THE Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has come back from the US convinced that the Labour government must change its position against the use of telephone taps as evidence in criminal cases.
What changed his mind, allegedly, was the information that was given to him in the US, as to how the use of these intercepts resulted in the jailing of five Mafia leaders.
Since this information was well known before his US visit, it seems that Goldsmith has once again capitulated to accept one of the security measures that the US administration is determined to see operating in Britain.
British intelligence is opposed to the use of phone tap evidence in the courts because it states that it will reveal too much about its methods and sources of information.
However, the US administration is convinced that a greater security threat to itself is coming from Britain than from any other country, including Afghanistan, and that emergency action must be taken.
It considers that disaffected sections of the Muslim community in Britain are at the centre of this threat, and it wants such elements locked up as soon as possible.
The US administration is known to have insisted – as soon as it was informed of the content of some of the phone chatter that British security agencies were monitoring, which allegedly suggested that action could be taken against US planes flying out of Heathrow – that the ‘suspects’ be raided and arrested at once.
The British security agencies apparently wanted time to try and collect some real evidence of a plot, but were overruled at the insistence of the US. So the raids were organised and went ahead, despite the fact that the British Prime Minister was out of the country. The draconian security measures brought in were directed at plane traffic to and from the US, but nowhere else.
The ‘premature’ raids led to only secondary charges against only some of the 24 suspects, ranging from actions preparatory to an act of terrorism, to withholding information about a future terrorist action.
Currently many thousands of people are having their phones routinely tapped. The US wants these phone taps, whether real or faked, used to round up large numbers of suspects, so that they can be tried and some jailed and a number even extradited to the US under the new one-sided extradition arrangements that Britain has agreed to.
Lord Goldsmith, who gave into the US over the war in Iraq has now given into the US over the measures Bush wants to see in Britain to conduct his ‘war on terror’.
An interesting fact is that human rights groups such as Liberty are applauding Goldsmith’s change of heart.
Liberty says that the use of telephone intercepts in prosecutions is preferable to internment. In fact we are now liable to see both in operation at the same time!
That Liberty’s position is just an acceptance of the abolition of basic rights in Britain, instead of a struggle to defend all of them, is glaringly obvious, and displays the feet of clay of the liberal petty-bourgeoisie.
Liberty says that it would make it easier to bring terror suspects to court and reduce the need for control orders – which are used for people who are suspected of being involved in terrorism but where there is not enough permissible evidence to bring them before a court. Note reduce the need for control orders, not abolish the need.
Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti said: ‘Our reluctance to use phone tap evidence in terror cases like most other countries is frankly mind-boggling. Surely the government and police recognise that this is a far more effective tool than bringing back internment by holding suspects for 90 days without charge.’
The News Line is concerned to defend all of the basic rights that have been won in Britain by the struggles of the working class.
The only way that this can be done is through a socialist revolution to smash capitalism and imperialism whose crisis is the source of all of the attacks on basic rights.
