Same old New Labour…Harsh new police powers |
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Piers Mostyn |
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The government’s media friends have been talking up the wonderful possibilities offered by Brown’s coronation as Prime Minister. In their fantasies, years of disaffection and disgust at Blair’s championing of bombs and banks can be brushed aside as a fresh breeze sweeps the political horizon. Fantasies, because Brown has wasted no time in demonstrating that it will be business as usual from the New Labour bunker. Top of the list are attacks on civil liberties. Undeterred by Blair’s Parliamentary defeat in his bid for a draconian extension of police powers to detain suspects without charge, Brown is pushing yet another “anti-terrorism” bill that will try again. The “compromise” last time was an extension to “only”. 28 days - powers that are already unparalleled in Europe. 90 days looks to be on the cards once again. It is claimed that serious crime, in particular terrorism, has nowadays become so sophisticated that police don’t have enough time to investigate after they arrest someone. But this is not based on any research into how many, if any, criminals escape justice as a result. The fact is that three existing solutions - for police to do more investigating pre-arrest; to bail the suspect to a later date or to charge with a holding offence where the evidence supports it - have worked perfectly well for a long time. Last time widespread hostility split the cabinet with leading members openly stating that they had seen no representations from the police to justify it. Liberty has denounced the proposal as internment by another name. This is not loose rhetoric. The control order regime (a system of house arrest that is itself an authoritarian abuse of civil liberties) is showing signs of collapse. Individuals subject to it have gone awol and judges have objected to conditions. Control orders themselves replaced internment without trial at Belmarsh - which was thrown out by the House of Lords, in a climate of mass opposition to the war. So we are back to internment by another route. The government’s attempts to cow popular opposition through talk of Islamic terror plots have not succeeded. It is now widely accepted that government policy - war on Iraq and Afghanistan, backing for Israel’s onslaught on the Palestinians and the oppression and witch-hunting of the Muslim community in this country - is itself a major driving factor boosting whatever risk to the public exists. Already shelved after an outcry was another proposed new law making it a criminal offence to refuse to answer questions when stopped by the police. Under s.44 Terrorism Act 2000 powers in London alone 22,600 have been stopped, of whom only 27 were arrested: that’s 0.1%. But that, it seems, left the police inexcusably weak. What these powers have in common is in ripping up the bedrock principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. However behind the headline debate on these proposals are a raft of others that show signs of being nodded through. These include new powers to clamp down on travel abroad. This is despite concerns about existing draconian powers - described by Liberty as a licence for “racial profiling” at ports and airports - to detain and question travellers for up to nine hours without even a suspicion of terrorism. Also in train are police getting the power to continue interviewing post-charge (which would destabilise basic rights to prompt trial and to know the case against you) and data sharing powers for the intelligence and security agencies. Massive public hostility in recent years has helped defeat a series of Labour attacks on our basic rights. But if this job is left to the Lib Dems and Tories, they will compromise, as they did before in allowing the current 28 day detention limit. It’s time for the unions and the anti-war movement to mobilise on the issue.
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