“If you are targeting people on the basis of the colour of their skin,” the Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, asked last week, “how else can you describe them? That is racist thuggery.” It is. But there is another way of describing the actions of the rioters burning people out of their homes in Belfast, though ministers somehow cannot bring themselves to say it. Terrorism.
The violence there clearly meets the government’s definition: “the use or threat” of actions designed to “intimidate the public” for the purpose of “advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”. Among these actions are “serious violence against a person” and “serious damage to property”. I happen to believe that the property clause blurs the issue. But either way, in what possible world do the Belfast attacks not fit the definition?
