Britain is gearing up for an increased risk of terrorist activity, according to the head of security agency MI5, Andrew Parker. He believes that the push against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will force many UK-born fighters to return home and some of them will inevitably continue to pose a threat.

Part of their response to this will be to increase the use of preventative measures brought in to monitor people who are suspected of being a risk, but where there is not enough evidence to either try or deport them. TPIMs – or to give them their full name, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures – generally include some sort of a sanction such as tagging or overnight home arrest.

The controversial orders made headlines in September 2013 when terrorism suspect Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed absconded from a west London mosque disguised in a burqa, despite being subject to a TPIM which required him to wear an ankle tag.

The government has recently reaffirmed its commitment to relying on TPIMs as part of its counter-terror strategy. It is seeking to renew the enablinhg legislation until 2021, since it would otherwise expire in December 2016. A government statement said that TPIMs “have been and remain a crucial component of the government’s national security response”.

TPIMs were strengthened under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015 which reinstated forced relocation as one of the range of obligations that can be imposed on a terror suspect. Forced relocation was dropped when the old system of control orders was replaced with TPIMs by the coalition government in 2010.

Counter-terror toolkit

There seems to be a weary public acquiescence in the notion that reliance on these non-trial-based liberty-invading measures remains necessary in the face of persistent though shifting terrorist threats. They have come to occupy a niche from which they are now unlikely to be dislodged until 2021, if then.

The renewed commitment to continuance of TPIMs might seem surprising. TPIMs have been underused – as of March 2014 only ten people had been subjected to them since 2012. Two of those absconded – and most of the other TPIMs expired after reaching their two-year limit. One suspect was imprisoned for breach of his TPIM; no information was made available on the others once their TPIMs expired.

Only three TPIMs were in force by the end of August 2015 – and initially the coming into force of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act had no impact on their usage, despite their re-strengthening. Only two TPIMs were in force early in 2016 – and then only one. It appeared that they were not worth deploying in terms of their practical usefulness as part of the UK’s counter-terror response. But in late October 2016, shortly before the five-year renewal of the legislation was due, a revival of their use was reported and at present six are in force.

Reliance on TPIMs remains inherently problematic. Their use damages the UK’s reputation in constitutional terms – they rely on targeting terrorist suspects to curtail their liberty without a trial. So they create restrictions that have a punitive impact but avoid the safeguards accompanying a criminal trial – including the need for proof to the criminal standard. They therefore demand a radical departure from procedural and constitutional normality. Parliamentary scrutiny of TPIMs is very limited: in formal terms it need occur only once every five years to consider the renewal of the legislation.

On the other hand, there is a general public acceptance that TPIMs are effective in security terms as one minor but important part of the counter-terrorist toolkit. But, at face value, their efficacy must be questioned – since suspects are free to leave their residences during the day (TPIMs can impose only an overnight residence requirement) and may be able to abscond – as we have seen.

Growing threat?

Reliance on TPIMs must be juxtaposed to the current threat from terrorism; MI5’s head, Parker, recently stated in an interview with the Guardian: “There will be terrorist attacks in Britain” and there are about 3,000 “violent Islamic extremists in the UK, mostly British”.

The expected eventual military destruction of the ISIS “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria is also likely to lead to an increase in the number of high-risk returnees who have experienced weapons and explosives training – and, of about 850 persons who went abroad to support ISIS or similar groups, about half have already returned.

So it is not immediately clear what purpose TPIMs actually serve, given that if there is proof that a person has been involved in supporting terrorism they could be charged with a precursor offence, including giving support to a proscribed organisation. On the other hand, imposition of TPIMs only requires proof to the civil standard – and, also the government view is that there are some instances in which it is problematic to use security material in a criminal trial.

So if TPIMs are still found to be necessary, then enhanced parliamentary scrutiny is essential. We need to ensure that the cost in terms of Britain’s human rights record is in proportion to their actual value in terms of national security. At the moment, that’s debateable.

Helen Fenwick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Minister says twice as many people watch Welsh language TV as live in Wales.

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The popular view of India’s journey to independence from British rule is the famous story of Mohandas Gandhi’s extraordinary campaign of non-violent protest. It is a heritage still marked today during international state visits.

