LONDON, 25 February 2005 — Tough talk on terrorism helped George W. Bush win re-election. The Madrid bombings turned Spanish voters. Now national security has leaped up Britain’s political agenda as Tony Blair vies for a third term.
Ahead of an expected May vote, the prime minister is trying to race through Parliament new anti-terrorism laws he says are needed to guard against a “serious security threat”. His opponents say the measures undermine the basic freedoms that have underpinned Britain’s judicial system for 800 years.
With polls showing the ruling Labour Party’s lead over the opposition Conservatives narrowing on issues like asylum and immigration, Blair urgently wants to convince Britons he is the man to guarantee their security from international terrorism. The latest survey on Thursday gave Labour 39 percent support, versus 37 percent for the Conservatives. Each side accuses the other of playing politics with national security, echoing a battle that dominated last year’s US election.
“The government is well aware of the need to look tough on terrorism,” said Richard Grayson, a politics professor at the University of London. The proposals bring in “control orders” for terrorism suspects who cannot be prosecuted. They include electronic tagging, surveillance and, in extreme cases, house arrest orders — all to be imposed by ministers, not judges. The measures will replace emergency laws brought in after the Sept. 11 attacks that expire next month.
Britain’s highest court has deemed those laws illegal. The Conservative Party says the measures overturn the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence, but Blair says the security services judge the orders necessary. The Conservatives risk being called “soft” on terrorism. “An unpleasant whiff of party politics permeates this debate” wrote The Independent newspaper in an editorial.
Analysts expect Britain’s election battle to focus on bread and butter issues like the economy, schools and hospitals, but the row over control orders has added terrorism to the mix. Home Secretary Charles Clarke raised the specter on Wednesday of a Madrid-style pre-election atrocity in Britain.
Blair’s measures cleared their first hurdle in Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday where Labour has a large majority. But opposition from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in the upper chamber could derail the bill — giving Blair ammunition to accuse his foes of being reckless. “There is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack,” Blair wrote on Thursday in the Daily Telegraph. “It would be the gravest dereliction of duty to wait until we suffered a terrorist outrage here and only then act.”
Conservative leader Michael Howard accused Blair of using national security for “political point-scoring”. But even without a specific threat or an attack in the election run-up, Labour is crowding out the right-leaning Conservatives on their traditional terrain of law and order. Blair helped transform Labour in the 1990s to appeal to the middle classes, encroaching on many Conservative policies. In the run-up to the election, Labour has vowed to be tough on crime, curb immigration, legislate for national identity cards and now bring in control orders. “This is terrain where one expects the Conservatives to be strong but the government is trying to pre-empt them,” said Wyn Grant, politics professor at Warwick University. Piling the pressure on its opponents, the government says 10 terrorist suspects being held under existing powers will walk free on March 14 unless new legislation is passed. They include Abu Qatada, a Syrian cleric who Britain says was the spiritual inspiration for the lead Sept. 11 hijacker. The Conservatives say the government can extend existing laws to give Parliament more time to debate new measures.
