"He loved Big Brother now."

posted by k

I'm waiting for the knock on the door.

My largely law-abiding life won't save me. They've invented new laws and then, just in case they've missed something, there are ways of personalising the law – devising special laws to get just one person. And I'm not talking about Brian Haw, who got the honour of a special clause in an act of parliament (which turned out not to work in his case after all). I'm talking about laws which might get me – or you. It wasn't always quite so bad.

Of course, there have been plenty of laws to trap the unwitting or foolish or honest. Don't tell a soldier you think he or she should have a change of career. That breaks the Incitement to Disaffection Act (1934). (I've broken that one a couple of times. I'd rather they arrested me for that because I did it deliberately - I think it's wrong to deprive anyone of freedom of thought and conscience.) And there are bad laws which have been repealed. Section 28, which scared teachers out of saying that Oscar Wilde was gay or that most of Shakespeare's sonnets were written to a fair young man, is no longer on the statute books. I'm pleased about that. But there are all those new, apparently well-meaning laws which seem to be used in unpredicted ways.

Take the law on stalking. One individual stalking another is a nasty, threatening matter. I've known young women in particular – though it's not only young women who are affected – really frightened by phone-calls in the middle of the night, threatening letters, displays of covertly-taken photographs. When victims complain and nothing is done, I'm angry. When victims, who may have been stalked for years, are beaten up and even killed, I start asking, “Why didn't they listen to her? Why don't they do something?” So the government responded. A minister could have pointed out that there were already laws against harassment or proposed a slight adjustment to existing laws. Instead we were offered a brand-new, shiny law which would protect the vulnerable from harm – and even from mild distress.

But it wasn't just used against stalkers. It was one of those all-purpose, catch-all laws which could be used against anybody who talked to or wrote to someone more than once. If I encounter an arms manufacturer on the train – it could happen; making weapons is big business in Britain – and find out about his profession, I might express myself strongly, even enter into an argument with him. And if I see him the next day, I might continue that argument – and he might be annoyed. Under the law, that would count as stalking and I might find myself in jail. If I were handing out leaflets and offered one to the same person twice, that might be considered a crime. It seems to me that if a friend and I had a row in a pub and one of us phoned the other to continue the row, that might be considered stalking.

The law is being framed to prevent awkward behaviour and mild distress – and the government seems quite pleased that it sweeps up political protesters and non-violent dissidents as well. Bu you don't have to break the law to get an ASBO. Anti-social behaviour legislation has been so widely framed that it's possible to construct a special law to limit the freedom of speech, action and movement of one individual who hasn't broken any law. That idea was controversial when it came in but now everyone's used to the idea that if your neighbour annoys you enough, you might be able to stop the annoyance with an ASBO. Sometimes ASBOs are used instead of charging someone with a more conventional crime. ASBOs allow magistrates to impose sentences that they make up: people can be banned from places and forbidden to act in a way that is perfectly legal for anybody else.

ASBOs lack the legal safeguards of conventional criminal laws and injunctions which protect individuals. If you break an ASBO – a law constructed just for you – you can land in jail. It's another convenient tool for dealing with protesters and dissidents.

Freedom of speech is being eroded too. I'm not an absolutist about freedom of speech. I'm not in favour of inciting hatred against anyone. Incitement to violence is dangerous. (I sometimes wonder why politicians are never charged with either offence.) There are many individuals and groups who suffer because of what is said about them – that's important for everyone to remember. Politicians and the people have a responsibility to counter a climate of hate. Silence won't achieve that. Nor will the competitive xenophobia of politicians.

Of course I'm sometimes hurt and offended by people's attitudes and what they say. I'm human. But my first action isn't to ring the police. I can see why an airport chaplain was offended by anti-religious cartoons, clipped from Private Eye, left in the airport chaplaincy – they were probably left there to offend. Leaving them there might have been a silly action but it surely doesn't deserve a criminal record. The church wasn't damaged. God wasn't damaged. It seems particularly ludicrous in a nominally Christian country where – archaically – bishops vote as unelected members of the second chamber of parliament and the Archbishop of Canterbury plays a key role in the coronation of the monarch. And – oh -dear! - I've made tactless and ill-judged jokes at times. Will the police come round to get me?

With any luck, the police won't kill me, though since the death of Juan Charles Menenez and the case of David Mery I've felt a little less confident on the tube. I usually find the police polite, even though I was caught in a kettle once and found my experience rather different from the police's official account.

