE GOOD TERRORIST

France or the German Red Brigades, or regional, as in the case of ETA

(the Basque independence group in Spain), the Provisional IRA, and
the many Palestinian groups.
Pure terrorist violence has certain characteristics which distinguish it
from other forms of violence. It is indiscriminate in its victims, some of
whom at least must be 'innocent', in the sense that they have no
repressive or military role. The bomb in the aircraft which crashed on
Lockerbie was indiscriminate, whereas a bomb planted at a military
barracks is not. The IRA bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984,
intended to kill members of the Cabinet, falls somewhere between these
two.
Terrorist violence is arbitrary and unpredictable, whereas violence in
war, including guerrilla war, is governed by rules, both formal and
informal, many of which are embodied in the Geneva Convention.
Terrorists are not constrained, as are conventional military operations,
by any moral or legal inhibitions about the cruelty of the weapons they
use. Lastly, politically-motivated terrorists will claim that their violence
is justified in the furtherance of their goals.
Such a justification is based on the belief that terrorism achieves its
objectives. In the short term, this is often the case, and a relatively small
group can gain massive publicity, collect a ransom, have prisoners
released, or provoke so repressive a reaction from the authorities that
others are prompted to support its campaign. In the longer term,
however, says Wilkinson, terrorism alone rarely achieves its goals.
Where it has been successful, there have been special circumstances.
Thus in Palestine in the 1940s, in Cyprus in the 1950s and in Aden and
Algeria in the 1960s, terrorism contributed to the departure of the
occupying forces. But in these cases the colonial power was constrained
by humanitarian and legal factors from taking action that would effec-
tively have eliminated the terrorists. Many acts of great cruelty were
done in the name of law and order in these colonial wars, but there
were not mass executions. In addition, there was intercommunal con-
flict which made a peaceful withdrawal impossible, and the terrorists
had substantial support from the indigenous population.
In some circumstances, the effect of terrorist activity has been to
harden the resolve of governments, and sometimes of the population at
large, not to give in to terrorist demands. This may create a situation
where a liberal democratic state passes essentially undemocratic laws in
its attempts to defeat the terrorists and retain a monopoly on the
legitimate right to use violence to achieve its ends. Individual civil
rights are then limited by anti-terrorist legislation. This is the case with
the Prevention of Terrorism Act in the UK, whose provisions for the
detention of suspects give much more power to the state than do the
laws of habeas corpus in ordinary criminal cases. The same is true of
non-jury 'Diplock Courts' in Northern Ireland.

133