Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he'd be guilty of terrorism

Orwell was hailed a hero for fighting in Spain. Today he'd be guilty of terrorism
The International Brigades are acclaimed for bravery. But British citizens who fight in Syria are damned. If only they did it for the money

If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government against a fascist rebellion would have no bearing on the case. They would go down as terrorists.

As it happens, the British government did threaten people leaving the country to join the International Brigades, by reviving the Foreign Enlistment Act of 1870. In 1937 it warned that anyone volunteering to fight in Spain would be "liable on conviction to imprisonment up to two years". This was consistent with its policy of non-intervention, which even Winston Churchill, initially a supporter, came to see as "an elaborate system of official humbug". Britain, whose diplomatic service and military command were riddled with fascist sympathisers, helped to block munitions and support for the Republican government, while ignoring Italian and German deployments on Franco's side.

But the act was unworkable, and never used – unlike the Crown Prosecution Service's far graver threat to British citizens fighting in Syria. In January 16 people were arrested on terror charges after returning from Syria. Seven others are already awaiting trial. Sue Hemming, the CPS head of counter-terrorism, explained last week that "potentially it's an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict, however loathsome you think the people on the other side are ... We will apply the law robustly".

People fighting against forces that run a system of industrialised torture and murder and are systematically destroying entire communities could be banged up for life for their pains. Is this any fairer than imprisoning Orwell would have been?

I accept that some British fighters in Syria could be changed by their experience. I also accept that some are already motivated by the prospect of fighting a borderless jihad, and could return to Britain with the skills required to pursue it. But this is guilt by association. Some of those who go to fight in Syria might develop an interest in blowing up buses in Britain, just as some investment bankers might be tempted to launder cash for drug dealers and criminal gangs. We don't round up bankers on the grounds that their experience in one sector might tempt them to dabble in another. (The state won't prosecute them even when they do launder money for drug gangs and terrorists, as the HSBC scandal suggests.) But all those who leave Britain to fight in Syria potentially face terrorism charges, even if they seek only to defend their extended families.

Last week a British man who called himself Abu Suleiman al-Britani drove a truck full of explosives into the gate of Halab prison in Aleppo. The explosion, in which he died, allowed rebel fighters to swarm into the jail and release 300 prisoners. Was it terrorism or was it heroism? Terrorism, according to many commentators.

It's true that he carried out this act in the name of the al-Nusra Front, which the British government treats as synonymous with al-Qaida. But can anyone claim that liberating the inmates of Syrian government prisons is not a good thing? We now know that at least 11,000 people have been killed in these places, and that many were tortured to death. Pictures of their corpses were smuggled out of Syria by the government photographer employed to record them. There are probably many more. That combination of horror and bureaucracy – doing unspeakable things then ensuring that they are properly documented – has powerful historical resonances. It haunts us with another horror, and the questions that still hang over the Allied effort in the second world war: how much was known, how much could have been done?

As no one else is now likely to act, and as the raid on the prison would probably have been impossible without the suicide bomb, should we not be celebrating this act of extraordinary courage? Had David Cameron not lost the intervention vote, and had al-Britani been fighting for the British army, he might have been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

When you think of the attempt by the British battalion in the Spanish civil war to defend a place they called "Suicide Hill", with the loss of 225 out of 600 men, do you see this as an act of terror – a suicide mission motivated by an extreme ideology – or as a valiant attempt to resist a terror campaign?

Sue Hemming claims it is "an offence to go out and get involved in a conflict", but that is not always true. You can be prosecuted if you possess a "political, ideological, religious or racial motive" for getting involved, but not, strangely, if you possess a financial motive. Far from it: such motives are now eminently respectable. You can even obtain a City & Guilds qualification as a naval mercenary. Sorry, "maritime security operative". As long as you don't care whom you kill or why, you're exempt from the law.

I expect that's a relief to Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the former foreign secretary who now chairs parliament's intelligence and security committee, where he ramps up public fears about terrorism. For several years he was chairman of ArmorGroup, whose business was to go out and get involved in conflict. The absence of one word from the legislation – financial – ensures that he is seen as a scourge of terrorism, rather than an accomplice. The British fighters in Syria should ask their commanders to pay them, then claim they're only in it for the money. They would, it seems, then be immune from prosecution.

Talking of which, what clearer case could there be of the "use or threat of action ... designed to influence the government ... for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause" than the war with Iraq? Tony Blair's ministers were, of course, protected by crown immunity, but could they have experienced no flicker of cognitive dissonance while preparing the 2006 act?

