I don't usually try to do this `web logging in real time' thing, but three comments about the proposed Prevention of Terrorism bill:
Firstly, all of the debate about this bill is essentially racist.
The previous legislation was explicitly racist. It said that the Home Secretary could gaol anybody he wanted, so long as they weren't British.
Superficially, the new bill looks non-racist, because it gives the Home Secretary the power to lock up anyone he likes -- foreign or not -- under house arrest. But note that all parties in the debate are not talking about locking up anyone; they're talking about locking up `suspected terrorists'.
Specifically we are supposed to hold in mind brown people who are Muslims (such as those who have been bailed from Belmarsh today).
This is, I suspect, is why the majority of people in this country are in favour of giving Charles Clarke the power to lock up anyone he likes. He says `suspected terrorists', and means `anyone he likes'; but people interpret this as `eeeevil brown people', and so it's a-OK with them. By contrast, I suspect that there are rather few Irish Catholics living in this country who think that this legislation is a good idea.
(Why do I say that Charles Clarke intends to lock up `anyone he likes'? Surely he is fluffy and nice, and has only our best interests at heart? And anyway, won't there be some condition about evidence from the `security services'? No messing about now -- these people might be THE TERRORISTS.
Well, in honesty I don't know whether Charles Clarke actually intends to start having people hauled off the streets by armed goons and held under house arrest purely for his own personal ends -- MICHAEL HOWARD DISAPPEARS, REMAINING TORY BLAMES HOME SECRETARY -- and even if he does I expect that it will take a few more years of deterioration before we wind up completely in the manure. But that said, the government's claim that the people in Belmarsh have been identified by the security services as dangerous terrorists should be taken just as seriously as the similar claim that the were `weapons of mass destruction' in Iraq. More generally, this is pure argument from authority, and is no way to run a justice system, even if giving individual ministers the power to lock people up were a good idea..)
Secondly, the `promise' offered by Tony Blair to bring in new legislation in July -- a promise which the Liberal Democrats and Conservative Parties have apparently now accepted -- is, of course, of no value. I expect that any legislation is offered to replace this bill in July -- if any -- will not restore habeas corpus.
Similarly, the proposed `sunset clause' would also have been worthless, because there is no guarantee that it would not be repealed.
Thirdly, if the Tories had retained their collective backbone, the government could, if so minded, just bring the thing in under the s.20 of the Civil Contingencies Act, which would require neither the consent of Parliament nor Royal assent, though the bill would then have to be renewed every thirty days.
Any suggestions for `countries to flee to'? The current list is Australia, India, or New Zealand, I think.
Comments
Posted by Roy Badami, Friday, 11 March 2005 20:19 (link):
Surely, since the old legislation discriminates on nationality rather than race, it is implicitly racist.
To be explicitly racist it would have had to give the power to detain anyone who wasn't caucasian (say)...
-roy
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 12 March 2005 12:56 (link):
Quite right. I've made an error that I've called people on in the past -- specifically the confusion of nationality, ethnicity and race. Oops. But I don't think this affects the substance of my point, which is that debate around the legislation typically assumed that it was only going to be used to detain non-caucasian people. And, indeed, this is how I expect it to be used, at first.
Posted by Alphonce, Friday, 11 March 2005 23:29 (link):
Surely if the spooks think that they've discovered someone intent on killing to make a political point they should arrange for their assasination. Isn't that why we employ these guys? There are lots of reasons why it's not possible to apply law to this situation, which is why the government are arse over tit. Obviously a few innocent people will be killed in the process, but 20,000 innocent French people were killed on D Day alone. So far as I'm aware, none of their relatives took us to court. We've got two sets of players using different rules at present and that rarely turns out well.
Posted by Alphonce, Friday, 11 March 2005 23:30 (link):
Or even 'assassination'
Posted by Roy Badami, Saturday, 12 March 2005 00:35 (link):
I fail to see how summary execution without trial can be in any way preferable to indefinite detention without trial...
-roy
Posted by Alphonce, Saturday, 12 March 2005 07:23 (link):
It's May 6th. You're PM. You took over No 10 an hour ago, having watched Tone and Cherie almost skip out of the building. You could swear you heard Tone say 'USA, here we come!' and Cherie replying 'We're rich, rich I tell you!' as they slid into the limo.
Before you had time to even think about the layout of your personal office, your PPS whisked you into a meeting with two officials from an security unit that most cabinet members, let alone members of the public, have never heard of. As a former home secretary you know about them but up until now you've never dealt with them.
They explain what they need quickly and precisely. They are 95% sure that a splinter group of the real IRA are in the final stages of mounting a ‘spectacular’ on the mainland. The group’s main aims are to destabilise your government and to settle a few scores with their former Real and Provo colleagues. The unit estimates that over 500 deaths will be caused in a south coast town - they can't be sure which as that will be decided at the last moment using a dice throw. It is possible that they are targeting a secondary school. The group are unconcerned about the kick back from this.
The officials insist that while they have a very strong case, arrest and prosecution is completely out of the question and that core members of the splinter team must be ‘taken out’ if the operation is to be disrupted and hundreds of lives saved. They have sources deep in the organisation in question which would inevitably be compromised.
They want to arrange for the deaths of key members of the splinter team within the next 24 hours. They need your political sanction before they can act. Only you are to know and only you are to decide. The operation will be discreet and efficient like many that they have run in the past. What’s your decision?
Neither you nor I are ever going to be in this situation, and to be honest I don’t know what I’d do in spite of my earlier post. I’m not a tremendous fan of assassination, but I raised this because it’s an aspect of all this which I’ve not heard discussed at all over the past few weeks.
