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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I am not a lawyer, and am not clear about the difference between subjective and objective recklessness; or, indeed, about the difference between the two amendments from either side. I may well be, however, the only Member of this House who would clearly have been at risk of this clause had this Bill been passed at the time. In the 1980s, I pursued the trade of an antiquarian bookseller. Amongst other material, we specialised in 20th century history, particularly that of the Soviet Union. I remember selling a number of books, including the early works of Lenin, which clearly acted—or might have acted—as incitements to commit acts of terrorism. Indeed, Lenin can be regarded as the godfather of terrorism as a political tactic. In particular, I remember that we had a copy of a book which we dealt in more than once: Moya Zhizn, the autobiography of Trotsky, first published in Berlin in 1931. I had a customer for this particular copy who will be somewhat remembered: Mr Robert Maxwell. I sold him a copy of Trotsky’s autobiography, I now think, looking back on it, recklessly. That is to say that Mr Maxwell was widely rumoured to be connected with more than one foreign intelligence agency and was not a man, in general, of good or reliable reputation. So on the one hand I should have had concern about my customer and, on the other, Moya Zhizn is written, as one might expect, in Russian. I cannot read Russian, and I have no knowledge of what inflaming material Trotsky might have put into Mr Maxwell’s mind had he read it. Nor did I know whether Mr Maxwell read Russian, although I think it quite likely that he did. What defence would I have had in those circumstances if I had been charged with recklessly selling something that was potentially an encouragement to terrorism without taking whatever safeguards—and I do not know what safeguards they could be—to satisfy myself that there was no more direct risk? Would that have been subjective recklessness or objective recklessness?