THE UK government in alliance with the Labour Party has over a three-day period pushed through an emergency law, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, so that it can continue to spy on phone and internet records and on the content of the phone and email communications of every person in the UK.
A European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling earlier this year meant that accessing these data was made illegal.
The Bill passed its final stage in the House of Commons at 22:00 BST on Tuesday, and was due to be passed by the House of Lords last night.
In the debate, Labour shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told the House of Commons that her party would support the Bill but called for a much wider debate on the balance between safety and civil liberties.
She said: ‘This is not the way that this kind of legislation should be done. Let’s be clear, the last-minute nature of it does undermine trust in the government’s intentions but also in the vital work the police and agencies need to do.’
Tory David Davis said the timetable undermined MPs’ ability to ‘defend the freedom and liberty of our constituents’.
He pointed out that the government had not been able to agree on this timetable, and this is why the Tories had to bring the Labour Party into the action.
He said: ‘My understanding is there was an argument inside government between the two halves of the coalition and that argument has gone on for three months. So what the coalition cannot decide in three months this House has to decide in one day.
‘This seems to me entirely improper because of the role of Parliament – we have three roles. One is to scrutinise legislation, one is to prevent unintended consequences, and one is to defend the freedom and liberty of our constituents. This undermines all three and we should oppose this motion.’
Labour MP Tom Watson described the Bill as an ‘insult’ and likened the way it was being pushed as ‘democratic banditry resonant of a rogue state’.
In a letter to Labour Party leader Miliband, Watson wrote of his ‘huge personal disappointment’ at Labour’s backing of the measures.
He added: ‘Far from scrutinising the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill, we seem to have helped generate the panic needed to rush this important Bill through under controversial emergency procedures, and the myth needed to present it as the antidote to paedophilia.’
Veteran Labour MP David Winnick, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: ‘I consider this to be an outright abuse of parliamentary procedure.’
Shami Chakrabarti, of Liberty, commented ‘Parliament is being shown contempt’ and that the measure was about ‘snooping on everyone’.
In fact, such contempt for a parliament has not been seen since the Enabling Act that was pushed through the German Reichstag by Hitler.
The Enabling Act was a 1933 amendment to the Weimar Constitution that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
Since the Nazis did not have an overall majority it was passed with the support of the 50-strong German National People’s Party, and led to the Nazi dictatorship.
Britain today is not Nazi Germany.
However British capitalism is in a desperate crisis. and on the brink of huge struggles between the working class and the ruling class.
It is well known that the Tories consider that the trade unions are the main enemy of British capitalism. They have plans in the pipeline to bring in new anti-union laws that will make the right to strike illegal and a legal strike impossible.
It is more than possible that the alliance that is pushing through by anti-parliamentary means, the dictatorial spying measures to be used against the British people as a whole, will be used in the future, in an appropriate hysterical atmosphere, to bring in a legal dictatorship against the trade unions.
The Trade Union Congress is meeting in September. It must call a general strike to defend the basic rights of the working class and the trade unions by bringing down this Tory austerity regime and bringing in socialism.
This is the only way forward.
