Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Robert Burns - Terrorist?


If he were alive and writing today? Yes.

From an article in the Scotsman...

ROBERT Burns’ great song Scots, Wha Hae Wi’ Wallace Bled is considered by many to be an appeal for insurrection. It is not so much about Wallace and Bruce but about Burns using their example to incite the struggle against an increasingly tyrannical and corrupt government in London. The last line “Liberty’s in every blow / Let us do – or die” is not only an incitement to direct violence, it also directly connects Burns with the armed revolutionary struggle then ongoing in France; “Let us do – or die” being the French revolutionaries’ battle cry

Samina Malik, a shop assistant at Heathrow Airport, was the first woman to be convicted under the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000. She was charged with the crime of “possessing records likely to be used for terrorism”. Among these “records” were a number of poems inciting jihad. She was found guilty and sentenced, a judgment later overturned on appeal.

The parallels between Burns and Malik are obvious: radicalised politics; associating with others of a like mind; connections with foreign terrorist groups and a call to insurrection. So how would Robert Burns, who styled himself a “son of sedition”, fare if he were to be judged by the standards of our current anti-terror legislation? Would we find him detained in Barlinnie Prison, languishing in solitary confinement and composing his jail diaries? If Scots Wha Hae could be indictable under our contemporary terror legislation, for what else might Burns have been prosecuted?

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