Description
British counter-terrorism originated in the 1970s, in the UK Government’s efforts to contain violence of Northern Ireland’s so-called ‘Troubles’. Now-familiar measures like stop-and-search, executive exclusion, or detention without charge first entered the UK’s domestic security arsenal through the passage of the 1973 Emergency Provisions Act and 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act. Both these acts emerged as part of the UK Government’s response to its assumption of Direct Rule responsibilities in Northern Ireland, following the suspension of devolved administration in 1972. Moreover, both were seen amongst legislators as being antithetical to their cherished mythology regarding Britain’s ‘liberal’ domestic security tradition.
Government ministers pursuing this counter-terrorism agenda understood MPs’ fears regarding the ‘unpalatability’ of novel powers put forward in their legislative programme. They thus embarked on a carefully-curated rhetorical package, by which to overcome parliamentarians’ fears and assure their support for new laws. This paper explores how that package took shape. It traces the reappearance of long-standing tropes on Northern Ireland, within Government ministers’ arguments in favour of novel counter-terrorism – particularly, tropes regarding the abnormality of Northern Ireland’s ‘present circumstances’ or ‘permanent emergency’, with which parliamentary audiences were familiar. The paper unpacks such tropes, dwelling especially on their peculiar temporal parameters, and clarifies their function for 1970s counter-terrorism discourses: namely, clothing ‘exceptional’ provisions in a language ‘accepted’ amongst legislators. The paper will interest scholars of historical IR looking to deepen our understandings of the histories of ‘terrorism’ discourses; as well as scholars of ‘timing theory’ and the uses of different notions of ‘time’ in political rhetoric.
