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On the surface, the Home Office’s latest data on terrorism arrests looks relatively stable. There were 255 terrorism-related arrests in 2025, which is only a 2% increase on the previous year’s figure of 250.
Funny thing is, I know three people who were arrested on terrorism-related charges last year. I could even pinpoint the date, because two of their middle-aged children had to leave my middle-aged birthday party to pick them up from a police station. I know, I know, it’s not all about me, even if it was my birthday – but if those numbers are solid, that means more than 50% of the mini-surge came from more or less the same group of people, two of them from the same postcode.
Looking closer, it turns out the latest figures are not very solid, because the number of terrorism arrests in 2025 was in fact 3,034, a 1,114% increase on 2024. This striking uptick would be enough to alarm and dismay a country’s security services, except for the fact that almost all of them were related to protests on behalf of Palestine Action. All those proscription offences have been left out, according to Counter Terrorism Policing, “due to the ongoing judicial review and subsequent appeal”. On the one hand, this is reasonable. If on examination, Palestine Action turns out not to be a terrorist organisation, it would hardly make sense to count its allies in your terrorism data.
At the same time, this is outrageous: 2,779 more people were arrested as terrorists. On the march on my birthday, half of them were over 60 and more people were arrested who were over 80 than under 20. Whichever way you cut it, terrorism arrests are an ordeal – even if they do magically vanish after a judicial review.
One friend whose mum was arrested made her a Christmas card captioned: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Realistically, this is unlikely to stop her.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
