Blurring of the definition of terrorism sets us on a very dangerous path - Andy Brown

All of which is hugely dangerous. Because politics is not a football game where you back your side right or wrong and shout abuse at the referee for attempting to make fair and balanced decisions. It is meant to be about trying to do your best for your local community, your country and your planet whilst standing for some basic principles.

One of the most important of those principles is that a crime is a crime regardless of who commits it.

When Hamas launched its horrible attack on Israel killing people at a music festival and taking hundreds hostage, it was a brutal war crime that was clearly wrong. Now that war crimes are being routinely committed on the orders of the Israeli government the same is true.

Hospitals are being bombed. Whole cities have been flattened. Hunger and homelessness has been forced on over a million people in a collective punishment. People are being ordered to leave their homes again and again with nowhere safe to go. A deliberate act of ethnic cleansing is taking place that has terrorised an entire community. Every day people are being shot dead in bread queues. Journalists trying to report what is happening get killed.

In such circumstances it is hardly surprising that people in this country have strong views. An increasingly small minority of people are still backing the Israeli government and arguing that we are witnessing acts of reasonable self-defence. Others have gone so far in their opposition to the current war crimes of the Netanyahu government that they have taken direct action to try to stop the British government from continuing to provide logistical support for a grotesque act of ethnic cleansing.

If we value freedom of speech then our country needs to make it possible for both views to be expressed within reasonable limits.

The sensible way to draw the line about what is acceptable is pretty well established in law. We are supposed to be free in this country to say whatever we like until we start encouraging others to acts of violence.

That means that if anyone tries to persuade a mob to engage in Islamic terrorism that they should be arrested and if the offence is serious enough, spend a lot of time in jail. It also means that if a white woman who happens to be the wife of a Conservative Councillor openly tries to persuade people to burn down a migrant hotel in the middle of a set of riots it is also reasonable to send her to jail. Lucy Connolly was found guilty in a fair and open trial of incitement to violence.

Anyone supporting Palestine Action who similarly encourages violence deserves a similar sentence. Voicing support for painting planes is a much less serious offence.

It is clearly a criminal act to break into an air base and damage a plane. Regardless of how justified the principle that is being upheld there are laws about criminal damage which carry significant sentences.

There is, however, a big difference between damaging a war plane and an act of terrorism and it is dangerously irresponsible for the government to try and confuse the two. A clear circle needs to be drawn around attacks on the public designed to kill and maim innocent people and damage to an object.

It is even more irresponsible to start charging people whose only crime is to voice vocal support for an act of criminal damage in opposition to planes housed on British soil being used to supply information to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. That is not inciting terrorism. At worst it is encouraging criminal damage.

There are consequences in law for inciting others to damage property but they are rightly very different to the consequences for inciting terrorism. When Yvette Cooper confused the two she crossed a very dangerous line.

Doing so has put the police in an impossible position. A country which proudly champions freedom of speech has ended up arresting pensioners on terrorist charges because they sat in the street.

The police are wasting a lot of time and energy arresting protestors that could have been spent on pursuing real terrorists. At a time when we are releasing criminals from jail solely because of overcrowding we risk filling those jails with people who voice opinions the government doesn’t like.

Protestors who deliberately cause a nuisance to champion a cause should expect to risk being charged with causing a breach of the peace. They do not expect or deserve to be equated with the Manchester bombers.

It insults the memory of those who have suffered from terrorism when the British government starts confusing protest with the killing of innocents.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.