Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Marine J. Petit, Lecturer in Virology, Section of Virology, Institute for Sustainability, University of Surrey

A tiny tick crawls across your skin, potentially carrying a virus so lethal it kills up to four out of every ten people it infects. Yet that same tick shows no signs of illness whatsoever – it feeds, moves and reproduces as if nothing is wrong.

Scientists studying severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV) have long wondered why this happens. The pathogen, first identified in China in 2009, causes high fevers, bleeding and organ failure in humans, but leaves ticks completely unharmed.

Alongside colleagues, I conducted research into how ticks can carry deadly viruses without becoming ill themselves. Understanding these resistance mechanisms could help scientists develop new ways to block or weaken tick-borne diseases before they spill over into humans or animals.

The findings come as climate change pushes ticks into new territories around the world. The Asian longhorned tick that carries SFTSV has been identified in Australia, New Zealand and the eastern US, raising concerns the disease could spread to regions that have never seen it before.

Unlike mice, humans or even mosquitoes, ticks pose a unique scientific challenge: most of the molecular tools researchers use to study infection simply don’t work in ticks.

Instead, we turned to data analysis. We captured detailed molecular snapshots of infected tick cells, tracking thousands of genes and more than 17,000 proteins simultaneously. This allowed the team to study the cellular response comprehensively, at different time post-infection.

We found that while human cells respond to viral invasion by mounting aggressive immune responses, mobilising multiple defence systems to fight the infection, tick cells take a fundamentally different approach.

Survival strategy

Ticks do have immune systems but they operate very differently from ours. Like humans, ticks have cellular signalling pathways that help detect and respond to infection. Known as Toll, IMD and JAK-STAT, these pathways coordinate defensive responses and trigger the production of antimicrobial proteins.

But when infected with SFTSV, the tick’s immune system showed only minimal activity. Instead of launching full-scale defensive responses, these pathways remained largely quiet. The virus appears to have evolved ways to avoid triggering the tick’s immune alarm bells.

Instead, the tick cells made major changes to their stress response systems, their production of RNA and proteins, and the pathways that control cell death. (RNA is a molecule that carries genetic instructions – like a working copy of DNA – used by cells to make proteins.) Rather than attacking the virus head-on, tick cells seem to tolerate the infection, reorganising their internal machinery to manage the damage while continuing to function.

This approach makes evolutionary sense when you consider the constraints these tiny creatures face. Mounting a full-blown immune response is energetically expensive – it requires lots of resources and can harm the host’s own tissues.

For ticks, which feed only a few times in their life and live off limited energy reserves, a gentler response may be more sustainable. And because this virus has likely been infecting ticks for millions of years, the two have had time to adapt to each other.

Rather than killing the host, the virus may have evolved to fly under the radar, while the tick evolved ways to tolerate it – allowing both to survive and reproduce.

Unexpected antiviral guardians

We identified two key proteins that act as molecular RNA quality controllers. These proteins, called UPF1 and DHX9, are ancient guardians found in all complex life forms, from plants to humans. One of their normal functions involves monitoring and controlling the quality of RNA, the molecular messenger that carries genetic instructions around cells. Think of them as cellular proofreaders, constantly checking that genetic messages are accurate and functional.

My research team first identified these proteins when they appeared as cellular partners that directly interact with viral proteins inside infected cells. This discovery intrigued us because UPF1 and DHX9 were unexpected candidates – they aren’t typically associated with antiviral defence – yet they seemed perfectly positioned to detect or process viral RNA, likely because these proteins normally scan RNA for errors, making them well-suited to spot the unusual structures often found in viral genetic material.

To test whether these proteins fight the virus, we used genetic techniques to silence the expression of UPF1 and DHX9 in tick cells, essentially removing these molecular guardians. We found that SFTSV viral growth increased significantly when these proteins were absent, demonstrating their antiviral function.

This suggests that ticks may have evolved a different kind of immune defence known as non-canonical immunity. Instead of attacking viruses head-on using traditional immune systems, ticks seem to use more subtle strategies. In this case, their RNA quality-control proteins act as internal monitors. Because viral RNA often looks different from normal cellular RNA, these proteins may recognise it as unusual. Once detected, they can trigger internal control systems that slow down or block the virus from multiplying – helping the tick stay healthy without a full-blown immune response.

Our research has important implications because UPF1 and DHX9 proteins exist in human cells too. Understanding how they work in ticks could reveal new ways to strengthen human antiviral defences or develop treatments that enhance these natural quality-control mechanisms.

