In what his opponents argue is a move more likely to aid rather than hinder terrorism in the UK, British Premier Gordon Brown Wednesday forced through a parliamentary bill that gives police power to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 instead of the current 28 days.
The large British Muslim community, already the victims of anti-Muslim sentiment following the July 2005 London bombings in which 52 subway riders were murdered, now faces the prospect of seeing entirely innocent members held by police and intelligence for six weeks as part of which the Brown administration claims are increasingly complex anti-terror investigations. There will be understandable anger and fear that this action is being taken specifically against Muslims. The bloody 28-year IRA terror campaign that ended in 1997 saw over 1,800 deaths, yet no British government in the period thought of introducing such extreme measures. There was no sustained campaign against Irish people living in the UK. The one exception — the detention without trial in the early 1970s of 2,000 suspected IRA and Protestant terrorists — quickly proved counterproductive and was abandoned. Successive British governments argued that to respond to Republican terror with repressive measures would be undermining the very freedoms and principles of the society that the terrorists were attacking. Yet Gordon Brown has railroaded this highly contentious measure through Parliament, ironically only with the support of nine Northern Ireland Protestant MPs, as a result of what is widely believed to be a shabby deal that included more cash and concessions for the British province.
The new bill has some way to go before it makes it to the statute books. The second chamber, the House of Lords, is widely expected to strike the measure down, meaning the legislation will have to return to the House of Commons. If the Lords continue to obstruct the bill’s passage, if and when it is returned to them in its original form, Brown may invoke the Parliament Act to force it through. The premier accuses those who oppose 42 days detention of being soft on terror. It is a blinkered view worthy of George W. Bush. Up until now, the present 28 days has proved perfectly adequate to allow police to bring terror prosecutions. Many senior British police officers, members of the security services, leading lawyers and most recently the European Commission on Human Rights have all condemned the measure as either illiberal, unworkable or both.
Faced with a rebellion by a significant minority of his own socialist MPs that would have led to his defeat in Wednesday’s vote, Brown seems to have used the issue to try and restore his much-tarnished reputation for decisiveness and toughness.
Quite the reverse is now evident. This self-proclaimed man of deeply held principles has not only been prepared to barter a discreditable deal with another political party, but he is quite clearly seeking to restore his political leadership at the expense of the right to liberty for all Britons, but most especially of the country’s overwhelmingly loyal and law-abiding Muslim community.
