As he delivered an impassioned defense of new police powers to detain terror suspects without charge for up to three months, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s performance last week was reminiscent of when he stood before Parliament to make the case for war in Iraq almost three years ago. But this time the result was just the opposite.
The House of Commons rejected the proposed anti-terror law by 322 votes to 291. 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill delivering a humiliating defeat for Blair, the first he has suffered in the Commons since he came to power in 1997.
Following the unprecedented defeat in the Commons, political analysts and the press immediately began talking about the beginning of the end for the prime minister. But Blair denied the vote was an issue of confidence and said it would in no way influence his determination to stay on until the end of his third term. But pressure from MPs of all sides is mounting on the prime minister and many analysts say it may hasten his departure from Downing Street.
“It is significant first major rebellion on a fundamental rights issue,” said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty. “The prime minister underestimated the extent to which people regard their rights and freedoms. He’s gone way too far and in doing so, he’s woken people up to just how dangerous some of these policies are.”
The idea of greater detention powers came up in the wake of the July London bombings. Initially, the government said that the police requested an increase on the time that terror suspects can be held without charge from the current 14 days to 90 days. There are rumors that Labour MPs had pressured the police to press for greater detention powers. The Tories allege that MPs lobbied chief constables in the days preceding the crucial vote on the controversial bill. They have called for an independent inquiry into what they say amounts to “politicization of the police”.
During a heated debate in the House of Commons before the bill was defeated, David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: “What is at stake here is the imprisonment without trial in the country that invented habeas corpus. This Bill would be counterproductive and ineffective.” He added that detention without charge for such an extended period could “wreck lives” and provoke public backlash.
Davis compared the government’s insistence on the 90-day case to the prime minister’s declarations in the run-up to the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. The claims that Blair made to take this country to the war continue to cast a long shadow over his credibility. Indeed, the controversial war in Iraq has taken a toll on the popularity of the prime minister’s and that of his party. Labour lead of 161 seats in the Commons shrank to a mere 66 in the general election earlier this year.
“Many people are euphoric about this (Commons defeat) because it is a blow to the prime minister, but, actually, 28 days is still a very long time to be detained without charge,” Chakrabarti said. She said holding people for an extended period of time without charging them leads to a deep sense of injustice that makes people arbitrarily detained natural recruits into extremist organizations once they are released. She added that the sweeping anti-terror legislation, which will disproportionately affect the Muslim community, has fractured the unity and solidarity generated in the aftermath of the London bombings. There are many who share her view.
“The handling of this issue has done damage to the fight against terrorism,” said John Denham, former Home Office minister and Labour chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Select committee. Many analysts say reaching out to and enlisting the support of the Muslim community is crucial for combating extremism effectively.
The defeat in the Commons was not the first time the government’s anti-terror measures ran into serious difficulties. In a knee-jerk reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the British government rushed through the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act in December 2001. The act allowed for the detention of foreign nationals suspected of having terrorism links for an unspecified and potentially indefinite period, without charge or trial. Subsequently, 17 men, most of them North African, were detained under the act. None was charged with any criminal offense. Britain’s highest court ruled last December that the UK was in breach of human rights law in its application of these anti-terrorism measures. In a virtual unanimity, with only one of nine judges dissenting, the British House of Lords, the supreme court of the land, ruled that the indefinite detention, without charge or trial, of foreign terror suspects was illegal.
Britain is the only EU country that has derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights on the basis of national security. Even Spain, which suffered deadly terror attacks in March 2004, did not deem it necessary to pass draconian laws to respond to the terrorist threat.
— Ms. Tamam Ahmed Jama is a Canadian journalist of Somali origin now working for an international newsmagazine based in London.