The research also opens possibilities for using these tolerance mechanisms to stop disease – either by strengthening similar defences in humans and animals, or by targeting them in ticks to break the chain of transmission. Future strategies might involve boosting antiviral proteins in wild tick populations or developing treatments that specifically target virus-tick interactions.

Traditional approaches to disease control are struggling to keep up, especially as climate change helps ticks expand into new regions. To prevent future outbreaks, we need a deeper understanding of how ticks, and the viruses they carry, interact with both humans and animals.

Learning how these tiny creatures tolerate deadly pathogens could be key to developing new tools that make people and animals less vulnerable to these diseases – or prevent ticks from passing them on in the first place.

Marine J. Petit receives funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 890970.

– ref. Understanding tick immunity may be key to preventing killer viruses from spreading – https://theconversation.com/understanding-tick-immunity-may-be-key-to-preventing-killer-viruses-from-spreading-261689

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Lewis Eves, Lecturer in Government and International Relations, University of Essex

Eighty years have passed since Japan’s surrender ended the second world war. But the way Japan thinks about its wartime history is changing at pace. This is coinciding with a political shift that risks renewed Japanese militarism, an outcome that would complicate politics across east Asia.

Japan’s traditional narrative of the war originated in the post-war occupation, a period in which the US oversaw the demilitarisation of Japanese society. These efforts included the establishment and adoption of Japan’s current constitution in 1947.

Article 9 of the constitution renounces the use of force as a means of settling international disputes, thus limiting the Japanese military to being a purely defensive organisation. Japan has upheld Article 9 since its inception, transforming itself into a pacifist nation and pursuing a humanitarian and diplomatic foreign policy.

Tokyo refused to send personnel even for UN peacekeeping missions until the 1990s, when a Japanese military contingent arrived in Cambodia following its civil war. When its troops have been involved, they have only served in supporting rather than combat roles.

The US occupying force also developed a peace education programme for Japanese schools. This programme established the core themes and ideas surrounding Japan’s traditional narrative of the war.

The narrative renounces militarism and points to the second world war as a cautionary tale of the excesses of nationalism and aggression. It explains that Japan was misled by militaristic social elites and that the war was not in the best interests of the Japanese people.

Remembering war crimes

Japan’s traditional narrative also encourages introspective contemplation of Japanese war crimes, such as the massacre of Chinese civilians in the captured city of Nanjing between December 1937 and January 1938. These atrocities are considered shameful and are not usually discussed in public by traditionalists.

When support for militarism grows, however, survivors of the war share stories of the atrocities they witnessed or – indeed – participated in. One instance of this occurred in 2007, when references to some of Japan’s wartime atrocities were removed from school textbooks.

Prominent traditionalists spoke out against this, with Rev. Kinjo Shigeaki giving interviews warning against militarism. He shared the story of how, brainwashed by Japanese Imperial Army soldiers into believing American troops would rape all the local women and run over the men with their tanks, he murdered his mother and siblings in 1945.

Nowadays, the traditional narrative is most popular among older Japanese people who lived through the war or the immediate post-war period. By holding true a historical narrative that renounces militarism, traditionalists are in favour of Article 9 and Japan’s pacifistic foreign policy.

The revisionist narrative emerged in the 1950s. Since then, it has grown to challenge the traditional narrative in popularity. It seeks to explain that the war was morally justified as an effort to liberate east Asia from western imperialists.

At the same time, the revisionist narrative also explains that the war was misguided. Its proponents argue that, by attacking and subjugating neighbouring countries, Japan was merely mimicking western-style imperialism.

Accusing the west of corrupting Japan predates the revisionist narrative. An instance of it can be found as early as the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, which took place between 1946 and 1948. General Ishiwara Kanji, the wartime leader of the Imperial Japanese Army, argued that Japan was forced to open up by the west and to behave as a western power.

Read more:
‘Then the city started to burn, the fires were chasing me’ – 80 years on, Hiroshima survivors describe how the atomic blast echoed down generations

Ishiwara told the tribunal: “When Japan did open its doors and tried dealing with other countries, it learned that all those countries were a fearfully aggressive lot. And so for its own defence it took your own country as its teacher and set about learning how to be aggressive. You might say we became your disciples.”

This perspective underpins the revisionist narrative’s framing of the Japanese people as a primary victim of the war. That an otherwise peaceful people with good intentions made the error of mimicking the west, resulting in a war in which they suffered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

By failing to condemn militarism, the revisionist narrative makes Japanese rearmament permissible. As a result, revisionists tend to oppose Article 9 and call for Japan to restore its military.

