In Parliament this week there were calls (by the Conservative MP Julian Lewis) for a review of the laws concerning Treason in the united Kingdom.  These calls came in specific reference to the case of a young British girl who left the United Kingdom in 2015 to join the Islamic State (ISIS) and who now, after the birth of her third child wishes to return to the United Kingdom to live.  (ISIS is considered a terrorist organisation by the government of the United Kingdom.) MP Julian Lewis argued that the law should be changed to allow for the prosecution of those who support groups who fight or intend to fight against the UK or the UK’s forces.  In looking into this more deeply it struck me that specific care needs to be taken he addressing treason – not least because the linguistic definition and the legal definition are not aligned…

The linguistic definition of treason, according to the Collins dictionary is “the crime of betraying your country, for example by helping its enemies or by trying to remove its government using violence.”  Whereas the current legal interpretation as read in the United Kingdom Treason Felony Act  refers to action taken against the nation and the crown or it’s territories – describing treason as “…to “move or stir” any foreigner to invade the United Kingdom or any other country belonging to the Queen.”

The former definition allows treason only to be committed by a citizen/ resident of the country in question, whereas the latter defines treason in terms of the target of the act: the country or the crown.  In both cases however, the concept centres around betrayal, the betrayal of a nation by a person.  The definition of the word betray is in an interesting one it itself, it being “to aid an enemy of (one’s nation, friend, etc)… or to be disloyal”.  Betrayal then implies a duty, a certain behaviour which if not displayed causes disappointment in the other party.  Citizenship of a nation or country is in the majority of cases an accident of birth.  It generally offers no option to refuse participation (without the acceptance of a 3rd party nation), and therefore is more likely to be an involuntary bond than it is to be a positive choice – under which conditions I fail to understand how it can come with any expected duties.

Whether then we consider treason to be an act against the country of which you are a citizen, or simply an act against the country in which you happen to be at the time, it would seem that by definition treason is discriminatory: it is either a crime which I can commit (as a citizen of the country in question) but that you cannot, or it is something which I consider to be a crime when committed against my country, but not yours!  – (As is clear in the United Kingdom Treason Felony Act which does not proscribe working against the government of any other country – that apparently, is all fine and dandy.)

Why should  it be tolerable for an individual to act to overthrow the government of one country but not another?  This places a clear limit on the considerations of the impact one’s actions – as long as you are not doing harm to this country, then we don’t care.  This is a clear case of the end justifies the means in reverse – the means (seeking to overthrow a government) are justified by the end (not our government!).

This isn’t simply racism on a personal level – this isn’t discrimination against one type of person, this is broad brush discrimination – everyone except ‘us’ is different.  The very concept of this crime is founded on an inherent prejudice – that the people of one country are better than the people of another country.  This is a perspective which I find to be both serious and insidious.

This may seem like semantics, however in a world where there is no automatic right to freedom of movement across all territories; a world in which there are a great many political parties & groups which openly and vociferously encourage the restriction of the movement that does exist; a world in which the freedom of movement of citizens are limited specifically for reasons of citizenship or religion  do we not think that to address the misconception that one set of people are better than another would be to treat everybody as the same?  If we are to treat everybody the same then there simply cannot be a set of laws which function when applied to only one country or only one type of person.

Within the boundaries or our little nations we pass laws to prevent people being discriminated against for reasons of religion or the colour of their skin – but these laws are passed and respected only within the boundaries of the country itself.  The laws apply only to citizens of that country, or to those who have be granted access in some form or other.

The very fact that these borders and boundaries exist mean that we can continue the conceit of thinking that we are just, whilst all the time we maintain an automatic discrimination against those who do not ‘belong to our group’.  This thinking is parochial, nothing more nothing less – the only difference is scale.  The existence of artificial standards and constructs are ever present, and only when we do away with them can we hope to see everyone as the same.

Ultimately, if we treat the people or institutions of one country differently to the people or institutions of another then we are racist, in the same way as we are racist if we treat people with different skin pigmentations differently.