HOME Secretary Theresa May said yesterday that thousands of people are potentially at risk of being radicalised in the UK.
May, when asked if she would push ahead with a Communications Data Bill, said: ‘The law enforcement agencies, the intelligence agencies, need access to communications data and that is essential to them doing their job.’
Former Labour Party Home Secretary Alan Johnson said that, ‘The first role of government is to protect its people.’ He also told the Andrew Marr programme a Communications Data Bill should be ‘on the statute book before the next election’, and that this was a resignation issue for the home secretary if she did not convince the cabinet to support this.
The bill includes plans for internet service providers having to store for a year all details of on-line communication in the UK – such as the time, duration, originator and recipient of a communication and the location of the device from which it was made.
May added the government taskforce announced this weekend would ‘be able to look across the whole of government’ and look at institutions such as universities and prisons to see what more could be done in tackling the issue of countering extremism.
The special committee, to be chaired by the prime minister, will include senior cabinet ministers and security chiefs. Once again, the government and the opposition are united in their approach to this issue of more state repression.
On Thursday, President Obama announced his position. He declined to close down the Guantanamo concentration camp and announced, ‘We face a real threat from radicalised individuals here in the United States … that’s the current threat.’
He added: ‘So it is in this context that the United States has taken lethal, targeted action against Al-Qaeda and its associated forces, including with remotely piloted aircraft commonly referred to as drones.’
He continued: ‘I’ve insisted on strong oversight of all lethal action … Not only did Congress authorise the use of force, it is briefed on every strike that America takes. Every strike. That includes the one instance when we targeted an American citizen – Anwar Awlaki, the chief of external operations for AQAP …’
The new doctrine is: ‘But when a US citizen goes abroad to wage war against America and is actively plotting to kill US citizens, and when neither the United States, nor our partners are in a position to capture him before he carries out a plot, his citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team.’
He continued: ‘Going forward, I’ve asked my administration to review proposals … to extend oversight of lethal actions outside of warzones that go beyond our reporting to Congress … For example, the establishment of a special court to evaluate and authorise lethal action has the benefit of bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial authority.’
Obama is considering the establishment of a special secret court to rubber stamp the murder of US citizens abroad despite the ‘serious constitutional issues’.
It is clear that, as the imperialist powers press forward regardless, with their wars in the Middle East, annihilating millions in the process, and with their war against ‘concessions’ to the working class at home, such as the NHS and the Welfare State, that more and more young and old people will become dangerously ‘radicalised’ and revolutionised as far as the ruling class is concerned.
The ruling classes have only one answer for this situation, and it is not stop the wars, it is step up the repressions. They will use police state measures, control of the internet, secret courts and secret trials, the internment of ‘dangerous suspects’ in new G Bays, and physical elimination as advocated by Obama.
The answer to these measures is not terrorism, since that only allows the police state to use ever more draconian measures. It is the mobilisation of the working class and the youth to carry through a socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism and imperialism on a world scale.
