YESTERDAY the capitalist state was split over the Blair government’s police state attacks on democratic rights.
Two Law Lords attacked Home Office plans, to allow the police to hold people for 90 days without charge, and to have an offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ as ‘unlawful’ in a Panorama Programme due to be shown Sunday night.
Lord Steyn said that a new power to hold people for 90 days would be found to be unlawful, and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick said of the new Bill: ‘It says that a person commits an offence if he glorifies, exalts, or celebrates an act of terrorism whether in the past or in the future. Now to me that is a very odd provision. The essence of criminal law is that it should be clear and it must be certain.’
The Home Office however rushed to bring its main ally, the Metropolitan Police, into the fray, breaking the law in the process.
It rushed to publish a ‘dodgy dossier’ drawn up by the Special Branch and signed by assistant commissioner Hayman – to show how much a 90 day holding period was needed – that broke the sub judice laws.
It did this by revealing the details of three current terrorist cases, which are sub judice, clearly prejudicing a fair trial for those charged in the cases. Respect for law is in sharp decline!
The government also yesterday sought to tidy up its proposed bill by stating that to be convicted of the offence of ‘glorifying terrorism’ people would have to ‘intend to incite’ further acts of terror.
Clarke said: ‘A number of people have made observations to the effect that there were difficulties in the wording we originally suggested, and so we thought bringing together the glorification and incitement clauses in the bill would be the best way to deal with that.’
The change = no change. Support for the Palestinian revolution or the Iraqi insurgency will still constitute illegal incitement to terror.
As well, the government intends to hobble ‘democratic’ judges, by bringing in security vetting for judges, before they are allowed to preside over terror trials, and by bringing in legislation that will tell judges how they must interpret the Human Rights Act.
The government intends to have puppet judges, and presumably the judges will be changed when governments are changed.
Meanwhile, the police who more and more tell the government what they want, and then see it speedily delivered, are planning their next move.
Yesterday leading police officers were attending an international police conference in London called to discuss their ‘shoot to kill’ policies.
The next police demand, will be for legislation that will allow them to continue shooting to kill ‘terrorist suspects’, without the possibility of any legal comeback.
They will want police death squads to be issued with rules of engagement cards, that will tell them precisely when they are allowed to shoot to kill suspects, the same kind of cards that are issued to soldiers in the British occupation army in the north of Ireland.
There is no doubt that once the demand is made the Blair government will rush to give the police chiefs what they want.
There is only one answer to this process, which has given the police more power over domestic policy than parliament, and which has see a legion of political police officers emerge.
That answer is the organisation of a socialist revolution to smash the capitalist state, and all of its repressive forces, to go forward to socialism.