But what would happen if the police came round and arrested me? According to the the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the police keep 25% of the goods and money they confiscate and the Crown Prosecution Service keeps a further 25%. The law was meant – so were told – to deal with major criminals and drug traffickers using threats and violence – and the standard of proof of how the money was obtained was changed, so that the “criminal” had to prove a legal right to the money. It sounds great when dealing with international criminals. It's more troubling when the police seize the jewellery – and even the life savings – of prostitutes working together for their own protection. Prostitutes are not .likely to go to court to recover their money, as the law requires. So cash-strapped police forces find that pursuing a particular crime is a nice little earner for the force, so long as the police forget that they are now living on immoral earnings – the usual definition of a pimp.

I could go one. I could go on. There are so many liberties trickling away. I've committed so many offences that might be arrestable. I even took a photo of the House of Commons – with a policeman outside. Governments don't usual restore the liberties they have taken – unless the people insist. And all around me are people who have forgotten the liberties they lost and adjusted oppressive, intrusive laws. I'm adjusting too. This time next year, I may have forgotten what liberty is. What liberties have I forgotten already?

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

posted by k

The Liberal Democrats are conferring this weekend. A long time ago I used to attend Liberal Assemblies - they weren't conferences then but altogether unwieldier bodies where debates were taken seriously as the means of changing party policy and, through that, the country and the world.

I left the Liberals on a point of policy in the early 1980s. Since then, the Liberals have merged with the Social Democrats although there are still liberals within the new party. There seem to be other changes too. There's concern with security. When I joined, in my late teens, Assemblies were a place where I might find myself sitting next to a Member of Parliament, a peer or - even in those days - a celebrity supporter. It was remarkably easy to take part in eager discussions of policy though hard to get called to speak - there were so many keen to debate.

If I couldn't get called to speak at the main debates, I had a chance to express my views at a range of smaller fringe meetings. And I'd wander round the stalls run by a range of organisations and have conversations with the stall-holders. I remember some of the organisations who ran stalls and fringe meetings. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality was there. So were the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Child Poverty Action Group. I remember these in particular because they challenged some of my assumptions and told me facts I hadn't previously known. The Liberal Assembly was a place where people actually changed their minds.

These days there are still stalls and fringe meetings. But it's all much glossier. As the Conference Directory says, "The Liberal Democrat Conferences have become increasingly professional as the party has become increasingly professional." I'm suspicious of the term "professional." It can be used to mean simply that someone has particular qualifications or behaves in a responsible manner. But it can also be used to urge that loyalty to an employer is more important than telling the truth or questioning the principles of a business or institution.

In the case of the Liberal Democrat Conference, one of the things professional seems to mean is sponsorship. The conference is marketed at potential sponsors as "a fantastic opportunity for companies, societies and organisations to meet thousands of conference attendees face-to-face and increase their brand awareness." I don't know what they pay for these opportunities but I am anxious at some of the organisations paying for access to delegates during debates about national policy.

All fringe meetings to do with health are in an area sponsored by Humana, a profit-making company which works on "NHS commissioning" in the United Kingdom and in the lucrative field of health insurance in the United States. A meeting on "Culture: Today and Tomorrow" is sponsored by Camelot, who are also represented on the panel. Similarly, a fringe panel on "The Future for Home Ownership" is sponsored by Lloyds who have a place on the panel. The National Landlords Association, which includes "promoting ... members' interests to national and local government" among its aims is also represented.

Obviously organisations should be able to stimulate debates and talk to people who are politically active. I may feel doubts about The British Association for Shooting and Conservation who, with The Angling Trust, are sponsoring "The Rural Reception" at which senior MPs are speaking (and for which drinks and canapés are provided). However, campaigning organisations have engaged in dialogue with party politicians for a long time. It seems reasonable that unions and even newspapers should sponsor events or advertise in the conference programme. Politically active people are likely to join unions and read newspapers. I'm surprised that publicly-funded organisations and charities find money for sponsorship or think it a worthwhile cost - what do they get in return?

But as I look through the list of sponsors, I find some names that puzzle me: Dr Foster Intelligence, Ernst & Young, Bloomberg, Tesco, The Nuclear Industry Association. And why is Asda, wholly owned by the U.S. company Wal-Mart, sponsoring a fringe meeting on "Imagining New Britain: Forging a New National Identity"?

The current Liberal Democrats - just like Labour and the Conservatives - are taking money from big business. They are even advertising privileged access to Members of the British and European Parliament. Monday at the Conference is "Corporate Day" when "senior business leaders" can "meet and engage with "senior parliamentarians". Party leader Nick Clegg and Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable will be there - and there will be a reception at the end of the day. I don't suppose places are free. It sounds like cash for access to me.