Why does this matter?

Historical narratives change. It is at the Japanese nation’s discretion which narrative it favours, with both probably capturing some aspect of Japan’s complex wartime history. What is concerning, though, is that the current shift in how Japan remembers its wartime history may contribute to militaristic backsliding.

Japan held elections for its upper house, the House of Councillors, in July. The rightwing populist Sanseitō party secured over 12% of the national vote, up from 3.33% in 2022. Sanseitō is an ultranationalist and pro-revisionist party that glorifies Japan’s imperial past and promises to revoke Article 9.

Alongside other pro-revisionist parties, it draws significant support from young voters. Young people in Japan nowadays consume significantly more revisionist media than older generations, alluding to the popularity of this narrative among young voters.

Read more:
Rightwing populist Sanseitō party shakes Japan with election surge

Japan’s neighbours view Sanseitō and other revisionist parties with suspicion. China, which lost more than 20 million people following Japan’s wartime invasion, has condemned calls for Article 9 reform. Past efforts to reform Article 9 – or even just pursue a more assertive foreign policy – have triggered large anti-Japanese protests in cities throughout China.

East Asia is already rich with possible flashpoints for conflict and hostility. These include concerns over possible Chinese military action against Taiwan, North Korean military posturing and Russia’s growing influence in the region.

Adding a re-militarised Japan, no longer inhibited by the aggressions of its imperial past, would only complicate matters further.

Lewis Eves does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Japan’s shifting memory of the second world war is raising fears of renewed militarism – https://theconversation.com/japans-shifting-memory-of-the-second-world-war-is-raising-fears-of-renewed-militarism-262809

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Owen Brierley, Course Leader in the Department of Creative Industries, Kingston University

Researchers are dealing with a disturbing trend that threatens the foundation of scientific progress: scientific fraud has become an industry. And it’s growing faster than legitimate peer reviewed science journals can keep up with.

This isn’t about individual bad actors anymore. We’re witnessing the emergence of an organised, systematic approach to scientific fraud. This includes paper mills churning out formulaic research articles, brokerages guaranteeing publication for a fee and predatory journals that bypass quality assurance entirely.

These organisations disguise themselves behind respectable sounding labels such as “editing services” or “academic consultants”. In reality, their business model depends on corrupting the scientific process.

Paper mills operate like content farms, flooding journals with submissions to overwhelm peer review systems. They practice journal targeting, sending multiple papers to one publication, and journal hopping, submitting the same paper to multiple outlets simultaneously. It’s a numbers game. If even a fraction slip through, the fraudulent service profits.

Is this just a case of scientists being lazy? The answer is more complex and troubling. Today’s researchers face constraints that make these fraudulent services increasingly tempting. The pressure to continually produce new research or risk getting your funding cut, called the “publish or perish” culture, is a longstanding problem.

As well, governments around the world are facing financial struggles and are looking to trim costs, resulting in less funding for research. Less funding means increased competition.

This creates a catch-22 situation for researchers who need publications to win funding but need funding to conduct publishable research. Environmental factors compound the issue. Globalisation means individual researchers are lost in an ocean of competing voices, making the temptation to game the system even stronger.

In this environment, the promise of guaranteed publication can seem like a lifeline rather than a Faustian bargain.

AI: Acceleration at what cost?

The rise of generative AI has supercharged this fraud industry. Researchers are witnessing an explosion in research articles that appear to exploit AI software to produce papers at an unprecedented speed. These papers mine public data sets that offer surface level evidence. These hastily generated papers bear hallmarks of a paper mill production process, including evidence fabrication, data manipulation, ethics misconduct and outright plagiarism.

Where a peer reviewer might once have received ten submissions for a conference or journal in a year, they’re now drowning in 30 or 40 submissions with a shorter time frame (six months or less), with legitimate research buried in the avalanche.

Overwhelmed reviewers, in turn, are tempted to use AI tools to summarise papers, identify gaps in the evidence and even write review responses. This is creating an arms race. Some researchers have started embedding hidden text in their submissions, such as white text on white backgrounds or microscopic fonts, containing instructions to override AI prompts and give the paper positive reviews.

The peer review system, academia’s safeguard against fraud, faces its own problems. Although it’s meant to ensure quality, it is a slow process where new ideas need careful examination and testing. History reminds us that peer review is essential but imperfect. Albert Einstein hated it.

