Gordon Brown Launches His War on U.K. Terror

Brown appears more committed to civil liberties than Blair. Appearances can be deceptive.

By Liam Bailey

Tony Blair's successor as British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown announced Jun. 3 his intention to strengthen counter-terrorism measures in the U.K. The third time the Labour party has done so since 9/11 and 7/7. Brown also pledged to increase parliamentary accountability to ensure civil liberties are upheld under the new laws. It remains to be seen whether Brown's rhetoric of maintaining civil liberties is anymore than a cover for more authoritarianism. As Blair's closest aide throughout most of his premiership it is likely Brown supported Blair's terror laws, which were often thought to be slowly but surely eroding civil liberties, so we could be in for more of the same.

However, whereas I thought Blair was turning the U.K. into a police state targeting Muslims and driving so called moderate Muslims into extremism, because Brown seems as eager to uphold civil liberties of the British way as he is to tighten measures to stop terrorism, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.

I am in support of most of Brown's ideas: the use of phone-tap evidence in court, allowing police to continue questioning terror suspects after they have been charged, and allowing judges to consider involvement in terrorist activities as an aggravating factor when adjudicating other crimes. Blair rejected the use of phone-tap evidence in court on advice from security services, who feared it would jeopardize their secretive methods for gathering intelligence. Brown plans to look into ways it can be used without revealing sources to the public.

Where I am against Browns policy is his regurgitating Blair's most controversial proposal that resulted in his first parliamentary defeat, extending the period of without charge detention from 28 to 90 days.

28 days detention without charge is as long as anywhere else in the free world. According to human rights groups any longer is tantamount to internment. It is claimed that the 90 day detention is needed in light of how technology can hide evidence of terrorist activities, i.e. to gain access to encrypted hard-drives and data storage devices etc. But British law states innocent until proven guilty, so, until any evidence is retrieved proving they are guilty of something, these prisoners are innocent and should be tagged and released after 28 days and their hard-ware kept.

A tag is linked to a satellite system and alerts authorities if you aren't in or around your home for a certain time every day. That way if or when the data is recovered the people could be re-arrested. 90 days detention without charge is too likely to be abused.

When Blair was defeated on the 90 day proposal, it was opposed by the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and some Labour back-benchers. Constitutional Affairs Minister and deputy Labour leadership candidate Harriet Harman thinks that this time it will be different, that the house will support Brown's measures -- including 90 days detention -- if Brown can make a good case that the measures are necessary. She said on BBC One's Sunday AM:

"I don't think there will be a huge problem if there is a proper debate about it -- if evidence is brought forward about why current powers are inadequate and what the safeguards will be." Her sentiments of support for the new proposals were echoed by the other deputy leadership candidates, Hilary Benn, Hazel Blears and Peter Hain.

Conservative sources say there is no new evidence to support the need for longer detention. Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesman Simon Hughes warned Mr Brown that he will have a fight on his hands if he attempts to increase detention without charge period for terror suspects. In an attempt to sweeten the proposal Mr Brown has insisted he will ensure a judicial review of extended detentions is undertaken every 7 days. It is difficult to predict whether that will counteract the level of opposition to the plan.

Apparently Brown is to put the phone-tap proposal to the cross-party Privy Council for discussion, which is honouring his pledge to make the government more open and accountable on its new course. Lord Carlisle, the government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation welcomed Brown's proposals, saying:

"I do think it is time for the political parties to get together and to try to reach a consensus with the government, so we can move forward on terrorism legislation on the basis of fitness for purpose, rather than having a hot political debate about these desperately difficult and important matters."

What detracts from this is the fact that Brown first released word of his proposals to the Sunday papers instead of the House of Commons. And just five days before Home Secretary John Reid was due to present his terrorism measures to the house, throwing any idea of even party consensus on dealing with the terror threat out the window -- let alone cross-party consensus. This also suggested Brown does intend to be authoritarian in his leadership and his terrorism measures -- it's my way or no way.

