A World to Win

There are only so many nails that the coffin of Britain’s parliamentary democratic state can take. At some point you have to pronounce the coffin well and truly sealed and the body ready for burial. New Labour’s fourth anti-terrorism Bill in five years takes us to the very edge of the grave.

The modern parliamentary state evolved in more than 300 years of conflict and struggle for basic rights. It incorporated earlier achievements, including the Magna Carta of 1215 which declared that an accused person had to be charged and brought to court. In its place, an authoritarian police state is rapidly coming into existence that targets dissent and opposition of all kinds.

Only police states take powers to hold people without charge for three months. But that is what the Blair regime is proposing. And why? Because, claims Blair, the police have made an “unarguable” case for changing the law from 14 to 90 days. So that’s it - the police now determine state policy. The same incompetent police who operate an illegal shoot-to-kill policy that produced the execution of an innocent Brazilian worker. All this is too frightening even for the Tories, with David Davis saying that a police briefing had not convinced him of the need for prolonged detention.

Holding suspects for three months, as former senior judges have pointed out, amounts to internment without trial. Judges ought to watch what they say, however, because they are next in line for the crackdown if New Labour gets its way. Blair has warned the judiciary that the “rules of the game” have changed and that judges should bear this in mind when, for example, hearing deportation appeals by alleged terror suspects.

Blair’s challenge to the judiciary is an historic one, as the new Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips hinted at when he said: “Occasionally one feels that an individual politician is trying to browbeat the judiciary, and that is wholly inappropriate.” In 1689, the Bill of Rights finally brought to an end almost half a century of struggle between parliament and monarchy. This had involved a bitter civil war, the execution of Charles I, a period of republican government under Cromwell and the deposing by parliament of James II.

The main purpose of the Bill of the Rights was unequivocally to declare illegal various practices of James II. Among such practices proscribed were the royal prerogative of dispensing with the law in certain cases and interfering in the course of justice in others. Then in 1701, the Act of Settlement made it impossible for judges to be removed by ministers or executive action alone, confirming their relative independence within the state.

But New Labour does not favour a system where the rule of law itself prevails over pressure from the government. That was clear when Iraq was invaded on a pretext, brushing aside international law in the process. When all this history is under threat, as it is from Inspector Blair’s regime, it is a sure sign that the parliamentary democratic state itself is no longer considered appropriate by our rulers. The absolutism once claimed by monarchy is now championed by New Labour. Judges shall do what they’re told, or else.

New Labour’s latest authoritarian Bill is another twist in the spiral of an intensifying crisis which pits alienated terrorists against the political representatives of global capital. The requirement for capital is to increase the penetration of unconquered parts of the world so as to sustain profit-making production. This corporate-driven globalisation, politically choreographed by Bush and Blair, has alienated Muslims and many others, undermining their traditional ways of life. Intensifying the crisis through draconian laws only leaves the population at large even more vulnerable to terror attacks. Blair’s Bill show that the present state is incapable of either tackling the underlying issues or protecting its citizens.

This new Bill will also be used as part of the growing armoury against any and all forms of opposition to the corporate state’s policies and actions. An 82-year old heckler was detained under existing anti-terror laws when he was thrown out of New Labour’s conference. Resistance to New Labour’s policies and actions is certain to grow, compelling the regime to jettison every political freedom and human right that the struggle for democracy has produced.

Existing political and economic structures are a real barrier to further human progress. They cannot tackle global catastrophes like the ecological crisis and provoke terror attacks driven by martyrdom, hatred and destruction. A World to Win’s case for creating a democratic, sustainable society based on need and not corporate profit is now stronger and more pressing than ever before.

14 October 2005