Whatever you might think of armed intervention in Syria, by states or citizens, Hemming's warning illustrates the arbitrary nature of our terrorism laws, the ring they throw around certain acts of violence while ignoring others, the risk that they will be used against brown and bearded people who present no threat. The non-intervention agreement of 1936 was not the last elaborate system of official humbug the British government devised.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/10/orwell-hero-terrorism-syria-british-fighters-damned

Absolutely agree with every word of that. The things that are going on in Syria are beyond horrific, and yet those who go to help, probably their relatives, who are gassed, bombed, maimed and tortured, are called terrorists, even though Cameron was advocating we did just that.

Is this piece of crap article for real?

Never heard something so absurd, Jabhat al-Nusra, is an extremist faction supported by the al-Qaeda terror network and banned in Britain.

So now the Guardian and Sassy is praising Islamic extremists, because they are at war with the Assad regime and even worse find it noble to free people from prison who we have no idea some are there for committing murder or rape?

Seriously if you ever had wondered about the ethics of the Guardian with not only its support for Hamas, but now also Jabhat al-Nusra, now you have your answer, they back Islamists. I am all for the Assad regime falling and democracy to replace it, but not for it to be replaced with Islamism.

Holy crap

Most of those fighting against Assad are not with Jabhat al-Nusra, some are fighting for the Syrian National Coalition, which the West are supplying with arms.  The point the writer was making about the man who blew himself up, which you failed to grasp, was that regardless of who he was fighting for, it's very difficult to condemn a man who sacrificed his life to save those prisoners of Assad.   Have you not seen the photo's of the bodies that have come out of there, hundreds and hundreds of them.   Ben and I tried to look at the link the other week, but they were so horrific we couldn't get past the first one.   Sometimes things aren't black and white, bad people do good things.   There are a lot more than 50 shades of grey in the world we live in today.

Sassy wrote:Most of those fighting against Assad are not with Jabhat al-Nusra, some are fighting for the Syrian National Coalition, which the West are supplying with arms.  The point the writer was making about the man who blew himself up, which you failed to grasp, was that regardless of who he was fighting for, it's very difficult to condemn a man who sacrificed his life to save those prisoners of Assad.   Have you not seen the photo's of the bodies that have come out of there, hundreds and hundreds of them.   Ben and I tried to look at the link the other week, but they were so horrific we couldn't get past the first one.   Sometimes things aren't black and white, bad people do good things.   There are a lot more than 50 shades of grey in the world we live in today.

But this man was with Jabhat al-Nusra for Christs sake who have been also cited for committing atrocities, seriously you need you head screwed back on

It is one thing to want the end of a despotic regime but not replaced by an even worse one

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/02/12/abdul-waheed-majeed-british-suicide-bomber-syria_n_4774351.html?1392221148&utm_hp_ref=uk


http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/tr/contents/articles/politics/2012/12/syria-opposition-fails-with-jabhat-al-nusra-terrorist-label.html#

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/syria-torture-photos-amanpour/

Thousands of them.   If I was male and my family came from that area and I saw that, I'd side with anyone to get them out.   That appears to have been his aim, and he gave his life for it.


The report draws its evidence from the testimony of a Syrian government defector codenamed "Caesar" and almost 27,000 photographs he provided; in all 55,000 such images were brought out of the country.

According to the report, Caesar worked as photographer in the military police. Once the war broke out, his work consisted entirely of documenting "killed detainees."

He claimed to have photographed as many as 50 bodies a day.


That was the prison that he blew the gates from so they could get the prisoners out. Whatever else they have done, that was something to be cheered.

I don't think the comparison its as cut and dried really.
The people that joined the international brigades where from all walks of life, rich and poor, religious and non religious, political probably for the most part, some not though, the question is if a similar scenario had happened in any country Germany, France, Italy a south American country would people still have joined these Brigades to liberate those lands? Most of them didn't join because they were Spanish ex pats or decendants of Spanish ex pats. Some of the people going to Syria from Britain must have the same ideals and good for them but would they go to the aid of a country they have no affinity with as with so many of the International Brigades and also many people who joined the free world against the Nazis a few years later.

Well, as many of them fought for us during the last war, the answer is probably yes.

