News from the New Party

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Britain is not a police state

It is now almost commonplace to hear the accusation that Britain is becoming a police state. Often enough this is hyperbole from opponents of the present government, especially opponents of its foreign policy and the War on Terror. One might look charitably on the comments to this effect of Mr. Abu Bakr, one of the men arrested during recent raids by anti-terror police in Birmingham, who has been released without charge after several days detention and who is understandably aggrieved. However, the comments of Dr. Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, comparing the situation of Muslims in this country with the Nazi persecution of the Jews, are simply disgraceful. Given that Islamist terror attacks in this country have killed Muslims too, it is reasonable to expect more wholehearted support for our security services from responsible community leaders like Dr Naseem.

Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that events since September 11, 2001 have given ample ammunition to those who fear for our civil liberties. The identity card legislation, combined with widespread public surveillance through CCTV and number-plate recognition technology, curbs on freedom of speech and religious conscience, and apparently bizarre police priorities, leading in one case to a man being charged for directing alleged homophobic abuse at a horse, all have combined to raise fears of an over-intrusive government obsessed with a degree of control over people's lives which has never been deemed necessary before in peacetime.

It is therefore only right that we should give careful consideration to the criticisms raised, especially when they come from somebody with the real world experience of the Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, who has criticised the renewal of calls for the police to be given powers to detain terrorist suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

"If you detain people, you must have good enough reason for detaining them and have a chance for there being a successful prosecution. [The Home Secretary] has not produced the evidence that shows that in 90 days you're capable of getting somebody prosecuted. Why does he want these days, so the police do what? Gather more evidence? To me that becomes, if you're not very careful, very close to a police state in which they pick you up and then they say later on we'll find evidence against you. That's what happened in Uganda with Idi Amin."

It is unfortunate that the MP for Dewsbury, Shahid Malik, saw fit to deride these comments as silly. Dr. Sentamu has a knack of making the headlines, but in this case he knows what he is talking about: not only was John Sentamu born in Uganda, but he served there as a judge. Under Idi Amin.

The request from the police for the powers to detain suspects without charge for 90 days caused a great deal of anxiety when it was raised previously in parliament, and ultimately the power only to detain for 28 days was granted. The reason given by many at the time was simply that the government (and the police) had failed to make an adequate case for a 90 day limit. Nevertheless, this can only be interpreted as a failure of confidence in the government, and in the police, on the part of Parliament. A serious state of affairs indeed.

We would suggest that it is this breakdown in public confidence which is the root of the matter here, and that while Britain is clearly not a police state, we are nevertheless suffering the consequences of an increasingly politicised police service. On the one hand the police are criticised for excessive political correctness, which has led to a number of absurd police actions which were not only oppressive of individuals but a tremendous waste of police time, and on the other hand for insensitive policing in respect of Islamist terror suspects. Indeed, the criticism of the police is now even coming from within the government itself, as the enthusiastic police investigation of the Cash for Honours affair comes uncomfortably close to the Prime Minister himself.

This last example ought to be reason enough for the "police state" critics to realise their mistake. In a police state, the police do not sniff too closely around the head of government. And neither are suspects, once released, allowed to go on television and berate the government and police, as Mr. Blair pointed out today. What we have here is a negative perception of the police which on the one hand has been exacerbated by government policy and ideology (i.e. the systematic politicisation of all state institutions, even those such as the civil service and the police which should be independent of party politics), and on the other hand by inadequate leadership and management within the police service itself.

The British police service needs to refocus on its core functions - the protection of the public, the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals, and the government should step back and allow it to do so. The burden of unnecessary bureaucracy must be removed and the pursuit of political agendas must cease if the effectiveness of British policing is to be increased and public confidence is to be restored.

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Britain is not a police state