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The Iron Lady and the IRA: What effect did the 1984 Brighton Bombing have on Margaret Thatcher?

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On October 12 1984, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), also referred to as the ‘Provisionals’, staged ‘the most audacious attack on a British government since the Gunpowder Plot’, attempting to kill the British Prime Minister (PM), Margaret Thatcher, and all of her cabinet ministers (Hughes, D. 2009; Carroll, R. 2023). The attack, known as the Brighton Bombing, occurred at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party Conference and was part of the IRA’s ‘key war’ in England against ‘high-prestige’ targets; a campaign which sought to end British rule in Northern Ireland by weakening the British’ resolve to remain.

The Routledge Handbook on Radicalisation and Countering Radicalisation (Edited ByJoel Busher, Leena Malkki, Sarah Marsden, 2023)

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This handbook provides a theoretical and methodological exploration of the research on radicalisation and counter-radicalisation, one of the most influential concepts in Security Studies, International Relations, and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Sitting at the heart of high-profile research and policy agendas on preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE), radicalisation as a concept has transformed the way researchers, policymakers, and societies think about how to counter terrorism and political violence. Deliberations about radicalisation and countering radicalisation have become further embedded as efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism have been ‘mainstreamed’ into other areas of public policy and practice, such as education, gender relations, health, peacebuilding, aid, and development. Theoretically and methodologically pluralistic, this handbook addresses radicalisation and countering radicalisation as they relate to a wide range of groups and milieus, articulating diverse ideological positions, drawing together insight and experience from multiple geographic and institutional settings, integrating global perspectives, and including scholarship focused on a range of policy fields.

This book will be an essential reference point for anybody working on radicalisation, countering radicalisation, or terrorism and political violence more broadly. The insight that it provides will be relevant for both academics and members of relevant policy and practitioner communities.

¡Basta Ya! The Basque Civic Movement and Nonviolent Resistance to eta’s Terrorism (Javier Argomaniz, 2023)

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This paper examines the impact that the Basque civic movement had in the civil resistance against the armed separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (eta). The ‘civic’ or ‘constitutionalist’ movement, whose best-known representative was the social movement organization ¡Basta Ya!, emerged to demand the protection of Basque citizens’ human and political rights, which were routinely abused by eta and their sympathisers. The movement impacted on the cycle of contention against terrorism through the diffusion of democratic norms and anti-eta political narratives, by sustaining civil resistance against terrorism while enduring persecution by their militants and sympathisers and by protecting the social fabric through the channelling of non-nationalist grievances into collective action that was pro-democratic and nonviolent. The case highlights the crucial parallels that exist between civil resistance to authoritarian regimes and non-state groups and the crucial role that civil society actors can play in the social delegitimisation of terrorist organisations.

Fundamental British Values & the Prevent Duty in Scotland (Nick Brooke, 2023)

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In July 2015, a legal duty came into force as part of the United Kingdom’s Counter Terrorism and Security Act that included a requirement (referred to as the Prevent Duty) for schools and other education providers to “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. Parallel to this initiative, schools in England were also required to include teaching on “Fundamental British Values” as part of the curriculum, to “build pupil’s resilience to radicalisation”. Yet this latter element is not required in schools in Scotland. This paper argues that the absence of a requirement for teachers in Scotland to include teaching on Fundamental British Values simultaneously politicises and depoliticises the delivery of the Prevent Duty, and British identity in this context. In doing so, the paper contributes to existing debates on the relationship between the Prevent Duty and the Fundamental British Values, reflects on the political nature of these parallel initiatives and examines the security policy implications of the contentious nature of British identity in Scotland.

End-to-End Encryption and Counterterrorism – Untying the Gordian Knot with State Hacking?

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While the increasing possibilities for end-to-end encrypted communication constitute a technical advance for general data protection, new challenges arise for law enforcement and intelligence agencies in monitoring terrorist communications. To work around the problem of terrorists ‘going dark’ and evading authorities’ surveillance, German authorities have come to employ controversial methods of communications interception through equipment interference using state spyware. In this paper, I reflect on the proportionality of such measures in light of their implications for fundamental rights by discussing theoretical and practical problems. I thereby constructively explore a current Gordian knot in counterterrorism in the digital age.

How Successful Have Efforts to Counter Radicalisation Been?

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Counter-radicalisation has emerged as a nascent and prioritised sub-field of countering terrorism, particularly as Western governments shifted from the ‘Global War on Terror’ to confronting domestic or ‘home-grown’ challenges. While counter-radicalisation public policies contain varied ‘toolkits’ with a range of options for interventions to reduce risks of individuals being susceptible to radicalisation, a sustained trend across policymakers and public debate is the focus on social media sites and internet communication technologies. 

