Terror is a Union Jack
This is what barbarism really looks like
9 July 2025
In an extraordinary legal filing submitted on 9 April in London, Riverway Law (now known as Riverway to the Sea) argued that the British government should remove its designation of Hamas as a proscribed terror group and recognise its legitimate role as a Palestinian resistance movement engaged in a struggle for self-determination and liberation. The UK home secretary had 90 days to answer the petition.
The deadline came and went on Wednesday, 9 July, without so much as a press release from either Riverway or the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. The silence only fueled speculation that the government was either buying time behind closed doors or deliberately avoiding a public confrontation with the legal and political implications of the case. Some observers interpreted the silence as a tacit acknowledgment of the petition’s complexity — especially given the international outcry over Israel’s conduct in Gaza — while others saw it as a calculated refusal to dignify what they considered a fringe or dangerous argument. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian activists hailed the filing as a landmark challenge to the UK’s longstanding policy, and rumours circulated that internal divisions within the Home Office were stalling a coordinated response.
The silence is deafening, leaving only the echoes, still reverberating, of the ominous remarks Cooper made in early April, just before the petition was lodged:
Hamas is a terrorist organisation. It was a barbaric terrorist attack on October 7. Hamas has long been a terrorist organisation. We maintain our view about the barbaric nature of this organisation.
“Barbaric” as a civilisational marker
Yvette Cooper’s use of the term barbaric to describe both the October 7 Hamas attack and “the nature of this organisation” reveals more than just her own political stance — it reflects a broader set of cultural, ideological, and racialised assumptions that shape how Palestine, resistance, and Islam are framed in mainstream British discourse today.
The word barbaric carries a long colonial and civilisational history. It contrasts the “civilised West” with the “savage Other,” drawing on a binary that dates back to imperial justifications for domination. By calling Hamas barbaric, Cooper isn’t just condemning violence — she is positioning Hamas outside the bounds of legitimate politics, and implicitly outside civilisation itself. When she says the group has “long been a terrorist organisation,” this further naturalises the label, suggesting it is intrinsic to its essence.
This rhetorical move serves to de-legitimise any claim Hamas might have to being a resistance movement, foreclose discussion of its political roots or popular support, and situate Britain, and its allies (like Israel), on the morally superior “civilised” side.
The racialisation of the Palestinian cause
To label a political organisation’s “nature” as barbaric (rather than simply its actions) racialises the organisation and, by extension, those associated with it. Since Hamas is seen (rightly or wrongly) as representative of many Palestinians — particularly in Gaza — this framing risks pathologising the Palestinian struggle itself, reducing it to irrational violence.
This fits with a broader ideological pattern in the UK. Palestinians are frequently framed not as a people with political grievances but as a threat to security, cohesion, or values. Expressions of solidarity with Palestine are often construed as evidence of extremism, especially when voiced by Muslims. Muslim civic organisations are regularly scrutinised for allegedly fostering a “climate of extremism” — often based on vague associations or speech crimes.
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Cooper’s statement reflects a culture of moral absolutism, in which nuanced engagement with the causes or contexts of violence is equated with sympathy for terror. This simplification has powerful political uses. It justifies the UK’s proscription of Hamas and its criminalisation of certain speech acts (e.g. displaying flags, chanting slogans). It underwrites the preventive security logic that treats some communities — especially Muslim ones — as potential threats. And it helps align British foreign policy with that of Israel and the US, reinforcing a global narrative war in which political Islam is cast as a menace.
Suppressing legitimate dissent
By asserting that the organisation’s nature is barbaric, Cooper signals that any move to de-proscribe Hamas is not only legally or politically wrong, but morally unthinkable. This shuts down debate. In practice, calls for the UK to rethink its position on Hamas — even in the context of negotiations, ceasefires, or Palestinian unity — are framed as beyond the pale. It also feeds into broader pressures on academics, activists, and charities who speak in favour of Palestinian rights, linking them (however tenuously) to extremism or antisemitism.
In short, Yvette Cooper’s use of the term barbaric reflects and reinforces Britain’s dominant ideological framing of the Palestinian resistance — and Islam more broadly — as inherently violent, irrational, and uncivilised. This framing draws on colonial binaries, racialises Muslim and Palestinian political expression, justifies securitisation and repression, and forecloses critical debate on Britain’s own role in global conflicts. It is not merely a rhetorical flourish. It is a discursive act of power that defines who gets to be human, who gets to resist, and who is allowed to speak.
