Fri, 08 Jun 2007
What?
Read a
short
review.
Where?
At a cinema near you. Check the
cinema listings.
When?
It opens today. Why not go see it this week-end?
Why?
Check out my
Is
the UK a police state? page for highlights of some
of our liberties this government has been taking away from us. Read the
following press release from
Scotland Against Criminalising Communities, published today, for some
of what Brown is promising us (note that I added the links in the
release):
Brown stitched up the Labor leadership -
now he wants to stitch up our
liberty
Campaigners reject "sham" call for consensus over anti-terror measures
We don't need any more
bells and whistles bolted on to Britain's
anti-terror laws. We need fundamental change to our anti-terror
policies. We need laws that target criminals, laws that protect the
innocent, laws that encourage careful, rational police work, laws that
discourage drag-net investigations, discourage prejudice, discourage
racism, discourage panic. In other words we need the ordinary criminal
law, not gimmicks invented to boost the discredited "war on terror."
Yesterday's official unwrapping of the government's long-trailed
package of "anti-terror" measures makes it clear that New Labour's
assault on civil liberties isn't about to end any time soon. SACC is
opposed to the new measures and opposed to Gordon Brown's efforts to
construct a sham "consensus."
Gordon Brown wants to prove his mastery over the Labour Party
by extending police powers to hold "terror" suspects without
charge beyond the current limit of 28
days - already far too long.
Blair couldn't get Parliament to accept this even in the aftermath of
7/7.
Brown also wants to allow police to question people even after they
have been charged. To give police this kind of power over people in the
most vulnerable situation imaginable guarantees miscarriages of
justice. He's even floating the idea of withdrawing the right to
silence of ordinary members of the public by giving police
powers to
stop and question us. To refuse to talk would be a criminal
offence.
And he wants to give police still greater powers to bully and harass
the men
held under control orders - men who have never been charged
with any offence and seem to have been selected for persecution mainly
on the basis of grudges held by members of the intelligence services.
The government wants to conduct a review into allowing
intercept
evidence to be used in terrorism court cases. But the key
issue
concerning communications intercepts in Britain isn't whether or not
the evidence should be allowed into court. The problem is that Britain
lacks any effective procedure for holding communications-tappers to
account. Figures provided in this year's annual report from the
Interception of Telecommunications Commissioner (covering
2005 and the first three months of 2006) show (when adjustments are
made for reporting methods) that interception warrants have reached a
new annual high of 5,723. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The
total number of requests by "public authorities" (the nine agencies, 52
police forces, 139 prisons, 124 local authorities and 26 other public
authorities) for communications data from service providers has reached
a staggering 439,054. The Commissioner says that, of all these public
authorities, it is the law enforcement agencies that are the principal
users and that they have "acquired fully automated systems."
The Intelligence
Commissioner says, in a report covering the same
period "I do not propose to disclose publicly the number of warrants or
authorisations issued to the agencies."
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect to all this is Brown's obvious wish
to put these issues - some of the key issues facing Britain today -
beyond the reach of politics. The man who became Prime Minister without
a vote or even a debate wants "cross party agreement" for his attack on
freedom before he puts it before Parliament.
We've been
here before. For thirty years, successive British
governments demanded - and got - a "bipartisan" approach to politics
and policing in Northern Ireland. It alienated a generation of Irish
people, stifled intelligent debate, guaranteed a compliant media and
prolonged the "troubles." And it meant that rumours about state crimes
in Northern Ireland's dirty war remained just rumours -
mentioned in eccentric corners of the media but
never brought to centre-stage and never publicly addressed by anyone
holding political power. Brown's push for a consensus will come as a
great relief to the murderers
of Jean Charles de Menezes, to the spooks
who stitched up the men held under control orders and the men being
deported
to torture in Algeria and Jordan, and to the officials who
managed not to notice rendition flights calling at British airports.
Spin-poodle Lord Carlile is already at work promoting Brown's
new vision. The Liberal Democrat peer and "independent" reviewer of the
working of the terrorism laws has done as much as anyone to paint an
acceptable face onto New Labour's machinery of repression. His
methodology is to criticise some details, give his backing to whatever
New Labour wants most, and steer the debate well away from
fundamentals. So it's no surprise to find him expressing support for
plans to extend pre-charge detention beyond 28 days.
Brown wants us all to agree on some sensible measures to do something
about terrorism. Anyone can see that the proposed legislation goes far
beyond that. But the problem is even deeper. The new measures, like
previous initiatives, are built on the wide-ranging and politicised
definition of terrorism contained in the Terrorism Act 2000. The
definition includes acts that don't involve personal violence. And it
outlaws support for overseas political movements engaged in almost any
kind of serious opposition to tyranny.
Any anti-terrorist measure, however modest, that is build on such a
definition is guaranteed to create injustice.
Anyone who watches the
new film "Taking Liberties", released today, will come away
understanding that legislation like this is a threat to everyone.
We don't need any more bells and whistles bolted on to Britain's
anti-terror laws. We need fundamental change to our anti-terror
policies. We need laws that target criminals, laws that protect the
innocent, laws that encourage careful, rational police work, laws that
discourage drag-net investigations, discourage prejudice, discourage
racism, discourage panic. In other words we need the ordinary criminal
law, not gimmicks invented to boost the discredited "war on terror."
John Reid said he is "committed to discussing the issue with interested
organisations, including police, the judiciary, civil liberties groups
and communities."
We've seen this kind of consultation before. Lord Carlile conducted a
lengthy review
of the definition of terrorism and published his
findings in March this year. He invited contributions from civil
liberties groups and communities. Many groups, including SACC, made
substantial submissions to the review. But few of the submissions found
their way into Lord Carlile's report. It contains hardly a hint of the
concerns expressed by many groups in their written submissions. And it
doesn't mention the widespread opposition to the legislation Lord
Carlile encountered in consultation sessions held around the UK. It
certainly doesn't reflect the views expressed at the Lord Carlile held
in Glasgow last July. Everyone attending the meeting - including police
officers - was critical of the current legislation. Instead, Lord
Carlile concluded the definition of terrorism was "useful and broadly
fit for purpose."
The current definition of terrorism means that Britain's anti-terrorism
laws are instruments of foreign policy at least as much as they are
instruments of domestic policy. Everyone knows that it is Britain's
support for US aggression in the Middle East that has made Britain a
target for terrorists. Even those who believe that western intelligence
agencies could be behind some terrorist incidents would agree
that the Blair-Bush wars are at the heart of the problem. It's only the
lunatics in the Cabinet that deny the link.
SACC will be insisting that any consultation over the government's new
proposals must deal with the core issues of Britain's policy
on terrorism. The Home Office appears to think that Lord Carlile has
kicked this debate into the long grass. It is mistaken.
Richard Haley
On behalf of Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)
Notes
