Labour’s anti-terror proposals offer the terrorists undue status, argues matthew carr |
|
Gordon Brown may have written a book extolling the political and moral courage of Nelson Mandela, but the PM-in-waiting's headlong leap onto the anti-terrorism bandwagon suggests that ambition and opportunism, rather than bravery, may be his defining personal characteristics.
The Iron Chancellor has made it clear he's right behind Home Secretary John Reid's proposals for new measures to combat terrorism, including a revival of the hated SUS laws of the 1970s and an extension of the 28-day limit on detention without charge.
Brown offers the usual arguments that the 'world has changed' and that exceptional measures are required to deal with a unique, deadly threat comparable to the Cold War.
But the proposals only demonstrate once again that the real terrorist threat to democracy stems not from the actions of |
|
 |
 |
 |
| This admirer of Nelson Mandela is arguing for the same legislation used to lock up his hero |
|
|
terrorists, but from the way that society responds to these actions.
There is no comparison between the current terrorist emergency and the Cold War - except in the imaginations of the politicians and ideologues who continue to foist such meaningless analogies on a credulous public.
To raise the deluded murderers who blew themselves up on the London Underground to the level of a strategic threat is to give them an exalted status that they do not deserve. To whittle away at fundamental democratic rights in the name of national security is to give al-Qaeda a victory it did not even seek.
If Brown wanted to show real courage, he might begin by admitting British government support for extraordinary rendition directly contravenes the democratic values he claims to extol. He might admit his government's promotion of a reckless and illegal war in Iraq has vastly increased the possibility the British public will be attacked. Instead we find the admirer of Mandela arguing for the same legislation regularly used by the South African regime to lock up his hero. 
FIRST POSTED JUNE 7, 2007
|
