Last August I ran THIS story on Sir Ian Blair warning what might happen after a future terror attack.Last week, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner addressed the Reform Club Media
Group. Nothing like the 'establishment' sticking together is there? The meeting
was conducted under Chatham House rules, which mean that no one attending is
supposed to divulge what is said. But one person present was so appalled at Sir
Ian's attitude and authoritarian stance that he has revealed to me an alarming -
and seemingly off the cuff - remark made by Sir Ian at the event.Sir Ian said
the British people should 'brace themselves for a truly appalling act of
terror'. He said that following this act of barbarism 'people would be talking
quite openly about internment', giving the impression that he would be leading
the pro-internment lobby. No doubt he will find a willing supplicant in the
tougher than tough Home Secretary John Reid.My informant thought at first that
it really was a throwaway remark but on reflection felt that it couldn't have
been made by accident. Well, either that or the Reform Club claret had loosened
his tongue.I haven't even bothered to ring the Met Press Office because I know
what they will say. But if this really is the stance Sir Ian is taking then we
should be even more worried about our civil liberties than we already are. I'm
now even more convinced that the Conservative stance against 90 days detention
was right.
Prescient words IMHO! John Reid has today made clear he wants to revisit the 28 day limit on holding terrorists . What a surprise this is coming after Sir Ian Blair's comments above in August. These people will stop at nothing to scare us and frighten us into submission. David Davis has it exactly right when he says:
"We will consider any new evidence but, if Dr. Reid is seeking this because
we are facing another terrorist incident, then that is not sufficient reason.
Any change has to be based on difficulties in charging within 28 days. "All the
evidence from the terrorist operation last August showed that the limit of 28
days did not prevent charging of a large number of suspects in the alleged
terrorist plot. This was made evident by the fact the Home Secretary and
Attorney General subsequently confirmed that there was no evidence for an
extension beyond 28 days."
17 comments:
Iain, Great scoop. I had a feeling in my water, reading all the stuff about the 'terror arrests' that it was only a matter of time before they would revisit this, although my speculation was around them trying to get cross party consensus to a figure of 60 days rather than try to ride roughshod over opposition to 90 days. However I am proved wrong, and if they achieve 90 days, then it will be a skip and a hop if anything nasty happens to move to internment.
Although they won't call it that, something like 'indefinite detention' or another neologism.
Sir Ian said
the British people should 'brace themselves for a truly appalling act of terror'. He said that following this act of barbarism 'people would be talking quite openly about internment
Fuck internment
-if the act was truly appalling people would be using the words "enforced repatriation" and if the Police didn't do it they would find a new elite to do it for them.
We all knew that the police were looking for an excuse to increase their powers. Have they found one in this alleged plot to kidnap a Muslim soldier?
Am I alone in considering it ever-so-slightly possible (certainly not definite - just possible) that this whole thing about the Birmingham nine is a stitch-up, in order to make people more supportive of internment?
Unlikely I agree, but I certainly wouldn't put it past certain establishment figures.
they are laying the groundwork for public disorder and the backlash when we all find out that the extra troops in Afghanistan will be used as part of the invasion of Iran.
coming soon..
It's all part of NuLab's political strategy.
Come out with an apallingly authoritarian policy (i.e 90 day detention without trial) and then pick a fight with the Tories and LibDems.
We NuLab support 90 day detention (we read all the secret stuff and really know how bad it is....) = tough on crime and terrorism....
...This is opposed by the Tories & Lib Dems = soft on crime & terrorism.
You're only safe under Labour...geddit
It's a sort of pick n' mix on what to scare the electorate with...
An apalling act of terrorism, the ice-caps melting and we all drown, Iran nuking London or perhaps bird-flu. Labour can choose to scare us with whichever it feel appropriate.
I suspect another planes plot shortly and tanks at heathrow.
According to the Chatham House website, the CH Rule is:
"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed".
(emphasis mine)
In regards naming Ian Blair, I suppose the get-out here is that if there is a moral imperative to reveal the ID of the speaker then that overrules the CHR.
d.
The police foil yet another plot and instead of giving credit for saving lives, you guys moan and put forward teen-aged arguments about "how the government always wanted this" or that it is "instutional islamophobia".
Christ save us!
Hello! Do you really believe that all of the arrests are stitch ups of innocent boy scouts?! Get real!
Do you not get that the islamo terror game is to show what a big man you are by turning the terror up a notch from the previous?
How many CONVICTIONS (and plea deals!) in the criminal courts in this country will it take for you to wake up to the fact that our way of life is under attack?
Iain, all you need to top off the discussion is to get Craig "Conspiracy Nut, Nut" Murray on the sofa to tell us all how it's a plot engineered by Bush and Dr John to rule the world...
Roll it out! It all reminds me of JFK's book, "Why England Slept".
I told you all that Blair was a nazi.... and Sir Ian too!
As a libertarian I think it's great that the Tories are now the party of civil liberties. I just wish they'd be more consistent about it (e.g. marijuana, rolling back Brussels, etc.).
Great piece, Iain. Keep fighting for our, currently woebegone, civil liberties.