Parties may need to sell advertising and access in order to be taken seriously. And it's important to be taken seriously in politics - small parties and independents don't get the same publicity or access to public debates, as ex-Ambassador Craig Murray discovered in the recent Norwich North by-election. But all this sponsorship seems a long way from what I remember of Liberal Assemblies.

Liberalism has been defined in many ways recently. Some commentators in the United States equate it with Marxism. In Europe it's often seen as a right-wing force in politics. For me it is neither.

Back in 1978, I heard Gerard Mulholland define the principles of Liberalism. He spoke as follows:

“The first principle of Liberalism … is freedom to live one’s life free from legal restraints, except those which stop your freedom from interfering with somebody else’s.

“The next principle is equality before the law and social and economic opportunity to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness without discrimination against caste, creed, politics, race or sex.

“The third principle is the brotherhood of all people everywhere, with tolerance for the things we dislike, forbearance for the things we don’t understand and joyful celebration of the things we share.

“It all adds up to progress towards a fair and just society for the only race that matters – the human race.”

The principles he stated were rooted in 17th and 18th century debates on individual liberty. They were passed on like the copy of Milton's Areopagitica which was handed to every new president of the Liberal Party. The interpretation has developed over time but they still seem like good principles to me.

Parties which are dependent on the sponsorship and goodwill of wealthy organisations and big business are a long way from the ideals of liberalism. It doesn't sound much like democracy either.

The Lost Principles of Policing

The Nine Principles of Policing were written in 1829, expanding on Sir Robert Peel's original Nine Points of Policing. Copies were issued to all members of the Metropolitan Police. There is some uncertainty about authorship. What is certain is that over the last 180 years, the themes which lie behind these philosophical guidelines have been forgotten.

The Nine Principles of Policing:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Dodo

"Bliss was it in that dawn"

posted by k

John Milton was born 400 years ago today. In his pamphlet, Areopagitica, after which this blog is named, he argued for the free exchange of ideas and knowledge. There were limits to his ideas of freedom of the press but he sketched out, in ringing tones, his belief that liberty and progress were dependent on the search for knowledge, truth and understanding.

Milton's ideas came out of that anxious and hopeful period in English history when parliament was at war with the king. He wrote this pamphlet three years before the Putney Debates in which, for the first time, the idea of one man one vote was advanced, and five years before the execution of Charles I and the establishment of the English Commonwealth. It was a period of immense danger, of grief and the separation of families. It was also a time when individuals questioned authority and took responsibility for debating the future of the country.

Areopagitica shows the excitement of debate at the time, when so many people were willing to look outwards and think questioningly about the world, risking their own safety to enter in a debate about the government of their country. Key questions hinged on liberty and what we would now call "human rights":

"Behold now this vast City: a City of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast and surrounded with his protection; the shop of warre hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, then there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge. What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soile, but wise and faithfull labourers, to make a knowing people, a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies. We reck'n more then five months yet to harvest; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."

Milton lost and the cause he loved - the Commonwealth - faded. After eleven years, Charles II was invited back by parliament. The leaders of the Commonwealth were hanged, drawn and quartered for their part in the execution of the king. Milton was lucky to survive.

But the ideas of Milton and his contemporaries lived on. In the nineteenth century, working-class radicals were among the most enthusiastic readers of Milton. Thomas Cooper, the self-taught Leicester Chartist, set out to learn the whole of Paradise Lost by heart before he was twenty. He managed only the first three books but Milton's ideas - and other ideas of the 1640s - influenced his writings and popular public lectures.

Milton was in the mainstream too. When English literature became part of formal education in the 19th century, Milton was taught as one of England's great authors. He turned up in classrooms and on the curriculum for A-level English. I remember being shocked when, in 1988, Conservative Education Secretary Kenneth Baker pioneered a National Curriculum in English - and left John Milton out. The mid-17th century was represented instead by a smattering of minor poetry. The great English-language epic - not to mention the plays and essays - was omitted.

Tony Blair's government didn't reinstate Milton. They were more concerned with the appearance of improvement than offering teenagers challenge and excitement. I don't suppose Milton's willingness to question authority suited either Conservative or New Labour governments. I haven't noticed much teaching about the 17th century in school history lessons. It's certainly possible to leave school without knowing that England was ever a republic. I suspect it's possible to leave university with a degree in English without reading a word of Milton. It's certainly rare for students to read the pamphlets.