British barbarism
If Yvette Cooper is going to bandy about terms like barbaric, she should start by taking a good look at her own armed forces. The British Army has been involved in so many atrocities throughout its inglorious history that it makes Hamas look positively benign by comparison. Let’s take a look at a few of these massacres, war crimes, and acts of brutality, and then let’s ask whether Hamas or the British Army is more worthy of being called a terrorist organisation.
Let’s start in Amritsar, India, 1919. On a quiet afternoon, thousands of unarmed civilians gathered peacefully in Jallianwala Bagh. They came to protest colonial repression, to speak, to assemble — basic human rights. But General Dyer had other plans. He ordered his troops to open fire without warning, trapping families inside an enclosed space, and mowing them down with machine guns. Over a thousand were killed or wounded. Children were shot trying to flee. No apology. No justice. Dyer was celebrated back home. The British Army didn’t just massacre Indians — it taught the Empire that brown lives don’t count.
Move to South Africa, turn of the 20th century. The British invented the modern concentration camp — not the Nazis, but the British. During the Boer War, more than 100,000 civilians, mostly women and children, were locked in filthy camps. Over 26,000 died, mainly from disease and starvation. A deliberate policy of scorched earth destroyed farms, poisoned wells, and wiped out food supplies. Why? Because the Boers resisted. And resistance, to the British, always meant extermination.
And let’s talk about Kenya, 1950s. The Mau Mau Uprising wasn’t terrorism — it was Africans demanding their land and freedom back. So what did Britain do? It built a vast system of torture camps, interned over a million people, and subjected thousands to beatings, rape, mutilation, and castration. Yes, castration. Elderly men were sodomised with bottles. Women had their genitals slashed with knives. And this wasn’t rogue behaviour. It was systematic. It was policy. And for decades, the UK lied about it — burned the files, buried the truth.
What about Ireland? The British treated it like a testing ground for imperial violence. During the War of Independence, the so-called “Black and Tans” terrorised civilians — burning homes, killing non-combatants, and torturing prisoners. Even after the Free State was established, the British continued to meddle, arm loyalist death squads, and treat Irish resistance as savagery. The blood on British hands in Ireland didn’t dry in 1921 — it runs all the way to the Troubles.
And let’s not forget the Chagos Islands, where in the 1960s and 70s, Britain deported an entire population. They rounded up the Chagossians like cattle, loaded them onto ships, and dumped them in slums in Mauritius. Why? Because the US wanted a military base on Diego Garcia, and Britain was only too happy to make the deal. A whole people erased — for profit and power. No amount of Union Jacks or crocodile tears can disguise that crime.
Cyprus, Malaya, Iraq — take your pick. In Cyprus, British troops hanged teenage boys, tortured detainees, and dumped bodies in shallow graves during the EOKA uprising. In Malaya, they ran “new villages” that were little more than barbed-wire prison camps, and burned down entire communities to root out insurgents. In Iraq, after the 2003 invasion, British soldiers beat hotel receptionist Baha Mousa to death in custody while others stood by and watched. This wasn’t battlefield fog — it was brutality in uniform.
And yet we are expected to believe that the British Army, the pride of Parliament, is somehow a civilising force? That soldiers who kicked in doors and tortured suspects in Basra are heroes, while Palestinians who resist occupation are savages? Spare us the hypocrisy.
This is the truth: the British Empire was built not on enlightenment, but on blood. The British Army was not a moral force — it was the iron fist of white supremacy, battering down any people who dared to raise their heads. The violence was not incidental; it was foundational. It was not a few bad apples; it was the tree itself that was rotten. And politicians like Yvette Cooper — who clutch their pearls at the word resistance while draping themselves in the flag of Empire — are complicit in perpetuating this double standard.
If barbaric means slaughtering civilians, torturing prisoners, disappearing communities, and ruling through fear — then say it out loud: the British Army is barbaric. And if terrorism means using violence to crush the will of a people struggling for freedom — then Britain has been running a terrorist organisation for centuries.
Don’t talk to us about civilisation. Don’t lecture us on violence. And don’t you dare pretend that history absolves you. The record is written in blood — and the world is watching.