Because the process is slow, many researchers share their findings first on pre-publication platforms, where work can be shared immediately. By the time the research reaches a legitimate science conference or journal, non peer review publications are already being distributed to the world. Waiting for the peer review process means a researcher risks missing getting credit for their discovery.

The pressure to be first hasn’t changed since Isaac Newton let his calculus discovery languish unpublished while Gottfried Leibniz claimed the kudos. What has changed is the scale and systematisation of shortcuts.

A rise in batch retractions (ten or more papers simultaneously withdrawn) signals that we’re not dealing with isolated incidents but with an industrial-scale problem. In the 1990s there were almost no batch retractions. In 2020 there were around 3,000 and over 6,000 in 2023.

In comparison, in 2023 there were 2,000 single paper retractions. This means that batch retractions of more than ten papers were three times higher than single paper retractions.

A path forward

If this were simply about weeding out unethical scientists, the systems we already have might suffice. But we’re facing a challenge to the network of checks and balances that makes science work. When fraudulent publications grow faster than legitimate science and when AI-generated content overwhelms human review capacity, we need better solutions.

The scientific community must reckon with how its own structures; the publication metrics, funding mechanisms and career incentives, have created vulnerabilities that unethical systems can exploit.

Until we address these systemic issues, the fraud industry will thrive, undermining the enterprise that has made our world safer, cleaner and more accessible. The question isn’t whether we can afford to fix this system—it’s whether we can afford not to.

Owen Brierley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How bad science is becoming big business – https://theconversation.com/how-bad-science-is-becoming-big-business-262821

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre, City St George’s, University of London

Unexpected growth in the UK economy isn’t enough to detract from the gaping hole in the country’s public finances. Speculation is ramping up about what steps the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, might take to plug the gap come the budget in autumn – and there are no shortage of ideas. The trouble is, each comes with risks and unknowns. Our experts have weighed up the evidence to offer their suggestions.

Bite the bullet – raise income tax

Maha Rafi Atal, Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, University of Glasgow

Rachel Reeves and the Labour party made three promises to the electorate last summer: to repair broken public services, to reduce immigration and to avoid an income tax hike. Unfortunately for Reeves, the three promises are at odds with one another.

To raise the revenue needed to invest in public services without a tax rise, the government needs economic growth. This is so it can raise the funds by taxing the same share of a larger pie. Restrictions on migration, however, are a drag on the growth of key sectors of the economy. This includes areas such as finance, the creative industries and higher education.

The chancellor has instead tried to raise other taxes, including employer national insurance contribution rates. But because these taxes hit businesses (which may pay for them by cutting back elsewhere) they can be a drag on growth too. In more prosperous global times, Reeves might have got around this by borrowing, but the UK’s borrowing costs are much higher than those faced by the last Labour government.

At some point, then, Reeves will have to choose between raising income tax and allowing cuts to public services. Voters tell pollsters they would much rather face the tax rise. This might take the form of a raise in the basic rate (a change of just 1% could raise as much as £8 billion), or it might take less direct forms like an extended freeze on the tax thresholds.

If the money is used to rebuild services, there’s time for that to bear political fruit before the next election. Holding off on income tax to avoid political blowback in the short term is penny-wise, pound-foolish in the long run.

Inheritance tax – progressive vote-winner or punishing aspiration?

Conor O’Kane, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Bournemouth

One of the things Labour is thought to be considering is changes to inheritance tax (IHT). The view is that, given property has appreciated so much in recent years, changes to the thresholds and rules around gifting could raise the revenues required to eliminate the shortfall. As an example, gifts given seven years or more before someone dies are not currently liable for IHT. This approach may appease those Labour backbenchers who have been calling for a wealth tax to finance public spending.

However, IHT brings political as well as economic risks. In the 2024 autumn budget, cuts to tax breaks for farmers passing on their businesses drew fierce criticism and angry protests. Opposition parties are likely to label any change to IHT as a “death tax”.

Economically, it will be difficult to predict how much revenue IHT changes would raise, as there may well be loopholes that can be exploited to avoid the new charges. But Labour could sell changes to IHT as progressive – put simply, those who benefited more from increases in property values pay a little more. Opposition parties, however, could frame it as a tax on aspiration.

There are no easy solutions here. Labour will need to tread carefully and will be keen to avoid policy rollbacks like those they recently experienced with winter fuel allowance and disability benefits.