Vintage wrote:I  don't think the comparison its as cut and dried really.
The people that joined the international brigades where from all walks of life, rich and poor, religious and non religious, political probably for the most part, some not though, the question is if a similar scenario had happened in any country Germany, France, Italy a south American country would people still have joined these Brigades to liberate those lands? Most of them didn't join because they were Spanish ex pats or decendants of Spanish ex pats. Some of the people going to Syria from Britain must have the same ideals and good for them but would they go to the aid of a country they have no affinity with as with so many of the International Brigades and also many people who joined the free world against the Nazis a few years later.  

Agree and most of those who form up the Salafist Jabhat al-Nusra are forigners, with one intention, which is not what the majority of Syrians want but to bring in their own ideological beliefs.
I find the article embarrassing and absured to even compare Islamist with the Civil war in Spain

How the hell would you know what the majority of Syrians want. They would definitely want the thousands of their men who were being tortured to be rescued.  

And the ones that the west are supporting, which most of these men have joined, are not islamists, they simply want to stop Assad killing, maiming, gassing and barrel bombing his own citizens. 

Sassy wrote:How the hell would you know what the majority of Syrians want.   They would definitely want the thousands of their men who were being tortured to be rescued.  

And the ones that the west are supporting, which most of these men have joined, are not islamists, they simply want to stop Assad killing, maiming, gassing and barrel bombing his own citizens. 

I think you will find most rebels are Islamist based now or run, as they have the most financial backing and many of these rebels are also happy to commit atrocities, which is just one place on earth where such events are happening, so why this one and not countless others?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/03/us-syria-crisis-rebels-factbox-idUSBREA120O220140203

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/syria-torture-photos-amanpour/

Look at that, then tell me the man who was willing to give up his life to same some of the thousands that Assad is doing this to, didn't do a good thing, whatever else he thought or did, this action was heroic.

Go on, look at the pictures. And remember they think this had already happened to about 60,000 people.

OMG look at the rebels, most are Islamist, so two groups committing atrocities and appalling acts and you think graphic pictures is going to make me suddenly want to back extremists, get real.

Yea right Didge. One of the reasons you opinion means zilch to me is because you are so sanctamonious and so bloody ignorant. Some of the rebels are fighting the islamists as well as Assad.

I have to say both sides are quite capable and have commited terrible atrocities
against each other and everyone in between. I know things happen in war with sometimes the best of people but really there is a habit with some societies that have blood feud type thinking to do the worst they can to their enemy or anyone who doesn't happen to actually support them just to make a point ie terrorism.

Orwell saw the light later and wrote Animal Farm and 1984. Animal Farm showed the ludicrous situation in the Soviet Union and the Communist systems in general  . Some are more equal than others. His 1984 novel is very relevant today Big Brothers Newspeak and the constant rewriting of the language is so close to the PC culture operated by the left which proscribes words constantly.

As for apologist for Islamic extremist well there are many left wingers who fulfil that role. It seems however extreme the action they will find an excuse to support it. I wonder if they will be quite so vocal when these jihadist return here and begin bombing the working classes here. I suggest they might rush around denying they ever supported the jihadist when the shit hits the fan. Am I being unfair in my assessment about Orwell having just reread those two books and a synopsis on his life I think not. The Guardian is as always so anxious to distort a message to prove its point it loses the plot quite often.

"Sanctimonious" isn't that the preserve of the caring left?
The left winger argues suicide bombing is a good thing it really improves the lot of people I've found. It especially good at removing skin conditions of the bombers themselves, along with any other bits of their anatomy.

Some of the rebels may indeed be fighting the Islamist the Islamist who have gone from this country to fight with Al Queda . The foreign Jihadist whose only concerns is to spread their own hateful brand of Islam. The ones which you are providing cover.

While you provide cover for us killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of women and children and say that is justified.

Sassy wrote:While you provide cover for us killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of women and children and say that is justified.

No I don't like terrorist full stop. I suggest the Palestinians have gone from all out war followed by all out terrorism perhaps a new approach is in order.

Set aside your dislike of the Jews for a moment do you think that the Arabs attacks on Israel in the wars was right?

Do you think attacking civilian targets daily is right?

I'm guessing unless you really really hate the Jews the answer to those questions is no but don't let me put words in your mouth.

If it is no then wouldn't an alternative strategy be appropriate one that reasonable people could get behind. You see your argument that suicide bombers are good simply isn't a winning line. It truly isn't going to catch on no matter how many times you say it.

I love a tryer but not someone who loves a terrorist MI5 better keep a close watch on you.