Control Orders and 90 days detention divided the Labour Party in 2006. It was an attempt by Prime Minister Blair to wrong foot the Tory opposition as being soft on terrorism. It was an uncomfortable time for those of us who opposed this excessive reaction that was more likely to increase the terrorist threat.
Yesterday Home Affairs questioned a victim of a control order. I thought he had a rough ride. I tried to correct it when it became my turn to question him. Here is part of the un-corrected transcript plus a comment I made in a November 2006 blog.
Q398 Ian Austin: Why do you think the judge said that he was satisfied that the Secretary of State’s decision to make a control order was justified on the material available at the time?
Cerie Bullivant: To my recollection, the judge said that he thought that the Home Secretary at the time they put it on thought that what they were doing was the correct thing but that if he had seen it the day after it was put on he would have quashed it. He goes on to say that later on.
Q399 Ian Austin: No, he said that he was satisfied that reasonable grounds for suspicion do not now exist but at the time—
Cerie Bullivant: I think if you read the statement in full—I remember it quite clearly from the day—he did say that if he had seen it straight after it was put on and seen all of the evidence he would have quashed it then as well.
Q400 Ian Austin: Would you agree that there will be circumstances in which the intelligence services and the security services get information as a result of their operations and it is not possible to make that information public in a public court because to do so would put intelligence and security personnel at risk?
Cerie Bullivant: I would say that it is impossible to commit a crime in the UK, especially a terrorism-related crime, without leaving an evidence trail. If we want to establish a system that will keep Britain safe, what we need to do and the laws that we need to use are laws that will put people who are dangerous in prison, not under house arrest. We need to do that by open courts and by a jury. The gentleman giving evidence before me was saying that the jury is the cornerstone of British justice. If people have committed crimes then there needs to be evidence brought, a jury and a trial. The fact of the matter is that control orders are unfair and unsafe.
Q401 Michael Ellis: The system of control orders that you referred to has been repealed by this Government, but the previous Government brought those in for a purpose. Do you accept that the reason why those orders and subsequent similar orders have been brought into existence is to prevent terrorist atrocities in this country? They have a good purpose behind them. You would say, of course, would you not, Mr Bullivant, that they are unfair, but the purpose behind restricting the liberty of certain individuals, a very small number of individuals, is so that the security services can satisfy a public need to prevent terrorist attacks? Would you accept that?
Cerie Bullivant: I would accept that the intention behind bringing them in is to prevent terrorism from happening but I would disagree that they are in any way successful at achieving that. There was a documentary, “Living with a Terror Suspect”, on Channel 4 around the time that control orders first came out. One of the terrorism suspects on a control order was allowed to go to five Underground stations. In my time on a control order, if I had been so inclined to be involved in terrorism I would have still been able to have gone and done those things. If somebody is a dangerous terrorist and we need to protect Britain from them, you don’t want them on house arrest, having to go and sign on at a police station once a day. This is not a correct way of dealing with them and protecting the British people.
Q402 Paul Flynn: One of the sections of the judge’s words that my colleague failed to read out was that he said, “For the reasons I have given in this and in the closed judgment, I am not prepared to uphold the present order, nor would I have upheld the previous order”. This completely exonerates you, doesn’t it?
Cerie Bullivant: Yes. I was very happy with the judgment of the judge and everything that he said. He repeated three times that there were no reasonable grounds for suspicion that I had ever been involved in terrorism-related activities.
Q403 Paul Flynn: It has been suggested by my colleague Michael Ellis that the control orders were essential and something that was universally approved of in this House. Do you recall at the time that they were bitterly opposed in this House as being illiberal, unnecessary, an overreaction and something that was designed to grab favourable headlines for the politicians involved as appearing to be tough on terrorism?
Chair: Order. Could Mr Flynn put his question, please?
Paul Flynn: I was in the House at the time. Mr Ellis was not.
Cerie Bullivant: I agree with you that both control orders and TPIMs are largely exercises in flexing the muscles and showing how strong people can be on terrorism, when in fact they are measures that do very little to protect us and alienate the Muslim community and make them feel like a second-rate suspect community. I feel that it is very important that we learn the lessons from the past. My family have Irish roots and I think no one would say now that internment was the most effective tool for dealing with the IRA. In fact the more you go down these draconian paths, the more you try to close things down, the more you are going to push people towards becoming more extreme against you. The better path I would propose would be to open up discussion of ideas and let the truth win out by the quality of its truth, if that makes any sense.
Q404 Paul Flynn: You knew a friend of a friend of someone about whom there might have been some questions, there was a drunken phone call from someone who had not been in touch with you since you became converted, and this was the basis of an attempt to deprive you of your liberty.
Cerie Bullivant: They were the only two things that I have been told about, yes.
Q405 Paul Flynn: Just the last question, was there ever any attempt to de-radicalise you at any time?