Read more:
Wealth taxes don’t always work the way governments hope they will. Here are some alternatives

Keep freezing income tax bands – and hope voters don’t notice

Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City St George’s University

Rachel Reeves faces a challenging task in the budget this autumn. Based on her own fiscal rules, there is a large hole in the public finances that will need to be filled. And as she has ruled out major changes to these fiscal rules, while also facing pressure to increase spending from within the Labour party, it is clear that she will have to raise taxes.

So it is likely that, whatever else she does, continuing the freeze (which is due to expire in 2028) on the basic and higher rate of income tax for another two years is likely to top her agenda. The freeze on thresholds is already projected to have increased income tax receipts by £40 billion per year by 2028, and extending it to 2029-30 could increase government tax receipts by an additional £7-£8 billion a year. This would make a substantial contribution to bridging the fiscal shortfall.

For one thing, it is the continuation of an existing policy and will not take effect until the 2028/29 fiscal year, when the current freeze ends. This makes it harder for people to gauge its real effects on their income. Although it will attract criticism for breaking her income tax pledge, it would be politically easier to justify than direct changes in tax rates. And unlike wealth taxes, it is difficult to avoid.

Cutting tax relief for pensions could be a hidden pot of cash

Jonquil Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Personal Finance, Open University

Debates about tackling government debt typically centre on cutting spending or raising taxes. But a third option, often overlooked, is restricting tax reliefs. An obvious candidate is pension tax reliefs over and above the basic rate, which benefit the better-off and are skewed towards men (since women’s ability to save is often suppressed due to unpaid care work).

The various income tax and national insurance reliefs for pension schemes (tax relief on contributions, tax-free income and gains for pension funds and tax-free lump sum at retirement) cost the government £52 billion in 2023-4.

By design, any system that gives people tax relief up to their highest marginal rate is regressive (it benefits the better-off more than those who are less well off), and around two-thirds of pension tax reliefs go to higher-rate and additional-rate taxpayers.

Advocates may argue that tax reliefs are necessary to encourage people to save for retirement. But the evidence does not support this. First, the only step up in UK pension saving in modern times has been due to the introduction of auto-enrolment in 2012 – not tax reliefs.

Second, research suggests that when tax-relieved savings schemes are introduced, they prompt a shift of existing savings. That is to say, people tend to move other savings into their pensions for the tax benefits rather than actually putting more money away overall for the future. But clearly, tax relief does not help people to save more if they don’t have the extra funds in the first place. And on social justice grounds, does it make sense for the mass of taxpayers to subsidise the relatively well-off who can readily save anyway?

Invest – and outgrow the fiscal black hole

Guilherme Klein Martins, Lecturer in Economics, University of Leeds, and Research Associate at the Research Center on Macroeconomics of Inequalities (Made/USP)

The UK should pass a modern golden rule focused on investment. The government should write into law a multi-year minimum for net public investment – at least 3% of GDP – so that capital spending can’t be raided when money for everyday spending is tight. Britain’s main constraint to economic growth is weak supply – service backlogs, infrastructure bottlenecks and lasting scars from under-investment that hold down productivity and labour supply. This will not recover by itself.

International evidence shows that each 1% of GDP in public investment raises output by roughly 1.5% over a few years. The combination of a higher GDP and increased tax receipts should make this policy at least neutral in terms of the debt-GDP ratio.

And Reeves must think strategically. Alongside sectors where the UK aims to build a comparative advantage – areas such as clean energy, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and digital/AI – it must also cover social and general infrastructure. This means the NHS, schools and skills, care and local transport.

To keep choices disciplined and transparent, the government could publish a list of projects, ranked and updated regularly. Spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility could then scrutinise the assumptions behind the growth and revenue payoffs. The message is simple: protect and stabilise investment to raise growth and help Britain outgrow the fiscal hole.

Jonquil Lowe is is a member of the Women’s Budget Group’s policy advisory group

Conor O’Kane, Guilherme Klein Martins, Maha Rafi Atal, and Steve Schifferes do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What’s the secret to fixing the UK’s public finances? Here’s what our panel of experts would do – https://theconversation.com/whats-the-secret-to-fixing-the-uks-public-finances-heres-what-our-panel-of-experts-would-do-263164

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Mead, Professor of UK Human Rights Law, University of East Anglia

The proscription of Palestine Action – banning membership or support for the organisation on the ground that the home secretary believes it is “concerned in terrorism” – has led to hundreds of arrests, two legal challenges and many questions about the state of protest rights in the UK.