Perhaps I’d ask them about those WMDs their colleagues were so sure about not so long ago, but I suspect they’d point the finger at Scarlett and Campbell and say that it was known - within the security services - that the intelligence was pretty much worthless.
So, again, what do you do? Stick to your liberal principles, or sanction the deaths of 4 or 5 and save 500 lives?
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 12 March 2005 10:33 (link):
This is the bit I've never been able to find credible. If `sources deep in the organisation' would be revealed by arresting the terrorists -- i.e. because the security services could only have known about their existence because of a tip-off from those sources -- wouldn't they be revealed by shooting them, too? And if these people actually were trying to blow something up, oughtn't to be possible to bring out evidence of this at the trial, without compromising those sources?
Posted by Peter Clay, Saturday, 12 March 2005 12:42 (link):
And what do you do the next day? What expediencies do you have to do to carry it out and cover it up? Do you kill the journalists who are investigating and might expose not only the sources you were trying to protect but the state-sanctioned murder?
How well do you trust the security services not to lie to you, or exhibit massive racial and sectarian bias? How will you check afterwards that they weren't lying to you? (This is why Arafat had twelve security services).
This sort of thing has happened before, and often, but there is never the "ticking bomb" scenario - it's more things like the Rainbow Warrior bombing, or Republican lawyers or civil rights marchers being killed.
Posted by Alphonce, Saturday, 12 March 2005 20:30 (link):
I don't know the answers to any of these questions, unfortunately. I just feel that there's a lot more to this than is discussed in public. I'm not a mathematician, but from the little I know about game theory isn't the Prisoner's Dilemma relevant to this? I remember hearing somewhere or other that the optimum winning strategy was something called 'Nice guys never lose' (a phrase which, incidentally, results in zero hits on google although I've presumably just changed that.) The idea was that the best way to 'win' in repeated runs of the prisoner's dilemma is to cooperate so long as the other player cooperates but as soon as they defect you hit them hard. On reflection, perhaps that's nothing to do with the point I raised at all, but maybe Chris could enlighten us.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Saturday, 12 March 2005 21:34 (link):
Well, without answering your detailed points, can't you do a bit better than `there's a lot more to this than is discussed in public'? That could be used to justify anything:
Posted by Alphonce, Thursday, 17 March 2005 06:36 (link):
Well, I'd hope that even under our constitution-free system we'd find a way of removing rather rapidly a prime minister who attempted to deflect all questions about bizzare decisions on transport policy by claiming that they were based on advice from the security services.
I suppose we refer to the security services as 'the security services' because the stuff they deal with is secure. We're not supposed to know about it. And as I attempted to suggest - though I'm by no means sure about this, which is why I raiised it - perhaps a different set of rules apply when we're dealing with people who are planning to kill people to make a political point than, say, when we're dealing with a someone who wants to maintain his lucrative income from tobacco advertising by bribing politicians.
The problem with the 'different set of rules' in this particular case is that no liberal, relatively open, democratic society could ever openly endorse them because that's not what we relatively open democratic liberals do. Some of us liberals might sort of hope that this kind of thing was going on but feel that, on the whole, it would be better all round if we didn't ask too many questions and move smartly onto nicer and safer stuff.
So far as I'm aware, the Human Rights Act does not include an exemption clause covering covert political assassination. However I'm in no doubt that if, on the morning of 15th August 1988 I had been Tony Blair and had been told that it might be necessary to assassinate a team of bombers who - it had been determined - were going to detonate a bomb in the centre of Omagh, because the option of detaining them was highly risky and impractical I'd have said something like "Why are you even bothering to ask?".
Look guys - let's get real. I know about this sort of thing. Just like the rest of you, and those slimey No 10 policy wonks and advisers who cream themselves over the stuff, I watch the West Wing. It's pretty clear from that that when you're in the Hot Seat you have to make some pretty unpleasant decisions even if you're the nicest, cuddliest leader of the free world we're never going to have.
Posted by Roy Badami, Sunday, 13 March 2005 19:37 (link):
They want to arrange for the deaths of key members of the splinter team within the next 24 hours. They need your political sanction before they can act.
I still don't see how this would achieve anything that wouldn't equally be achieved by arresting them within the next 24 hours, and detaining them indefinitely without trial.
Not that I'm in favour of detention without trial. But if assassinating them would foil their plans, surely holding them incommunicado would be equally effective?
-roy
Posted by dsquared, Monday, 14 March 2005 11:49 (link):
What I found extraordinary was that apparently Blair had asked the cops and spooks "Would you like lots more powers to lock people up without having to go to the trouble of proving anything?" and they had said "Well I suppose yes, and we probably need more money too" and this was meant to be clinching, absolutely irrefutable evidence that they were necessary because after all, why else would people want their jobs to be made easier?
Next week, Blair asks Bernie Ecclestone "Is tobacco advertising really absolutely necessary to preserve Formula One racing?" ... oh no, that one's already been done. How about "asks the brewery industry whether 24 hour drinking would lead to us becoming a nation of continental wine-sippers" ... shit ... help me out here.
Posted by Chris Lightfoot, Monday, 14 March 2005 17:18 (link):
Good point. He won't do it for the bloody railways, though, will he?
Posted by Daniel Davies, Tuesday, 15 March 2005 23:39 (link):
Course he will; look at Virgin Trains. They ring up Branson and say "Don't you think that these timetables and performance standards are a bit too onerous and need to be relaxed?". He says "Yes they are, and how about a bit more subsidy too."
Post a new comment.
Comments copyright (c) contributors and available under a Creative Commons License. See also the comments policy.