Terrorism Act 2000

The Terrorism Act 2000 is the principal counter-terrorism statute of the United Kingdom. Section 1 defines terrorism as "the use or threat of action" involving serious violence against a person, serious damage to property, danger to life, a serious risk to public health or safety, or serious interference with an electronic system, where the use or threat "is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public" and "is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause"; the words on international organisations and racial causes were added by later amendment.¹

Proscription

Under section 3 an organisation is proscribed if it is listed in Schedule 2, and the Home Secretary may add one by order "only if he believes that it is concerned in terrorism," meaning that it commits or participates in, prepares for, promotes or encourages, or is otherwise concerned in terrorism. Section 11 makes it an offence to belong or profess to belong to a proscribed organisation.²

National Action, which the Home Office describes as "a racist neo-Nazi group that was established in 2013," was proscribed in December 2016 by Home Secretary Amber Rudd, after it had celebrated the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox.³⁴ The Sonnenkrieg Division, which the Home Office describes as a splinter of the System Resistance Network, "an alias of the proscribed group National Action," was added by an order made on February 27, 2020; the Feuerkrieg Division followed in July 2020, the Atomwaffen Division in April 2021, The Base in July 2021, the Terrorgram Collective in April 2024, and the Maniac Murder Cult, the Russian Imperial Movement and Palestine Action in July 2025.³⁵⁶ Combat 18 and the Order of Nine Angles were not on the list as of July 2026; on the day the Atomwaffen order was announced, HOPE not hate said the government had missed an opportunity to proscribe the Order of Nine Angles.³⁷

Prosecutions

Section 58 makes it an offence to collect or record information "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism," to possess a document containing it, or, by later amendment, to view such a document on the internet.⁸ Benjamin Hannam, a probationary constable of the Metropolitan Police, was convicted at the Old Bailey on April 1, 2021, of National Action membership under section 11 and of two section 58 offences, among other counts.⁹ Michael Szewczuk pleaded guilty to five section 58 counts, including possession of the White Resistance Manual and the Al Qaeda Manual; Harry Vaughan to twelve; Jack Reed, convicted at Manchester Crown Court in November 2019 at sixteen, to three alongside preparation of terrorist acts; Ben John, a criminology student, was convicted at Leicester Crown Court on August 12, 2021; and Ashley Podsiad-Sharp, a prison officer at HMP Armley in Leeds, was convicted at Sheffield Crown Court in 2023.^1011121314

Schedule 7 allows officers to stop and question travellers at ports. Jacek Tchorzewski was stopped under it at Luton Airport on February 20, 2019, before a flight to Poland; his seized phone produced the ten section 58 counts to which he pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey on June 21, 2019.¹⁵ Declan George-Candiani was stopped at Stansted Airport on August 13, 2024, and convicted at the Old Bailey on October 3, 2024, of two counts under section 58(1).¹⁶ Cameron Finnigan was sentenced at the Old Bailey on January 16, 2025, for possessing an 11-page document on vehicle-ramming and knife and firearm attacks, among other offences.¹⁷