Reading Milton was my introduction to Britain's radical past. I read most of Milton for pleasure - I loved the exhilaration of his language as well as his engagement with the ideas of his time. It didn't matter that some was difficult. I took what I could from a first reading and returned later, for more. Milton may have slipped from the public consciousness but I don't think he'll be forgotten for ever.

Happy 400th birthday, John Milton - and thank you.

"First they came ..."

posted by k

Thomas Cochrane would make a great hero for a historical novel. It's arguable that he already is the hero of several, since he may be the model for Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey.

Somehow I'd never heard of Thomas Cochrane until I read Craig Murray's blogpost about him yesterday. Evidently he's not just an important figure in the naval history of Britain but also part of Britain's frequently forgotten radical past. As Craig Murray points out, Cochrane was a radical MP who believed in one man one vote and the abolition of the "tax of knowledge" which priced newspapers so that they were beyond the budget of working people. In 1815 he was arrested in the Houses of Parliament and the precedent has been cited approvingly by New Labour as the government attempts to justify the treatment of Damien Green, shadow immigration secretary.

Craig Murray rightly points out the irony of New Labour, which has laid claim to radical roots, finding its only precedent in actions taken under Lord Liverpool's government, one of the most oppressive administrations of the 19th century.

I don't think there's much need to spell out what was wrong with the arrest of Damien Green or the search of his office, home, computers and emails. Governments who authorise - even at arm's length - the detention of members of the opposition endanger democracy.

But I wish, in all the fuss about the treatment of Damien Green, there had been more mention of the routine use of dawn raids, house searches and detention without trial in Britain - or of the way people legally in this country are required by law to supply detailed biometric data and to pay hundreds of pounds for this privilege.

Asylum seekers in particular are subject to dawn raids. And foreigners, such as students, who are in the country legally, are expected to pay hundreds of pounds for new, biometric ID cards. It's true they won't be taken to the police station to provide the necessary data. Instead they have to travel to one of six centres and wait in line until someone is free to see them. Failure to possess or update a card will be a criminal offence. This is the beginning of ID cards for all of us.

First they came for the asylum seekers. Then they came for the foreigners. Then they came for an Opposition MP. Where will it end?

The Government Will Protect

“It is part of the role of government not to wait till crime has been committed but, for the good of the wider community and the families themselves, to step in earlier when it is obvious to all agencies that this is the type of situation that can end in tragedy.” - Jacqui Smith: Home Secretary. The Times. 27th June 2008.

Is this not the same logic as has been used to propel the US and British peoples into support for an illegal war and occupation?
Is it not the same logic which underpins the ever more intrusive (and inadequately regulated) surveillance culture?
Is it not the same logic which is presumed to justify the dismantling of protections against injustice, against detention without trial, against abusive police interpretations of already abusive law?
Be reassured. The government will protect you. It will protect you from the witness and experience of the human condition, it will protect you from children and it will intervene to protect you from yourself.
Impossible, you say?

Dodo

We Have Been Advised of The Price of Liberty

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

At 6.35pm on Wednesday 11^th June 2008, the UK House of Commons passed the Counter Terrorism Bill. With the the £1.2bn bung to Ulster to gain the support of the nine Democratic Unionist Party MP's, the price of liberty has been established as £85.7 million pounds a day.

A brief history. It was the Terrorism Act 2000 which introduced a provision for terror suspects to be held for 48 hours This could be extended to seven days with the permission of a judge. In 2003,that was extended to14 days and in 2006 to 28 days. We might expect certain Senior Police officers wll continue to press for the need for further extensions to that limit in order to psychologically destroy a segregated and degraded suspect. Blair argued for a 90 day detention limit, on advice from senior Police and Security staff.

“Six days felt like six years. I dread to think what 42 days would feel like.” Ratzwin Sabir, a postgraduate student at the University of Nottingham, was detained under the Terrorism Act for the offence of downloading (and arranging printing of) an edited al-Qaida training manual from a US Government website. For his dissertation. It has been reported that it was a junior clerical staff-member at the University who advised the Police of the matter.

As a nation, the people of the United Kingdom have yet another reminder that, in the eyes of both the Government and those who act as its security agents, the principles of liberty, of justice, of rights, have no longer any place in the scheme of things. And will use scurrilous political means to get their way. Even if the authority for the matter has been eroded by the unusual strength of the rebellion by Labour MP's' who have, in large part, been historically supine.

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When ... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." Sir Edward Gibbon 1737 – 1794.