The new proposals are in response to three terror suspects who had been issued control orders under the old legislation absconding. However I feel suggesting 90 days detention is necessary because of that is like sending a bear to catch a mouse. I see no reason why the tags I spoke of above can't be used to strengthen existing control orders. Brown's leap to Blair's 90 day detention plan backs-up claims that he was staunchly behind Blair's legislation and the absconders simply gave him the leverage to revive the defeated proposal.

So, overall Brown's latest release was much like his vision for his premiership when Blair steps down, the new measures for terrorism are different than Blair's in slight ways, but on the whole I'd say we can expect more of the same.

War & Grief

Think of the people left behind by every death in the world's war zones.

By Liam Bailey

For the first time in my life, I have been forced to deal with the sudden death of someone in my immediate family. Such a death is a like a tsunami of grief engulfing everyone it touches. Not only immediate relatives but their friends and distant relatives as well, if not affected by the death, then affected by their sympathy for those who are.

I am only talking about one death. Last night when I was watching the news it occurred to me that if one death affects, say 100 people, when 36 people die in an attack in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or anywhere else in the world, then that potentially affects at least 3,600 people.

I have found in the last few days that my sister's death has affected me less than that of an uncle I hardly knew dying when I was a child. The only reason I can think of for this is my being engulfed in news reports from the world's war zones in the past year. Devastating attacks are causing unrelenting tsunamis of grief across the world's war zones each and every day, but have we heard about them so many times on the news that we have disassociated from the pain of an unexpected death?

I believe we have. In the example above I mentioned an attack with a death toll in the mid-30s. That should be shocking on its own, but it isn't. Attacks with such high death tolls are commonplace in Iraq; frequently two or more such attacks happen each day. So, because of this maybe they can't be shocking, but I feel that they should still be upsetting.

If we imagine that an attack, say on a marketplace, might kill 15 people, if these are fifteen people, wandering the market alone, then using my formula above that is 1,500 people in separate families forced into the grieving process. More likely it would be a family walking through the market together. Maybe four of those killed were from the same family -- mother, father, daughter, and son. For their extended family that is a tsunami of grief, like the one hitting my family, multiplied by a factor of four. There could have been another member of the family on the day out to the market, but he/she had gone to get an ice cream, or straggled behind admiring something that caught their eye. Now he/she has the grief to deal with, plus the guilt of not keeping his family together with him. The extended family now has the grief of all the deaths, plus the heart-breaking sympathy for the one left behind.

If every time an attack like this happened, everyone looked at and thought about it in this way, would there be less violence in the world?

For instance, a suicide bomber boards a bus in Israel and leaves four people dead in his wake. The four people's deaths are on the news, four people far away and distant from our hearts. But if the news reports told us that the dead were a mother and her small baby and two grandparents on their way to the hospital to see their first grandchild for the first time, it would upset and appall everyone with a heart, Palestinian militants included. The militants may think twice the next time they are asked to martyr themselves.

It probably isn't practical or even possible that news reports could contain such information about the deceased in every violent incident around the world every day. What is possible, in fact even probable, is that almost every life extinguished in a violent manner affects someone apart from the deceased. Some may be vagrants, and only their vagrant friends will be affected in a small way. But some will certainly be mothers that will never see their children again, and/or like my sister, the children may be so young it is unclear whether they will even remember their mother. That is one aspect of my sister's death that has affected me badly.

Is anything more upsetting than a child asking where their dead mother is? Yes, having to explain the answer to them.

So, the next time you are listening to the news about three simultaneous car bombings or an attack of any kind that has left a total of 75 people dead, try not to compare it to the death toll of 9/11, 7/7 or the many other major disasters that have killed many more. Try to imagine the grief each individual death has potentially caused and spare a thought for those left behind.

My sister's death was the biggest shock I have ever experienced, but it could not have been avoided. Can the same be said of those dying in the world's wars?

Surely there are enough people dying unexpectedly and unavoidably in the world, in accidents, natural disasters and civilian murders, for the tsunami of grief to do a perpetual lap of the world's oceans. So let's stop unnecessary wars and violence from causing anymore thousands of avoidable deaths, or, let's at least try.