It is rare for anybody to find a political party with which they find their actions and policies to be in compete agreement. In fact, this is probably a logical impossibility given the fact that there is self-contradiction in virtually any full policy platform. And one problem that grassroots Labour members such as myself have had with the actions of the party both in Opposition and in government is their cheerful willingness to erode our civil liberties, and in particular our rights to privacy. Ed Miliband, who has the nerve to describe himself as a ‘civil libertarian’, has just pledged the Parliamentary Labour Party’s support for a revived Communications Bill: I shall explain the implications of this later.
Not that the Coalition parties are any better. They might have canceled the nightmarish National Identity Cards scheme (isn’t it strange how Blairites dislike the state restricting freedoms for businesses and the super-rich, but have no qualms about throwing away the freedoms that the working and middle classes), but the Conservatives are determined to push through the Communications Bill, or ‘Snoopers Charter’. Under the Bill, details of every website visit, email, phone call, and text message made by every individual will be recorded on a central database which Government agencies, not just the police, can examine at will without seeking approval from any other organisation. The Orwellian nature of the plans was so extreme that the Liberal Democrats did something unusual. They said ‘no’ to their Conservative collaborators. But don’t get carried away with the idea that we can trust them on this issue: they did vote through the National Identity Register and the near-abolition of Legal Aid, which has put poor individuals at a massive disadvantage.
It is a transparent pattern of cynical emotional manipulation of the public that the three parties use to undermine our rights. They wait until an awful terrorist attack takes place, as in Woolwich, and then point to it as evidence of why we must abandon this component of the Magna Carter. The actual problem lies in the failure of police and secret services to utilise their extensive powers enough, the failure to integrate potential terrorists by allowing them to fall to the fringes of our society, and lastly the failure of an aggressive foreign policy.
The terrorists win, we are told, when we allow fear of them to change the way we live. It is time our leaders consider this before we edge further towards a horrifically authoritarian society.