Dodo

"The sword, the mace, the crown imperial"

posted by k

When I was quite young, I was fascinated by the cast gallery in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This was partly because of the stern notice on the door, forbidding children under 15 from unaccompanied entry. I assumed - and still think - this was because of the fragility of the exhibits though it may have been because of the cast of Michaelangelo's David. I was too young to find his nudity particularly interesting or surprising. There were plenty of nudes in the National Gallery and British Museum and, for that matter, on public statues. But although I gazed in fascination at other works - Donnatello's little David and the massive cartoon-stories on Trajan's Column, it was Michaelangelo's David I liked to see. I visited the museums with my younger brother and would lurk outside the cast gallery, looking for a friendly-seeming grown-up who would act as my escort. Nowadays the whole idea would fill parents and social workers with anxiety, but my younger brother and I came to no harm. After all, at eight or nine I was old enough to be sensible and independent on a day out.

It was David's expression that fascinated me. Was he confident or was he afraid? I could never decide from the smooth, white, imitation marble. I still didn't know years later, when I saw the original sculpture and outdoor, in Florence.

I didn't know what David was meant to signify: the idea that he signified anything beyond his own story would have seemed strange to me. Now I learn that he stood for Florence itself and that the huge figure represented small, vulnerable Florence as an embattled city state. David seems to have retained that meaning through the centuries as various rulers and governments have co-opted him. Even the wealthy and powerful like to think of themselves as vulnerable defenders of peace and liberty.

I grew up with different myths of vulnerability. Like most myths, they were founded on a truth. What happened to Britain in the Blitz was terrifying (so was the bombing of Dresden and Nagasaki) and the courage of Londoners and others was rightly praised. I heard enough of air-raids and fires from my parents to know that it had been very bad indeed. Living through bombing, coping with daily news of death and injury and simply carrying on took immense courage - a courage that became a way of daily life.

From tales of the Blitz, from the story of Dunkirk, I learnt a myth of Britain: plucky little Britain, defender of liberty and democracy, standing alone against the fascist foe. This was merged with later knowledge to suggest that Britain fought Germany because of Nazi treatment of the Jews and other oppressed groups (gypsies, homosexuals, communists, dissidents, etc.). That wasn't so, although many individuals joined up because of the known evils of Nazism. Britain fought because Germany invaded Poland and because Britain itself was threatened. The treatment of minorities was seen as a domestic matter. There was considerable anti-semitism in Britain, even during wartime, and the opposition to Jewish immigration in particular prefigures current prejudice against asylum seekers who flee to Britain from torture and death.

Suffering did not make Britain a better, more tolerant place. It didn't prevent Britain from pursuing brutal imperialist policies elsewhere. The myth of small, suffering Britain enabled people - including me - to look away from the truth. I didn't notice what was happening in the Chagos Islands. I've only recently realised that the barbarous mistreatment of the islanders - which continues as our current Labour government refuses to obey court judgments and let the islanders return - was part of a well-established imperial agenda.

We in Britain are so used to the idea of our country as a guardian of freedom that this reads like mad extremism. But what else can I call it, when I read the words of the chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir John Harding, in 1955? He had been sent to ensure Cyprus continued as a useful British base; his mission was to prevent independence at all costs so that Cyprus could remain as a useful base for operations in the Middle East. Sir John Harding wrote to the British cabinet that, if Cypriot self-determination were to be prevented, "a regime of military government must be established and the country run indefinitely as a police state." The British cabinet accepted Sir John Harding's advice. Ministers were happy to run police states elsewhere if they contributed to Britain's safety or economic advantage. That is what imperialism means.

It's one of many passages that struck me in a long, informative article by Perry Anderson on the recent history of Cyprus in the London Review of Books. I hadn't known much about the history of Cyprus before. When I was at school, the British press treated Archbishop Makarios as a figure of fun but he emerges from the LRB article as a figure of far more integrity than the British cabinet ministers, civil servants and soldiers who opposed him. The British government encouraged and orchestrated brutality for its own interests, regardless of the rights, well-being or lives of its Cypriot subjects. And when things went wrong, Britain's Labour government, under Prime Minister James Callaghan, asked the United States for help - "an instinctive reflex in Labour," Perry Anderson comments.

The United States also presents itself as small and vulnerable. The myth of the frontier is still strong and U.S. citizens rightly recall the courage of people who trekked across the country and built communities in the wilderness. But the wilderness wasn't uninhabited. As the new settlers established themselves and finally fought back against the oppression of imperial Britain, they also sought to subdue the original inhabitants of their country. George Washington outlined his strategy in his commands to General John Sullivan in May 1779:

"The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates and adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more."