But there was another, often forgotten – and much less peaceful – side to the struggle for Indian independence.

British colonial rule in India had been established through a series of wars fought across the subcontinent from the mid-18th century onwards. It was bloody and gradual, and rested on a thin foundation of coercion and military dominance.

This was made painfully clear by the uprising of 1857, in which a series of rebellions erupted across northern India, seriously undermining imperial confidence. Although the mutiny was crushed, the memory of it continued to inspire generations of Indian anti-colonialists, who would later refer to it as the First War of Independence.

While the events of 1857 were described by the colonial authorities in various terms including “mutiny”, “rebellion” and “insurgency”, the first act of anti-colonial violence to be given the label of “terrorism”, was carried out 40 years later.

In 1897, two brothers assassinated WC Rand, a civil service officer responsible for dealing with an outbreak of bubonic plague in the city of Pune, whose measures of forced home entry, bodily examinations and segregation were considered extremely heavy-handed.

Later, after colonial officials decided to partition the prosperous province of Bengal in 1905, non-violent forms of popular protest were accompanied by the growth of secret cells of revolutionaries who sought to undermine British imperial authority using targeted assassinations and bomb attacks.

Even though the partition was annulled in 1911, the revolutionary organisations it spawned did not disappear. In fact, they expanded massively.

On November 1 1913, Indian revolutionaries living in San Francisco published the first issue of Ghadar, or Mutiny, a radical weekly newspaper that quickly developed a global readership. By the summer of 1914, the Ghadar Party they founded was an international organisation, with more than 6,000 members and networks throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.

In February 1915, revolutionaries connected to the Ghadar party attempted to overthrow British rule through an ambitious uprising across northern India. Led by Rash Behari Bose, a veteran revolutionary who had personally attempted to assassinate the Viceroy of India in 1912, the revolutionaries tried to convince the Indian Army to mutiny by disseminating propaganda in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Meerut.

The plot was foiled after a British-paid spy penetrated the organisation, prompting a huge crackdown in which hundreds of radicals were detained. Bose was forced to flee India, escaping to Japan where he would live out the rest of his life in exile.

The following month, Ghadar revolutionaries in the US acquired two ships, the Annie Larsen and the Maverick. They planned to land a huge arms shipment in Calcutta on Christmas Day. It was timed to coincide with another planned uprising in Burma, then still a part of British India, and a raid on the prison islands of the Andamans, in which incarcerated radicals would be liberated to take up arms against the British.

Like the February uprising, the Christmas Day plot was detected and foiled by the colonial intelligence services, which had expanded their operations to a global scale in response to the transnational reach of Ghadar.

With the implementation of strict wartime legislation such as the Defence of India Act, 1916 was a turning point for the revolutionary campaign, which was driven underground by imperial intelligence services, who detained several hundred suspected revolutionaries.

India’s revolutionary organisations did not vanish after World War I. As the war measures expired, the colonial government implemented the 1919 Rowlatt Act in an effort to extend executive powers into the postwar period. The proposed legislation permitted suspects to be interned without trial and allowed political cases to be tried without juries. This provoked outrage among the majority of the Indian population, who viewed it as an insult to their loyal service during the war.

At a gathering in Amritsar in April 1919, imperial troops opened fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters, killing at least 379 people and sparking nationwide anger.

Peace in his time

This is the context in which Mohandas Gandhi (usually called Mahatma out of respect) emerged to lead the Indian nationalist movement, which he rallied with a message of peaceful non-cooperation and non-violent resistance. Nonetheless, the more violent anti-colonial organisations formed in the years before and after World War I influenced both anti-colonial politics and imperial security right up until India’s independence and partition in 1947.

After the Second World War, many British officials were unsettled by fear of the Indian National Army, a military organisation made up of Indian prisoners of war released from Japanese custody and led by the famous nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose.

Despite being defeated militarily, the INA strengthened British unease that the continued occupation of India would be met by violent resistance. Following the end of the war, the trial of INA prisoners provided a serious problem for colonial legitimacy and helped to stoke the mass nationalism that forced Britain to withdraw in 1947.