Cerie Bullivant: No. In my interactions with the security services, I have never been asked about involvement in terrorism. My interactions with the Home Office have been that even when the judge gave his initial ruling, before it became a written judgment and it became the law, he said at the end of the hearing in December that he would be quashing the order, he would not be opening any grounds for appeal and the order would be quashed. He said that when it came down as a written judgment then it would become the ruling and the law, but he told everyone before that that would be the case. Even then the Home Office refused to reduce the conditions of my control order or even acknowledge that they had been wrong to do it in the first place.
Q406 Paul Flynn: Do you accept that at the time because of fear and so on of what was going on the authorities did behave in an hysterical way that was understandable and the feeling was that everyone was assumed to be guilty unless they were proved to be a Christian?
Chair: If you could make your answer as brief as possible, please.
Cerie Bullivant: Yes. I think you are right that there was an immense amount of fear around at the time, but if we are going to look at best practice here then the case of Anders Breivik and the reaction of Norway is a much better place to look. If we act through fear then we are only going to create fear in other communities as well and a society of fear.
Later the Committee questioned the former head of MI6 Nigel Inkster.
Q407 Paul Flynn: In 2006, long after Osama bin Laden had left Afghanistan and the al-Qaeda left Afghanistan, when only two British soldiers had been killed in combat, the British Government decided to go into Helmand Province in the hope that not a shot would be fired, and their mission was to end the drugs trade. Did this have the support of the security services at the time and how successful was that?
Nigel Inkster: Of course when you say the support of the intelligence services, in terms of a recognition that this mission was going to go ahead and would need to be provided with intelligence support—
Q408 Paul Flynn: Did they support the view that not a shot would be fired—
Nigel Inkster: No, I do not think so.
Paul Flynn: —and that drugs would be eliminated?
Nigel Inkster: No, I do not think we did. As to the drugs problem, I think the drugs problem in Afghanistan was far more severe and intractable than anyone had imagined when the United Kingdom first took responsibility for this. There was a reluctance to recognise that the agendas of counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics run counter to each other, which I now firmly believe they do.
Q409 Paul Flynn: The Intelligence and Security Service Committee here, and all other committees involved in defence—and presumably the security services—were also cheerleaders for the view that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to Britain. Doesn’t this suggest that we need better knowledge and better information of the kind that came from Edward Snowden? I am putting to you that the last two disasters we have had, the Iraq War, fought on an entirely false basis, and the incursion into Helmand, which cost us 427 lives, in addition to uncounted Afghanistan lives, were errors. The security services, which are costing us £2 billion a year, were part of the belief, the set of ideas, that led us into those terrible mistakes.
Nigel Inkster: On the Iraq inquiry, I think we can do no better than await the outcome of Lord Chilcot’s report.
Q410 Paul Flynn: It is already three years late, as you know, for reasons—
Nigel Inkster: Indeed, yes. On the Afghan point, can I make the point that the British military did not go into Helmand Province on the recommendation of the intelligence services. They absolutely did not. That was a decision that they took on their own recognition.
Q411 Paul Flynn: Do you believe that Angela Merkel is a threat to the United States or that Turkey is a threat to the United Kingdom?
Nigel Inkster: That is not a judgment for me to make and I think it is not for me to second-guess what the—
Paul Flynn: Can you conceive of any reason why we should be spying on them or why—
Michael Ellis: Mr Flynn, would you just allow Mr Inkster to answer the question that you put, if he wishes to go further?
Nigel Inkster: Sorry, which one?
Michael Ellis: Is Angela Merkel a threat to the United States?
Nigel Inkster: I think that is a judgment for the United States to make. There is no doubt that there are significant areas of policy difference between Germany and the United States. There are areas of German policy that the United States may have concerns about or may not feel well-sighted on. Whether listening to Mrs Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, if indeed this is what happened, is the best way to do it, that is not a matter for me to pronounce on.
Q412 Paul Flynn: Don’t you think the rest of we citizens of Europe are benefiting from the fact that Edward Snowden has revealed to us that America is so neurotic that they listen in to Angela Merkel ordering groceries, and isn’t it right that we have that information, and should we not applaud Edward Snowden as a whistle-blower?
Nigel Inkster: Sir, you may. I do not. I regard him as a traitor and—
Q413 Paul Flynn: Okay. What about the rest of the information about what happens to ordinary citizens? Do you think that this is something that we should be aware of, that every phone call we make, every visit we pay, that someone can find out where we are, what we are seeing, who our friends are? It is an outrageous intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens in Britain, of which we were kept in ignorance, and Edward Snowden has allowed us to know that.
Nigel Inkster: I think this point about the ubiquity of visibility that comes from modern ICT is more an issue for the people who have manufactured and developed these capabilities. After all, it was not the intelligence services who asked the people who manufacture this to put GPS into it, to put all these other capabilities in that enable somebody, if they care to do so, to know what I am doing and where I am at almost any time of day or night. It is simply the reality of the modern ICT world that we have moved towards, which has not been well-understood, not been well-appreciated, and I entirely accept that there is scope for a debate on the way in that these communications are developing, the implications for individuals, but I think that the intelligence component of this can only be one small element in that debate, not the primary element. The intelligence services—
Q414 Paul Flynn: A final question: do you think that the excessive overreaction to what were terrible events and the way that the Western Christian world seemed to have demonised the Eastern Islamic world is itself a cause of antagonism and creating a sense of injustice, because many of the terrorist atrocities in this country were home-grown, from people who were brought up and educated here? If we had had transparency in the past, rather than feeding on secrecy and living in the darkness of not knowing what was going on, that has in fact led to an increase in tension and some of the absurd injustices, such as the control orders.