"I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed."

"But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them."

Terror was Washington's weapon in the American War of Independence - or the American Revolution as it is sometimes known. The settlers who were becoming a nation thought terror a fair tactic to achieve the just society they envisaged - and that America's original inhabitants were proper victims. Less than three years previously, Washington had signed the Declaration of Independence, which included the words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, ..."

Today, Britain and the United States continue to use terror to further a modern imperial agenda. But we are constantly told that terror is what other people employ, and we have complex organisations - not fully accountable to democratic government - to defend us from the "terrorist threat". Liberty is curtailed in the United States and in Britain, with popular support.

The myths we hold dear talk of ideals - liberty, democracy, equality - which are still valuable. But unless we unpick the myths and look at historical facts - and our current practices - we'll find it hard to safeguard the values we should hold dear.

The Juggernaut of Subjection

A summary of the principal legislative sources of the erosion of
rights and freedoms in Britain becomes cumulatively chilling.
This entirely excludes all of the procedural shifts which facilitate
the huge expansion of (for example) CCTV. Or the
fingerprinting of children in schools without prior parental consent.

I have avoided entering commentary on the shift in the Zeitgeist and
the obfuscation which has permitted the general public acceptance
(and even support) of such cumulative repression.

Further commentary can be found with the intelligent use of Search engines.
Preferably other than Google if you want to keep your browsing habits
untracked. Do not forget that the information collection for
marketing purposes by Corporate Institutions, from Google to Tesco, is
a further reflection of the extent of the erosion of the liberty to lead your
life without unseen monitoring or intervention. In this, there is a meeting
of minds within the realms of both Civil and Corporate Governance.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC ORDER ACT 1994

Abolishes a suspect's right to silence (by permitting Courts and
Juries to draw inference from a suspect's refusal to disclose
matters to the Police at the time of arrest). 

POLICE ACT 1997

Allows the police to break into property and install
electronic surveillance.
A chief constable can make such authorisations if he
believes it will help fight serious crime.
The occupier of the property need not be under suspicion of a crime.
The decisions can be taken without  a warrant. (Sections 91 to 108)

CRIME AND DISORDER ACT 1998
 
First facilitation of ASBO's and the conception of causing Harassment,
Distress or Alarm. Introduction of Parenting Orders and Curfews on
Offenders released on Licence.

IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM ACT 1999 

Among other matters, facilitating the establishment of Detention Centres.

TERRORISM ACT 2000 

Definition of “terrorism” close to catch-all.. 
The government can  proscribe organisations without
having to prove that they have committed any offence.

REGULATION OF INVESTIGATORY POWERS ACT 2000 

Authorises Surveillance and disclosure of Communications
largely without warrant.
Authorities able to do so range from any Police Force to include any
Local Authority and the FSA.

FOOTBALL (DISORDER) ACT 2000 

Enables courts to place banning orders on people, prohibiting
them from travelling when a football match is on, without proving
they committed an offence.
Allows the police to prevent a person without a banning order
from leaving the country if the police have “reasonable grounds”
for believing the person may cause trouble at a football match. 

HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE ACT 2001 

Enables the Health Secretary to authorise disclosure of
confidential patient information to anyone he chooses if he
believes it is in the public interest or will improve patient
care.

 
ANTI-TERRORISM, CRIME AND SECURITY ACT 2001

Allows government departments and public bodies to disclose
confidential information to police forces for the purposes
of investigations of any crime anywhere in the world.
Permits the Home Secretary to certify any foreigner as an
“international terrorist” if he/she decides that they are
a risk to national security.
Terrorism is defined as in the Terrorism Act 2000.
Section 29 prevents courts from challenging the detention of
foreigners under sections 21 – 26,.  

SOCIAL SECURITY FRAUD ACT 2001 

Officials authorised by local councils and the Department of
Work and Pensions can demand that banks, credit card companies,
utility companies, any company providing financial services
and phone companies hand over any data they think is necessary
for the purposes of preventing or detecting benefit fraud,
without a warrant.
These officials can also demand that telecommunications companies
tell them who owns a particular account, when given only a number
or electronic address associated with the account,
again without a warrant.


THE PROCEEDS OF CRIME ACT 2002

Under this Act, the Criminal Assets Recovery Agency is set up
and in Part 5, it is given the power to seize a person's assets
using civil procedures in court.
This law applies civil proceedings to a dispute between the state
and an individual, with the state as the adjudicator.

ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR ACT 2003

Extends the thinking behind ASBOS and includes premises closure,
obligations on landlords, parenting orders, dispersal of groups,
public assemblies (the 1986 Public Order definition of an assembly
reduced from 20 to 2).

EXTRADITION ACT 2003

Part 2 - unratified treaty with USA. No prima facie evidence
required for extraditions from the UK to the USA, but still
required for USA to UK extraditions. 
Part 1 of the Act implements European Arrest
Warrant extraditions.
There is no requirement for evidence to be heard before a UK Court.
Also refer to the Home Office website.

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT 2003

Facilitates the elimination of Juries from complex fraud cases.
Removes protection against “double jeopardy”. Permits hearsay evidence.

THE CIVIL CONTINGENCIES ACT 2004

Authorises any cabinet minister to make "emergency regulations"
Emergency regulations may make any provision that can be made by
Royal Prerogative or Act of Parliament.....
the FIRST of the real shifts towards Enabling Act thinking.

THE PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACT 2005 

Under this Act, the government can impose “control orders” on
anyone they suspect might be involved in “terrorism-related”
activity. 
The person subjected to a control order does not get a trial,
is not charged with anything, and may have the evidence or
accusations against them withheld from them or their lawyers.
Terrorism is defined as in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000

THE SERIOUS ORGANISED CRIME AND POLICE ACT 2005 

Sets up the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA)
All offences, no matter how trivial, are now arrestable,
granting powers to obtain DNA, intimate samples, fingerprints
and photographs of those arrested,
to be retained on file regardless of whether the suspect is
charged with or convicted of an offence.
Don't discard your cigarette butt.
Protestors, even a single protestor, must apply at least 24
hours (and more normally 6 days) in advance for a permit
to protest within 1km of Parliament.

LEGISLATIVE AND REGULATORY REFORM ACT 2006

Originally drafted in terms which would have made this an
Enabling Act, the diluted text with some safeguards introduced
remains the second part of Enabling thinking.
By this, Ministers can, with minimal Parliamentary
scrutiny, modify and enact regulations, interpretations,
resources targeting and law.

IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM AND NATIONALITY ACT 2006

Further powers tor restrict the rights of immigrants
and asylum seekers.
Sections 56 and 57 modify the British Nationality Act (1981)
to permit the Home Secretary to deprive a person of citizenship
or the right of abode.

TERRORISM ACT 2006

Further clarification of offences of glorification etc.
Extends detention period.

IDENTITY CARDS ACT 2006

Well publicised. Read and weep.
Also introduces the National Identity Register.
More detail of this and other intrusive measures at
the No2ID resource.

There are times when I feel utterly lost, demotivated, by this
juggernaut of intervention, the abuse of an authority with a
“reasonable” face. The perversion of minds continues through
misrepresentation, through propaganda, through
an arrogance of rectitude which denies freedom in the name
of some collective "security".
Measures such as these laws were not deemed necessary
during the IRA campaign from 1969 to 1997.
Nor, for that matter, during the Second World War of
the last century.

How much freedom will you give up for a Government's definition
of what it is which should make you feel secure?
For the Government's actions in the name of "security" do nothing
to ease any personal sense of vulnerability. They act in the
enhancement of fear.

Remember Pastor Niemoller.

Dodo

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Lies, damned lies and statistics

According to a Europol Report, of 498 “Terrorist” attacks in 11 EU member states during 2006, just one (failed) was carried out by a group which could be classed as “Islamist”. That in Germany. The only fatal attack, with the deaths of two people in Madrid, was carried out by ETA, the Basque group, who were responsible for 136 attacks.

Of the 14 member states surveyed, statistics on arrest were available in 13 (the UK does not provide statistics on cases awaiting trial). Of 706 suspects arrested in relation to terrorist offences, 257 were “Islamist”. That bastion of liberté, egalité, fraternité, France, accounted for 342 of these arrests of which 139 were “Islamist” and 188 “Separatist”. (Little reported in the UK, where I write, there were 283 separatist attacks in Corsica during 2006).

The report does not include information on the activities of the security services, nor the role of such as Eliza Manningham-Buller (Director General of MI5 until her retirement last week - April 2007) in emphasising the extent of the terrorist threat. There is no means for public scrutiny of the accuracy of the PR from such security services.