So while it is the memory of Gandhi and non-violence that is now marked by British politicians when they visit India, the other side to the story is very real, and should not be forgotten.

Recalling the history of Indian revolutionaries isn’t just a matter of filling in historical gaps. It can help us gain some perspective on modern society by looking at the recent past.

And now a visit to India by the British Prime Minister Theresa May has included a pledge with the Indian PM Narendra Modi that India and the UK will work together to fight terrorism in both countries. It is not known whether or not they discussed the role that terrorism played in securing India’s independence from Britain. But perhaps they should have done – they would have had plenty to talk about.

Joseph McQuade receives funding from the Gates Cambridge Trust.

In this section Manifesto clash: house building Manifesto clash: recent house building Manifesto clash: affordable housing Introduction There’s an old saying about Englishmen and their homes. The modern variation might be that they don’t have enough of them. The basic problem is supply continually failing to meet demand. The population is growing, increasingly affected by net […]

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The European Union, like all public bodies, attracts regular criticism over how it uses public funds. Sometimes, the criticism comes from within. The European Court of Auditors (ECA) is an EU body set up to examine the accounts of the Union.

In 2013, the ECA found that 4.7% of the €149 billion spent by the EU wasn't spent according to the rules. What would this €7 billion have paid for?

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What has the British High Court ruled?

A challenge brought by a collection of individuals to the government’s intention to trigger Article 50, setting off Brexit negotiations, has been successful. This means the process cannot begin without it being put to a vote in parliament first.

The question the court considered was whether the government is entitled to use its prerogative powers to make the decision by itself.

The claimants argued that doing so would lead to changes in both domestic law (as passed by parliament) and the rights of citizens without the express authority of parliament. The government argued that the referendum gave it the prerogative power to decide whether EU law should continue to apply in the UK.

The court was not swayed by the government’s argument. It found no evidence to support it in legislation (the European Communities Act 1972) or the fundamental principles of the constitution. In other words, the government cannot decide when to start the process of leaving the EU using its own powers and must put the matter before parliament.

Will this stop Brexit?

In a legal sense, no. The court was clear that this is not a judgement about whether to leave the EU or not, and it was not a case attempting to overturn the result of the referendum. It simply found that the process of formally leaving the EU by triggering Article 50 cannot be started by the government alone.

Will it delay Brexit?

Possibly. The government has said that it will appeal the decision, which means it is likely to be heard in the UK Supreme Court. That casts some doubt on the prime minister’s intention to trigger Article 50 by the end of March 2017. If the Supreme Court upholds the decision of the High Court, then the matter will go before parliament.

What will MPs be voting on?

The judgement makes clear that legislative approval to start Article 50 negotiations is needed. This means that a bill will need to be passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords. But there will not be a Brexit “deal” to vote on, as the process of negotiating an exit deal between the UK and the EU has not yet begun – and cannot begin until Article 50 is triggered. Parliamentary debates are public.

Are they likely to vote for or against triggering Article 50?

The majority of MPs favoured remaining in the EU according to their stated positions before the referendum. However, many may decide that the result of the referendum to leave the EU means that they should allow the government to begin that process without delay.

Many MPs are likely to be sensitive to how their individual constituencies voted, as well as the policy of their parties and what has changed in the country since the vote on June 23. In the Lords, who do not represent constituencies and do not have to worry about re-election, the outcome may be more difficult to predict.

Are there any precedents for this situation?

There is no precedent for this situation in UK constitutional law. However, the court drew on case law dating back to 1610 to set out what it found were underlying principles of the constitution. Joining the EU in 1973 resulted in one of the most significant events in UK legal history, and it looks like leaving the EU is set to cause even more of a legal and constitutional upheaval.

What will the British public make of it?

Brexit supporters are likely to be disappointed by what seems likely to cause a delay in the process of leaving the EU. However, much was made in the referendum by Leave campaigners of parliament taking back control of law-making in the UK by no longer allowing EU law to take effect. This judgement makes it clear that the government must operate within the limits of its constitutional powers and clearly underlined the importance of the role of parliament in law-making and where individual rights are concerned.

Paul James Cardwell has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. This article does not reflect the views of the research councils.

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