Just been at a very informative Oxford CCS meeting, with Mike Macnair speaking on the offence of treason. Some key points:

Fundamentally, treason laws ban waging war against the state or overthrowing it by force. You might think it would be good to agitate for their repeal—but it wouldn't

No state can legalize armed struggle against itself: that follows from the nature of what it is to be a state

(This doesn't stop eg John Bolton demanding that eg Venezuela should do just that; but the demand is not made in good faith)

If you did persuade a state to get rid of the named offence of treason, the offence would come back under a perhaps vaguer guise (eg "terrorism")

Therefore the democratic demand is that treason should be defined as narrowly & specifically as possible, to make it hard for it to spread out & include forms of political dissent other than armed struggle against the state

In this country the relevant law is the Statute of Treasons 1352, which is obv archaic in some points of detail but which was actually drawn up to limit the definition of treason rather than to extend it & which is still usable

There have recently been proposals (eg from the think tank the Policy Exchange) to "modernize" the offence of treason

These proposals would indeed get rid of the old-fashioned language ("adherent as enemys nostre seigneur le Roi"); but they would also extend the definition of treason to encompass all kinds of activities that do not involve waging war against the state

They are therefore repressive & should be opposed

(They also involve a nationalist political doctrine that is absent from the existing 1352 text)

The 1352 Statute could perfectly easily be used to prosecute eg people who have travelled to Syria to support IS (they've adhered to the enemys la Reine, haven't they): the objections are political rather than legal, & relate to the policy of Britain & its Gulf allies

And, in connection with the enemys nostre seigneur etc, the position in international law is that a "hostile country" is a country with which Britain is at war—not, as in Roman law, a country with which no formal peace treaty exists

In discussion, a connection was made between this issue & the fundamental democratic demand that there should be no military action except in immediate self-defence without an explicit public declaration of war

Mike has already written on some of these matters in the Weekly Worker, but I think he's planning to return to them there or elsewhere. Well worth checking out what he has to say