I live in the UK, a land where our liberties of action, association, comment and privacy have been shattered over the past decade, principally in the years following the WTC atrocity. I live in a nation which was the focus for a sustained Irish Terrorist assault. Yet even after the bomb at the Grand Hotel (12^th October 1984) which almost assassinated the Prime Minister, the Government saw no cause for such draconian intervention in the lives of its inhabitants during that protracted murderous campaign. That within the boundaries of the Island of Britain. In Ulster, riven by sectarian criminality and terrorism in the names both of a "Republic" and of "Loyalist", the application of the law, of military policing and of clandestine security action was less enlightened. Nevertheless, even in that province, the range and reach of legislation remained less draconian than that which applies nationwide over twenty years later.

I live in a nation which has actively supported US policies of propaganda, mendacity, illegal invasion, war, occupation and grand larceny. This after many years of under-reported military attrition and enforcement of murderous UN sanctions policies on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I live in a nation which has acted in support of the extension and consolidation of the message of State terror to the world. And whose Government has cynically encouraged and exploited a condition of fear of domestic terrorism to justify its domestically repressive and internationally aggressive policies.

Margaret Thatcher, never at the time thought of as a bastion for liberty, in a speech to the Tory conference at 9.30am, seven hours after the Grand Hotel bomb which came so close to killing her (and led to the deaths of five people) said “....the fact that we are gathered here now — shocked, but composed and determined — is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”

It is not terrorism, nor the threat of terrorism, which is destroying liberty in this land. It is not terrorism which has so eroded our constitutionally monarchic “democracy”. The creation and exploitation of a condition of fear provides the excuse for an instinctively authoritarian and evidently near-fascist culture of Government to impose its limited vision of humanity upon us all.

I have seen no UK comment on the Europol report.

dodo

"the Golden Journey to Samarkand"

posted by k










"O turn your eyes to where your children stand.
Is not Baghdad the beautiful? Oh stay.

"We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

[...]

"We travel not for trafficking alone:
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned;
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand."

It's many years since I read James Elroy Flecker's strange play, Hassan. As I recall, it's a confection of orientalism, sado-masochism and fascination with absolute power. The doom of the main characters is romanticised and torture is treated erotically. The effect was doubtless heightened in the original 1923 production (after Flecker's death) when music by Frederick Delius was added. At the end, the audience is drawn away from the tragedy by the arrival of a band of pilgrims whose song includes the repeated line, "We make the golden journey to Samarkand."

Today no-one would escape from a world of torture and state cruelty to Samarkand. Samarkand is in Uzbekhistan and Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador there, has chronicled some of the horrors of Karimov's totalitarian regime. And there's nothing erotic or glamorous about it. Imagine a country in which the state compels children to work a 12-hour day picking cotton - or in which cotton workers are effectively enslaved for life. Imagine a country in which 1 in 6 people are employed by the security services, or in which the mildest grumble about the government can lead to imprisonment or death. Imagine a country in which dissidence can end in being boiled alive or in which confessions are extracted by the torture of children in front of their parents.

Now imagine you live in a country which expects its paid servants to turn a blind eye to such torture; which describes "confessions" gained in such a way not as true but as "operationally useful"; which treats the upholders of this regime as noble allies in the War against Terror. If you live in Britain or the United States, you don't need to imagine - you already live in such a country.

We live in a country whose government lies and lies again. We are expected to believe that 1 in every 200 male muslims is an active terrorist. Of course it's not true. But the government wants to persuade us to surrender our liberties. This is what John Reid said on a recent webchat:

"The truth is that all of our liberties are under threat from extremist terrorists who have a contempt for the liberties that we value so much. Therefore, we need to protect them and in a civilised society people accept that requires some curtailment on our own liberties. For instance, while everyone agrees on the desirablility of freedom of speech, most people agree that it has to be curtailed when it comes to racist remarks or encouraging hatred against others. It is that balance which is always difficult to achieve, but I am proud that in this country we are amongst the most libertarian in the world, though we are under one of the greatest threats from terrorism."

It's rubbish. You can't protect liberties by getting rid of them. And in Britain we are not "under one of the greatest threats from terrorism". Just compare daily life here with life in Baghdad.

Of course, terrorists exist. Terrorists may even get us. But it's unlikely. Our government isn't anything like as bad as the government in Uzbekhistan. But condoning the torture of other people in a distant country indicates a rottenness which will touch us too. I'm no longer so sure than it can't happen here. I've seen people slip quietly from firm ethics to acceptance of horrors. We have taken our first steps on "the golden road to Samarkand."





For the full John Reid webchat with comments, click here.



And for further details of Craig Murray and his book, Murder in Samarkand (now available in paperback), click here.