More than 500 people were arrested last weekend, the overwhelming majority for displaying a placard in support of a proscribed organisation. This is an offence according to section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and carries a sentence of six months or fine. All have been released on bail, save for a handful who refused to give their details to police.

The decision to proscribe has arguably affected the free speech rights of the group and its supporters. This issue is why a High Court judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, has granted Palestine Action permission to challenge its proscription by means of judicial review.

In his view, it was reasonably arguable that the proscription order amounted to a disproportionate interference with articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights. These guarantee a right to free speech and peaceful assembly.

Disproportionate governmental decisions – that do not properly balance an individual’s rights against the wider public interest (in, say, national security) – are unlawful in the UK under the Human Rights Act 1998.

If the court at the full hearing in November agrees, and decides the proscription order does not strike a proportionate balance, it will almost certainly quash it. The effect of striking down an order such as here is to take the law back to Day Zero, as if it had never been passed.

What will happen to those arrested?

The High Court has had the power since 2022 to make a quashing order effective only from the date of the decision. If that happened here, any previous convictions would stand.

But if, as is more conventional, the quashing order covered the entire period of proscription, anyone still in the criminal justice system and yet to be found guilty would have their charges dropped. It would be impossible to continue a prosecution if in law Palestine Action had never been proscribed at all.

More interesting would be those who have been convicted between July and November. Their convictions or fines are not automatically discharged with the quashing order.

There is a trial of three supporters set for September. An instructive parallel here are the recent convictions of various Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion activists.

Several were convicted under “serious disruption” regulations, which were ruled unlawful by the Court of Appeal in May. The human rights advocacy group Liberty has called on the CPS to review all convictions under the older, lower standard.

Broad definition of terrorism

Palestine Action has committed serious property damage to influence the government or to intimidate arms manufacturers into stopping, and has done so for a political or ideological cause. That is almost certainly within the UK’s definition of terrorism, which illuminates the breadth of that term and the uncertainties surrounding its application.

Palestine Action’s co-founder, Huda Ammori, initially tried to challenge the proscription order in July, through an application seeking interim relief preventing the order coming into force. In this judicial review, Chamberlain thought the terrorism definition capable of covering Palestine Action. His decision in favour of the home secretary was upheld by the Court of Appeal later that day.

But the unprecedented application of counter-terrorism law to a direct action group highlights how the UK’s terrorism definition is now much wider than under the previous law. That law defined it as “the use of violence for political ends, including any use of violence for the purpose of putting the public or any section of the public in fear”. MI5 advice to the Home Secretary and presented to the court in July acknowledge the novelty of proscribing a group that did not use or advocate violence to achieve its political ends.

The current law also requires no proof that someone is actually made fearful or terrorised. Other states have higher bars – Ireland requires serious intimidation – or seem to generally manage without laws and powers to deal with terrorism, as is the case in Germany.

Legal commentators have pointed out for years the possibility of terrorism law capturing direct action protesters. In my own book in 2010, I offered the view that an environmental group that destroyed a farmer’s GM crop field would probably mean they came within the terrorism definition.

It’s worth pointing out that while the Terrorism Act creates the offence of support for a proscribed group, it does not require officers to arrest. They must exercise discretion. In this case, that includes a consideration of the free speech rights of hundreds of protesters.

It would have been perfectly lawful, albeit politically contentious, to have decided arrests were not warranted, given that there was no obvious and direct harm posed to national security (or to others) by the peaceful expression of what is, currently at least, an unlawful view.

We can see such discretion in Northern Ireland, where PSNI do not regularly arrest those waving flags proclaiming support for UVF or IRA – both long-term proscribed organisations.

Seeing such depictions can only reinforce the views of those who argue the clampdown on Palestine Action is politically motivated and partial. And as law professor Geoff Pearson suggests, the longer the laws are in force and police continue to enforce them to the degree witnessed last weekend, the more police legitimacy will be called into question.

Finally, the mass arrests reflect what I consider a very real problem in protest law: the limitations of effective, timely enforcement. Being released after 24 hours does not remedy the fact you were removed from your protest site. An effective right of protest is about not just the law, but the reality on the ground.

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David Mead is affiliated with The Labour Party and UCU, and serves on Liberty’s Policy Council

– ref. Palestine Action arrests: what happens next, and what it tells us about the breadth of Britain’s counter-terrorism laws – https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-arrests-what-happens-next-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-breadth-of-britains-counter-terrorism-laws-263080