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Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
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Britain "sleepwalking" into a police state Seán Mac Mathúna | |
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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. American essayist and critic HL Mencken (1918) As we approach the next election here in Britain (pencilled in for 05/05/05), there is increasing concern about the threat of an emerging totalitarian state. The British state has a long history of repression and police-state tactics in the uprisings against colonial rule in former British colonies such as Malaysia, Aden, India, Kenya and southern Ireland. The methods learnt here, which are going to be unleashed on the British people, are of the kind associated with General Sir Frank Kitson - from the compulsory use of ID cards, house arrest, detention without trial (internment), the notorious Civil Contingencies law, and widespread use of surveillance. Much of this is being justified by the New Labour government as part of the bogus "war on terror" that started over the September 11th attacks. George Churchill-Coleman, a former leading anti-terrorist police chief in the fight against the 1970's IRA, said that the New Labour government is "transforming Britain into a police state". He added that the proposals to extend the power of the executive with indefinite house arrest, were "not practical" and threatened to further "marginalise minority communities" - presumably the Muslims. What is incredible is that Churchill-Coleman recognizes the mistakes of the past - in particular in Northern Ireland - whilst the Blair government doesn't seem to comprehend why things went wrong, or the lessons that should have been learned. Lessons were not learned with regards to Internment in 1971, the wrongful arrest and conviction of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, the Maquire family, Judith Ward and many others (who would have probably been executed if Britain had retained the death penalty). Churchill-Coleman sent a warning shot across the bows of Charles Clarke, the New Labour Home Secretary when he said: "I have serious worries and concerns about these ideas on both ethical and practical terms. You cannot lock people up just because someone says they are terrorists. Internment didn't work in Northern Ireland, it won't work now. You need evidence." The government do not seem to be listening. They are attempting instead to push repressive legislation through Parliament is the quickest possible time, and with minimal debate. Maybe the security establishment prefers that a "Labour" government does this fast - and before the next election . . . historically, we have seen that people are more likely to kick up a fuss if the Tories dare to even suggest such a move. Other opponents have also spoken up recently. Guy Mansfield QC, the chairman of the Bar Council, said yesterday that "House arrest without trial was as damaging as imprisonment without trial and would breed resentment among ethnic minorities". One leftwing Labour MP and QC, Bob Marshall-Andrews, called the proposals "the most substantial extension of the state's executive powers over the citizen for 300 years". In reality, New Labour are taking the British people back to Victorian times - when firstly, everything was decided in the "market place" and not by the ballot box - privatisation is one good example. There were few civil rights , along with many draconian laws enacted, to counter the "threat" from everyone from the Tolpuddle martyrs, the Chartists and many others who attempted to introduce democratic reforms in this country. Back then, political prisoners would be deported from Britain and Ireland to countries such as Australia and often forbidden to return. Now, in 21st century Britain anyone who the Executive deems is a "threat to national security" will be subject to indefinite house arrest here without trial - or even knowing what exactly they are being charged with - or what (if any) evidence there is against them. Recently, Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy attacked British Ministers for whipping up a climate of fear that would be used for their electoral advantage in May 2005. Shami Chakrabati, the director of the human rights group Liberty, is also wary: "Tough talk and tougher legislation is cheap. It doesn¶t make us any safer from crime, terrorism and the other great causes of fear. What it will do is undermine the very democracy that this government and its allies across the Atlantic say they want to defend". Labour peer and barrister, Helena Kennedy, has also become one the leading critics of the government's increasingly authoritarian policies and points to globalisation as a root cause of generating feelings of vulnerability. "People are easily alarmed by the idea that barbarians are at every gate in the form of terrorists, asylum seekers and criminals. They are prepared to sacrifice a significant level of freedom and privacy in exchange for greater security". In a scathing attack on Blair, she said: "Fundamental shifts are taking place in our justice system with barely a whimper of opposition. On June 18, 2002, the Prime Minister claimed that the 'biggest miscarriage of justice in today's system is when the guilty walk away unpunished'. In that statement he sought to overturn centuries of legal principle ... whereby conviction of an innocent man is deemed the greatest miscarriage of justice. For Tony Blair there is no such thing as legal principle, as we saw in the rejection of international legal principle in relation to the Iraq war. For him, everything is negotiable." The so-called "war on terror" is what the Blair government is using to justify stripping the British people of their freedoms. Even during the 'Cold War' with the USSR this never happened - such repression was limited to conflicts such as northern Ireland. Then the threat was supposedly coming from the Communist Eastern bloc. Since the collapse of those countries, the NATO bloc, led now by the Bush regime in the USA, have cleverly reinvented the enemy - in this case, Communism has simply been replaced by Islam. What is happening in Britain now is akin to the what happened in Italy during the period between the 1960's and 1980s - when a coalition of right-wing terrorists, elements in NATO, the Mafia and the Italian government colluded together in a "Strategy of tension" to destabilise Italy and keep under the Western sphere of influence. Events such as the 1980 terrorist attack at the railway station in Bologna and the killing of Aldo Moro kept the Christian Democrats in power and continually fragmented the democratic left. Since 911, the Blair and Bush governments have pursued the same course of events - keeping the constant climate of fear to justify repressive laws and, stage by stage, convince people to surrender civil liberties that took centuries of struggle to win in the first place. ©fantompowa.org2004 |
e-mail: thefantompowa@fantompowa.org |