Another Queen’s Speech, another anti-terrorist crackdown. This year’s Counter-Terrorism Bill follows last year’s Terrorism Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005. There are only so many ways of saying the same thing. With each new wave of legislation, only the date gives a clear indication of which law is which.
In 2001, in its report on the new Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act, the Commons home affairs select committee wrote that “this country has more anti-terrorism legislation on its statute books than any other developed democracy”. Since then, a further three pieces of substantial legislation have been passed in this area; this new bill will make it four. The latest proposed measures will allow the questioning of suspects after they have been charged. Ministers are also considering increasing the length of time a suspect can be detained without charge beyond the present 28 days. Memories are short, but as the government talks once again of increasing this period of detention, it is worth remembering that when Labour came to power in 1997, the period of detention without charge was just 48 hours – only in exceptional cases could the home secretary grant an extension of up to five days.
Most of the criticism of Gordon Brown’s first legislative programme has been wholly unjustified. The drive to build more affordable homes, the raising of the educational leaving age and the extension of flexible working to include the parents of older children all add up to the beginnings of a progressive vision.
But on security, the government’s policy has been consistently illiberal and Brown has signalled his intention to continue where Tony Blair left off. On the weekend before the Queen’s Speech, I attended a conference held by Progress, new Labour’s most cheerleading fringe group, where I spoke at a meeting entitled “Beyond the Politics of Fear: How Does Labour Win the Security Debate?” It struck me that Labour already believes it has won the security debate, a feeling reinforced by the new legislation.
In the court of public opinion – or so the new Labour argument goes – no anti-terrorism measure is too harsh, no curtailment of liberty too far-reaching, just so long as most people believe it is not happening to them. At the same time, the Conservative Party’s decision to defend ancient liberties in the face of legislation such as control orders, the extension of detention without trial and ID cards is seen as an open goal for a Labour government that has never been afraid to flex its authoritarian muscles. This leaves us in the strange position where we have the Tories, the Law Lords and most of liberal Britain on one side and the Labour Party and the Daily Mail on the other.
There is some evidence of a shift of tone under Brown – but the softer language of the new Home Secretary and the excision of the phrase “war on terror” from the ministerial lexicon means little when the government is so determined to revise the internment legislation. In the chopped logic of this government, there is no security debate. The last election was won on the present security agenda and the belief is strong that the government has an authoritarian mandate.
It is easy to forget that this government was indulging in the politics of fear long before the events of 7 July 2005; indeed long before 11 September 2001. The direction of travel was indicated by the very first piece of anti-terrorism legislation to be brought in – the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998. It was this piece of legislation that fundamentally shifted this country’s philosophy towards the terrorist threat by making it an offence “to conspire to commit terrorist acts abroad”. This ensured that Britain became dependent on other countries’ definition of what it was to be a terrorist in order to counter the domestic threat. Our domestic policy became yoked to the demands of foreign policy. The most glaring example of the inconsistency of this policy came when Libya was brought in from the cold. At a stroke, Islamist dissidents of the Gaddafi regime became al-Qaeda terrorists.
What followed was an obsession with foreign terrorist sleeper cells. Thousands of hours of police time and vast sums of public money were wasted on pursuing terror suspects from North Africa against whom there was no serious evidence of terrorist activity. As we now know, to tragic cost, we were looking in completely the wrong direction – the deadliest threat was home-grown.
On the pretext of “the war on terror”, fundamental liberties have been swept aside. The Terrorism Act 2000 extended detention without charge to seven days. A year later the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act brought in detention without trial for foreign terror suspects. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 extended the period a suspect could be kept without charge to 14 days. When the Law Lords ruled that holding foreign suspects without trial was unlawful, the government used the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act to introduce “control orders”, which restricted the movement of terror suspects using electronic technology and curfews.
Labour’s first piece of anti-terrorist legislation was a reaction to the Omagh bombing of 1998, and although the threat has switched from Irish republicanism to Islamist nihilism, the pattern of atrocity followed by crackdown has been maintained. It is interesting to contrast this with the reaction to the Brighton bombing of 1984, in which the IRA targeted the Conservative cabinet at the party conference.
As Simon Jenkins pointed out in his recent book, Thatcher and Sons, the then prime minister did not respond by announcing a new raft of legislation, but by requesting that Marks & Spencer open early to allow survivors to replace clothes lost in the blast. As an admirer of Lady Thatcher, it is a model of leadership Gordon Brown would do well to follow. Faced by the present Islamist threat, a truly courageous government would have held its nerve and refused to allow our fundamental liberties to be whittled away by the men of violence.
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