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Terrorism Bill

I support the amendment very strongly. I will be brief, because much of what I wish to say has already been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. My support is based on my experience of living in South Africa under apartheid rule and during years of emergency from the mid-1980s onwards. At that time, even wearing a T-shirt in the colours of the ANC made you liable to arrest and arbitrary detention, and certainly to a roughing up in the streets by the security forces. It is important that one has in the Bill the kind of protections that the amendment affords. There are so many despotic governments in the world and the forces of democracy often have no other way forward in trying not only to obtain democratisation in their country but also to inform people, who are so severely suppressed and oppressed and have no access to information, that an active movement is doing something to try to liberate them and to remind the outside world that that force is alive and well.