Nigel Inkster: I think this is a rather large question for me to answer in the space of a couple of minutes.
Paul Flynn: You can say yes.
Nigel Inkster: I think the short answer is no, I am not convinced that that it is.
Why I voted against 90 days
November 2006 blog
Last week I voted for this bill because I had an assurance from a cabinet minister that this week the 90 days would be dropped, probably in favour of 28 days.
That would have resulted in Labour and Tories voting for 28 days and the LibDems for 14 days this week. The result would have been 28 days or a similar period.
On Monday I had phone call from a young Muslim constituent who pointed out the unhappiness among Muslim that this law would unfairly discriminate against his community. You many well say this is the price for the fact that the terrorist atrocities were all committed by Muslims. There is no sympathy for anyone guilty of planning terrorist acts being held without charge for 90 days. But inevitably innocent people from one community will be held. That would deepen the sense of injustice that is fuelling the twisted delusions of the terrorists.
It's a repeat of internment in Northern Ireland when the Government was
persuaded to act 'tough' and lock people up without
trial. It's admitted by all that internment was responsible for
attracting recruits to the IRA cause and increasing
the number of acts of terrorism. I spoke at the
Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday and told Tony
Blair that if we go for the over-reaction of 90 days,
we are likely to increase acts of terrorism here.
Before the decision to go to war in Iraq I wrote to
Tony Blair, spoke and put down EDMs saying 'Attacking
a Muslim state before a Palestine settlement could
create the ‘living nightmare’ of a terrorist attack
here' That has been on my website since February 2003.
The same experts and Prime Minister who assured us
that there were WMD in Iraq are now telling us that we
need 90 days. 139 Labour MPs voted against the war,
another 78 wished they had followed up their
opposition and also voted against. The results of that
vote are the deaths of 97 British soldiers and the
killing of 52 people in London on 7/7.
Sensible senior people of all parties, Ken Clarke, Min
Campbell, John Denham argued that 90 days was a gross
over-reaction. It it's justified, why not apply it
child murderers and other serious offenders? Anyway, 90
days could never become law because it would have
been savaged by the House of Lords and would be in
conflict with international treaties we have signed.
It was strongly argued on Monday that our insisting on 90 days instead
of seeking a compromise would put the Tories in the
politically embarrassing position of appearing to
support terrorism and opposing public opinion. The two
Davids were attacked for this by the Sun yesterday.
This is cynical political opportunism of the worst kind.
The Chief Constable was recruited to contact me last
weekend. This is first time ever that this has
happened and I answered his e-mails. The Sun urged
their readers to ring up their MPs and we were
subjected to heavy whipping which resulted in a fist
fight in a lobby between two Labour MPs. It's been a
nightmare week. The political reasons for insisting on
90 days have not, I believe, become part of the debate
but were one of the main reasons for the row. All
Labour MPs loathe voting against our government. I am
not in the top 25 of those who have voted against.
I also told Tony Blair Monday that his three stunning
victories has earned the legacy of the greatest
servant of the Labour party in our 100 year history.
49 Labour MPs voted against 90 days, 14 abstained and
about 20 voted for very grudgingly. On the votes of the
reform of the NHS and Education service in England
those votes against will be more than a 100. The
leadership must accept the arithmetic of the new
parliament and debate with their own MPs. They do not
do so now.
The thorns in New Labour’s side.
Convention on Modern Liberty Research Team paper 4
Download as a PDF
The Convention on Modern Liberty has conducted a survey of Labour MPs’ voting records to find the most democratic members on the government benches. They are Mark Fisher, the member of Stoke on Trent for the last 26 years and leader of cross party the Parliament First group, and Jeremy Corbyn. the member for Islington North who also won his seat in 1983. Distained by Labour party whips as rebels, both voted against all seven of Labour‘s worst intrusions on rights and liberties. The convention is happy to offer the two MPs free tickets to the event at the Institute of Education in central London on February 28th and bottle of champagne.
The seven authoritarian measures that the CML used as a test were -
- The indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects n
- The power of the Home Secretary to create Control Orders
- Identity Cards Bill (3rd Reading)
- 90 day pre-charge detention for terror suspects
- 42 day pre-charge detention for terror suspects
- The removal of juries from some fraud trials
- Prohibiting protests outside parliament,
The following labour MPs rebelled and voted against four of these proposals:
Diane Abbott – Hackney North & Stoke Newington
Paul Flynn – Newport West
Glenda Jackson – Hampstead and Highgate
Lynne Jones – Birmingham, Selly Oak
Clare Short – Birmingham, Ladywood (Labour at the time)
Alan Simpson – Nottingham South
Dennis Skinner – Bolsover
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