[A-List] UK state: fascism

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Blair's shock troops are on something of a high after the Hutton whitewash.
While Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers man the backbenches and pepper the
broadsheets with singularly nasty proposals to do with social policy,
Blunkett sits in cabinet and dreams up the most draconian thefts of civil
liberties that not even Thatcher et al would have contemplated.

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'Blunkett like Mugabe,' says peer as anti-terror row grows
DEBORAH SUMMERS, Political Correspondent
The Herald, February 03 2004

DAVID Blunkett's proposals to toughen anti-terror laws prompted a leading
Labour peer to compare the British home secretary with Robert Mugabe
yesterday.

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, who was made a peer by the prime minister in
1997, said plans to lock up terror suspects on the basis of intelligence
given at secret trials was "an affront to the rule of law".

"It is as if David Blunkett takes his lessons on jurisprudence from Robert
Mugabe," she said, on the BBC Radio 4 programme. At the weekend Mr Blunkett
argued that the threat from potential suicide bombers was now so great the
burden of proof should be reduced from beyond reasonable doubt to the
balance of probabilities.

However, Lady Kennedy said: "He really is a shameless authoritarian and I
think we can be confident that many of his colleagues in the cabinet,
including particularly the attorney general, will sit on this, because it
really is an affront to the rule of law."

She accused the home secretary of playing games by talking up the draconian
nature of the plans in "a classic Blunkett tactic". She said: "You suggest
all kinds of outrageous and awful things because then you get away with half
of them. You set people up for something awful and then they are relieved
when they don't get the worst possible scenario.

"But all of this is terrible and even half of it would be a disgrace."

Mr Blunkett set out the proposals in a discussion paper that could see
"pre-emptive" trials presided over by judges vetted by the secret services
of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Speaking during a six-day visit to the Indian sub-continent, Mr Blunkett
said he hoped to address the issues ahead of the next election.

"I think we need to debate how we . . . deal with these delicate issues of
proportionality and human rights on the one hand and evidential base and the
threshold of evidence on the other," he said.

"That is quite a challenge because we are having to say that the nature of
what people obtain through the security and intelligence route is different
to the evidence gained through the policing route.

"It needs to be presented in a way that doesn't allow disclosure by any of
the parties involved which would destroy your security services."

Civil rights and Muslim groups roundly criticised Mr Blunkett's ideas.

Mark Littlewood, campaigns director of Liberty, said: "Simply introducing
more laws, greater powers and stiffer penalties will go a long way to
undermine British justice and will not make our country any safer."

Louise Christian, the solicitor representing the family of Feroz Abbasi, one
of nine Britons detained at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, said the comments
showed Mr Blunkett was not fit to be home secretary.

Michael Howard, the Tory leader, gave a guarded reaction to the plans. "You
have to try and strike the balance between giving the British people the
proper protection against terrorism and not depriving innocent people of
their liberty," he said. "It is a very difficult balance to get right."

Mark Oaten, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "The home
secretary appears time and again to put headlines ahead of the principles of
justice."

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islam Human Rights Commission, said:
"This is the sort of legislation that in Germany led to genocide and to
concentration camps."