Have the UK’s Anti-Terrorist Laws Violated Basic Human Rights and Turned Muslims Into a Suspect Community?

Prof Steven Greer

Professor of Human Rights, School of Law, University of Bristol

Steven Greer, Professor of Human Rights at the School of Law, University of Bristol, studied Law at the University of Oxford, and Sociology at the London School of Economics, before obtaining a PhD from the Queen's University of Belfast. In addition to the University of Bristol, he has taught at Queen's Belfast, and at the Universities of Sussex, Hannover, and Wollongong.

This lecture will argue that the real debate about anti-terrorist legislation in the UK is not about whether it is necessary, but about what characteristics it should have and about how four competing objectives can simultaneously be fulfilled: responsible management of often incalculable risk, and compliance with democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. The first step towards finding answers lies in properly assessing the kind of crisis the UK faces. By contrasting this with the experience of Northern Ireland, and by considering key elements in the contemporary legislative response, some conclusions will be drawn about the sort of anti-terrorist laws which can currently be justified and about whether or not they have created ‘suspect communities’.