Coming under colonial rule in the 17th century, India became a laboratory for the development of emergency law. This thesis examines how the India laboratory impacted emergency law in the UK, exploration uncovering how colonial emergency regulations affect the contemporary legal order of the UK. Charting the historical development of colonial law, I first explore how emergency law developed in colonial India. Chapter 1 discusses emergency regulations in Company India while Chapter 2 launches inquiries into emergency regulations under the Crown. My subsequent chapters interpret Césaire’s boomerang theory and then apply it to determine how regulations, developed in Company and Crown India, affect Metropolitan emergency law. Particularly I discuss Articles 15 ECHR, Article 56 ECHR and the Terrorism Act 2000. I surmise that all three aspects of contemporary law possess roots in the colonial encounter. Articles 15 and 56 ECHR were designed to accommodate rule by force in the colonies and represent prevailing understandings of colonial civilisation respectively. Meanwhile proscription under the 2000 Act mirrors its colonial predecessor, importing the form and delegitimising logic of proscription regimes once upheld under the Crown. The law is such that the UK government, as it did in colonial India, retains the capacity to outlaw, among others, those organisations concerned with the violent achievement of national liberation; even non-violent supporters of these organisations facing condemnation as terrorists under the Terrorism Act 2000. In reaching these conclusions, I follow an historical approach, establishing how law developing overseas changed the legal order of the Metropole.
Matthew Pearce (Mon,) studied this question.