I'm puzzled my mixed reaction to David Davis. I have never liked him, he comes as across as too Tory and too macho. Then I read his views, such as those you've quoted and his statement that he'll hug hoodies too, just a little harder than Cameron, and I love old DD.
I'm going to alter my view of Davis, he seems to have just the right qualities for a British (or English, who knows..?) Home Sec.
Why Ian one would think you have hidden motives your not telling us about ,I can see you want to be a MP, good luck , I can see you want the conservatives to win, good luck and I see you want to get well known ,good luck, but why all this , you would think you were writing a scary novel
Hold on one minute. John Reid said in December that he knew, at that time, of no evidence for detention for more than 28 days ( in effect undermining the last Home Sec and the Prime Minister ).
Maybe it was a big news day - but I tried pointing it out at the time and of course it was in the Daily Telegraph, but for some reason it didn't make the splash I'd have expected.
What has changed in John Reid's mind since then ? What has he seen to change his mind ?( OK lets just have the things relating to terrorism. )
Iain, the longer they have the longer they will take. The latest lot of suspects went before the beak after 36 hours, apparently without having been questioned. (I am awaiting more info on that)
You can't trust people with unbirdadled power.
Kris: What is "our way of life"?
It is under attack mainly from the Government, whilst they defend our "varlues".
How does Ian know about this 'appalling act'? Will it be an inside job or is he just saying that he is not up to the task of stopping it?
And what can these Nazi fucks do with 90 days that they cannot do with 28? Torture? Or as a hop and a skip to internment? Combined with the chatter about using army barracks as prison camps, it all points in one direction. We have to stop these traitors as a matter of urgency.
LBS
My way of life started with the age of enlightenment, through to a codified understanding of fundamental rights and obligations, down through Mississippi and South African freedom fighters, to equality for women and LBGT rights.
And after all that, you want to stand aside and allow the "informal" imposition of Sharia and to put your head in the sand about a small but significant percentage of the Muslim community putting their minds to new ways of blowing themselves and others up?
And while we're at it, I just LOVE how the MUSLIM community in Birmingham are upset. THEY'RE UPSET!!!
Denial is not a river in Egypt...
Kris, have you ever gone shooting your mouth off in an Internet chat room? Or have you ever transferred money outside the formal British economy? It is for these things that several British Muslims were arrested as suspected terrorists during the last scare story (remember that?).
They need not worry too much, and nor need the latest arrestees: of over one thousand British Muslims arrested on the same basis, only 12% have ever been charged with anything, and 80% of those have been acquitted. That leaves about two per cent of arrests leading to a conviction, and most of those for nothing to do with terrorism: once the Police go rummaging through people's lives, they can find all sorts of things.
Some of those arrested last time had been under surveillance for over a year. But then some poor soul under Pakistani interrogation alleged a plot to blow up aeroplanes. To Bush and Blair, who discussed this matter over the weekend before the arrests, it was Christmas. "Another 9/11," they must have exclaimed. Something to distract attention from Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and numerous domestic policy failures.
True to form, Blair sent in John Reid, whose OWN SPIN was that he had directed the arrests. This was so scandalous that it had to be true: no one would make it up against himself. The Home Secretary now bragged about directing the Police to arrest people in the middle of the night!
Reid is very clever, and, as I can testify first-hand, an excellent after-dinner speaker. But he was a Communist Party activist deep into his adult life, well before the fall of the Soviet Union. At Stirling University, when the Communist Party ran the Students' Union (with its large cash turnover), Reid was its enforcer. As he later was for Neil Kinnock, and now is for Tony Blair.
So, yes, I am afraid. Of John Reid.
But we cannot allow ourselves to stop at being afraid. We need an alternative programme to the otherwise never-ending theft of our liberty. So, with deep breath, I propose: the restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law, the use of this to restore Britain's historic fishing rights, no EU law to apply in the United Kingdom without having gone through exactly the same parliamentary process as if it were a Bill which had originated in our own Parliament, the adoption of the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, the election of Britain's European Commissioner by the whole electorate from a shortlist of two submitted by a secret ballot of MPs, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice by resolution of the House of Commons (giving this country the same level of independence as is rightly enjoyed by Germany through her Constitutional Court), and the non-application of any ruling under either the Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights unless and until ratified by such a resolution, repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act, repeal of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, restoration of the situation whereby a Bill which runs out of parliamentary time is lost at the end of that session, no identity cards, no control orders, repeal of existing erosions of trial by jury and of the right to silence, repeal of existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolition of majority verdicts (which, by definition, provide for conviction even where there is reasonable doubt), raising of the minimum age for jurors at least to 21, restoration of a minimum property and/or educational qualification for jurors, restoration of the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolition of stipendiary magistrates, repeal of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, repeal of the provision for Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, restoration of the pre-1985 prosecution powers of the Police (i.e., abolition of the Crown Prosecution Service), and a return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with police forces at least be no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability (most obviously though Police Authorities, although with the mind by no means closed to the idea of elected sheriffs).
There.
That would be a start, anyway.
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