David Davis on the subject of 90 day detentions:
Our best defence against terrorism is our belief in liberty and
tolerance, along with a determination to take no nonsense from enemies
of that liberty and tolerance. Liberty is not best defended by
sacrificing liberty –
Quite: to give up our liberties to fight those who would take them from us….what’s the damn point?
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Cameron’s move in this respect is welcome but one can’t trust the man. He seems to be forming policy on the run and could swing back the other way if it were expedient.
Good police intelligence work and £ millions spent on surveillance and timely arrests that actually produce convictions help a lot as well.
Cameron’s move in this respect is welcome but one can’t trust the man. He seems to be forming policy on the run and could swing back the other way if it were expedient.
The Tories have consistently been opposed to it. The Lib Dems are also against it so it’s right up Cam’s street.
give up our liberties to fight those who would take them from us….what’s the damn point?
Well, I’m not so sure that’s really the issue. Those who would take our liberty, also want all our property, our souls and our lives. All of these are goods worth striving for, so in extreme circumstances reducing our liberty would indeed be acceptable. Especially if a slight reduction in liberty today were necessary to prevent its complete destruction tomorrow. Just in principle.
In the specific case we’re dealing with today, that’s BS of course and I certainly hope that Cameron is sincere in his opposition.
Well said timmyhawk, who it should be mentioned appears to be against ID cards. This whole “we are going to lose what we are fighting for” is a nonsensical slippery slope variant, what next? Are we to start thinking we are living in the Third Reich?
Let’s get a sense of perspective. The moment that a government oversteps the mark, they will not be electable to the wider population. Just as while there is a threat, a weak ineffective approach will be unelectable. While there is a threat, the population gives some latitude, when the threat is gone they won’t. And all the arguments from various sides in the debate make sure we don’t slip into totalitarianism while defending ourselves from totalitarianism. Have some faith in the bloody mindedness of your fellow citizens.
Here’s David Cameroon: “Britain is not becoming a police state. The police do a great job in this country and they are an independent body which is good.
“People should co-operate with the police and let them get on with their job.”
That’s good enough for me.
“Quite: to give up our liberties to fight those who would take them from us….what’s the damn point?”
I accept the sincerity of that sentiment but during WW2 we did accept the indefinite detention without trial of British citizens – for example, Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, and wife – and we did accept personal ID cards. I can still remember the registration number on mine. We also had ration books.
From the fall of France in June 1940 through to a year later when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, we stood alone in Europe against Germany – and remember that in 1940, Britain’s population of 40 million was almost exactly half the combined populations of Germany and Austria.
After the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, we even became engaged in a friendly alliance with the Soviet Union despite the death toll from the Ukraine famine of 1932/2, the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s and the gulags and despite the fact that Uncle Joe had had no insuperable objections to the Soviet Union contracting a Friendship Treaty with Nazi Germany on 28 September 1939 when Britain and France were already at war with Germany – see Norman Davies: Europe (OUP, 1996) p.1000.
The United States, that great bastion of liberty, didn’t enter the war in Europe until Germany declared war three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.
After the war, Victor Gollancz declined to publish George Orwell’s immortal fable: Animal Farm, fearing it would be construed as insulting to our heroic Soviet allies. Mind you, Victor Gollancz had been pleased to publish The Road to Wigan Pier in 1937 but that book was about poverty in the north of England because of capitalism.
The one thing I will say though is that Worstall’s line is great rhetoric, and good for bolstering our commitment to liberty. And that is always a good thing.
In America, the detention and incarceration of Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, regardless of any evidence of personal engagement in treason, is not much of a testimony for all the high rhetoric about the protection of personal liberty enshrined by the principles of habeas corpus in Magna Carta (1215) and the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, is it?
http://www.chicora.org/Japanese-Americans.htm
Turnout at the last election was what, ~60%? The Labour Party got 37% of that?
So less than a quarter of the electorate voted Labour. I’m not sure what this “wider population” is that Anthony referred to!
Now, I don’t believe this Government is particularly ‘evil’. Although the people at the top do seem to be a bunch of control freaks and frequently display contempt (or at least a lack of appreciation) for the rule of law.
Of course we also have to remember that these are people who think being confined for 18 hours a day doesn’t amount to house arrest, and they will support a measure for the sake of expediency even where there are doubts about its legal basis.
It seems to me Tony and co. believe that to remain in power they must out-tough the Tories on crime and terrorism, so they propose all sorts of liberty-infringing measures – 90 day detention – and they also propose measures to make the statistics look good.
For example, improving the number of ‘offences brought to justice’ by introducing summary ‘justice’ – i.e. getting rid of ‘due process’.
They may even genuinely believe that getting rid of due process, because it is “unsuited to the 21st century”, or detaining people for three months without charge, is in our best interests.
But this is where the dangers lie – the road to hell is paved with good intentions, isn’t it?
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