Abstract

This chapter aims to provide a critical overview of the United Kingdom counter terrorism strategy. The first part of the work contains a reflection on the scale of the terrorism threat in the country as well as on the challenge it may pose in the future. The second part focuses on CONTEST, the counter-terrorism strategy that the UK has designed to deal with the issue. Finally, the chapter critically assesses the effectiveness of the UK counter-terrorism approach in actually containing the threat and investigates the socio-political effects of these policies on 'suspect' communities and individuals to then identify what lessons can be learn from evolving understandings of and responses to national and international security threats. Attention is devoted to both the UK as a target of terrorism but also as an exporter of terrorism.