Terrorism Making Headlines: Danish Journalists and the Ethical Dilemmas of Covering Terrorism

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This study explores the ethical considerations that are encountered by Danish journalists when covering stories about terrorism and whether there is a perceived need for more editorial guidelines. An online questionnaire with multiple-choice, Likert scale and open text box questions was distributed to a sample group of Danish journalists using the snowball method in March 2021. The survey gathered quantitative and qualitative data from a total of 74 Danish journalists who all remain anonymous. Their suggested ethical considerations were analysed and compared to dilemmas raised in the academic literature on the relationship between terrorism and the media. The study shows that the dilemmas described in the literature are similar to those experienced by the journalists surveyed. Their ethical considerations were mainly related to the publication of graphic details, the use of propaganda material, names and photos of the terrorists, as well as whether the coverage could inspire copycats. The media coverage’s effect on victims, viewers and readers as well as on national security was also of concern. The journalists surveyed appeared to prioritise importance to the public over sensationalism in their terrorism coverage. A bit less than half of the participants, particularly those younger than the sample group’s average age, expressed a need for more editorial guidelines to be used during terrorism coverage. In addition, female journalists, to a larger extent than their male colleagues, perceived more editorial guidelines as a current need, and they in general found keeping the ethical balance in terrorism coverage more difficult than male journalists said they did. In the future, courses on ethics in terrorism coverage, particularly for younger journalists, or more clarification in media outlets with regard to editorial guidelines for terrorism coverage may be useful.

Ideational Variation within the American White Nationalist Movement: A Framing Perspective

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Recent research on terrorism and political violence has sought to better conceptualize the far-right. Specifically, various studies have contributed hypotheses regarding the White nationalist movement within the United States. Nevertheless, additional reflection is imperative to ensure the production of resonant counternarratives, the proper implementation of counterterrorism and counterextremism measures, and the overall reduction of racial hate and conflict. As such, this paper will provide further insight into the American White nationalist movement by determining how White nationalist groups differentially frame ideas to mobilize recruits. To address such a topic, this paper will (1) highlight the rise of racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism in the US, (2) outline its framing theoretical and methodological approach, and (3) apply framing theory to the cases of Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, and Christian Identity groups to comparatively analyze their unique activity within the activism realm. The project concludes that White nationalist groups supply divergent frames to radicalize recruits.

International Organisations and Terrorism: Multilateral Antiterrorism Efforts, 1960–1990 (Bernhard Blumenau & Johannes-Alexander Müller, 2021)

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This article examines early antiterrorism negotiations within international organisations (IOs) and their outcomes. It assesses how international cooperation emerged in specialised, regional, and global IOs and provides a long-term overview from the 1960s until the late 1980s. Drawing on primary sources and scholarly literature, this article identifies the patterns, trends, and key characteristics of the successfully adopted measures. It demonstrates that early multilateral antiterrorism efforts faced several obstacles (sovereignty, national interests, mistrust, and geopolitics), and, therefore, international negotiations fared better when following a piecemeal approach within specialised or regional organisations, where the focus could be on specific aspects of terrorism (e.g., hostage-takings). A key characteristic of the successfully adopted antiterrorism instruments was the aut dedere aut iudicare principle, which allowed states to maintain perceptions of sovereignty by either extraditing or trying a suspect. The antiterrorism efforts examined here were mostly preventative in design and worked to discourage future terrorists by ensuring that safe havens were closed and that perpetrators faced justice. The shift to suicide terrorism in the 1990s would instead require new international antiterrorism efforts to focus on pre-emptive strategies, depriving terrorists of the means to carry out attacks. The roots of these measures were laid in the 1980s.

Lessons from Beruit and Belfast: How Dysfunctional Democracy Undermines Consociational Settlements in Deeply Divided Societies

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Consociational democracy has become a dominant model for post-conflict democratisation, making an understanding of its dynamics and outcomes important for practitioners and scholars of peacebuilding. This paper explores the quality of consociational governance in the long term in societies transitioning from conflict, and asks whether this imperfect system is viable in the long term despite the absence of adequate transition mechanisms to a more efficient and normatively adequate system. A comparative analysis of Northern Ireland after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a crucial case of supposed consociational success, and Lebanon after the 1989 Taif Accords, which has failed by all measures except having avoided a return to civil war, provides insights into the functioning of power-sharing in both cases and into consociationalism more generally. The causes, nature, and consequences of the ongoing financial crisis in Lebanon and the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal in Northern Ireland are explored in historical context. It is argued that despite their crucial role in bringing an end to violent conflict, the inefficiency and dysfunctionality of consociational governments damages their fragile and conditional legitimacy and consequently fails to adequately manage the problem of disputed legitimacy that leaves deeply divided societies vulnerable to recurrent violence. The dysfunctional politics often dismissed as insignificant in the face of recent violent conflict is therefore a serious problem that maintains many of the conditions that led to past violence. This paper concludes that while neither case study provides a good model for export, there is much to be learned from their successes and shortcomings that can be applied to current or future consociational settlements when these problematic solutions to conflict are unavoidable.

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