Azara Blog: Blair wants more dictatorial powers

Date published: 2005/08/05

Tony Blair has outlined a raft of plans to extend powers to deport or exclude foreigners who encourage terrorism.
The UK can already exclude or deport those who pose a threat to security and Mr Blair said he also wanted to clamp down on those who advocated terror.
The prime minister said he was prepared to amend human rights laws to make deportations more straightforward.
But Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy said Mr Blair's announcements would put the cross-party consensus under strain.
...
On the new anti-terror package, Mr Kennedy warned that plans to ban Muslim organisations, powers to close mosques and deport people who "visit particular bookshops and websites" risked "inflaming tensions and alienating people".
Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, said Mr Blair has attacked key human rights and would jeopardise national unity.
...
At the final news conference before his summer break, Mr Blair said British hospitality had been abused and people should know the "rules of the game are changing".
"People now understand that when we warned of the terrorist threat it wasn't scaremongering it was real", he said.

Blair has got to be kidding. Nobody believed there was not a real terrorist threat, especially after Blair started his illegal war in Iraq. The question is whether we then respond by showing we are not afraid of the terrorists and continuing to lead our lives as normal, or showing that we are caving into the terrorists and introducing dictatorial law after dictatorial law. Blair unfortunately has chosen the latter path. (As has Bush, of course.)

The BBC claims in a side panel of that article that the planned measures include:

Home secretary to consider deporting any foreigner involved in listed extremist centres and websites
Make justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere an offence
Automatically refuse asylum to anyone with anything to do with terrorism
Examine calls for police to be able to hold terror suspects for longer before pressing charges
Use more control orders against British terror suspects
Create a list of preachers who will be kept out of the UK

Heck, who could be opposed to these? Well under most counts Nelson Mandela would have been refused aslyum in the UK and deported to South Africa should he have ever managed to escape to the UK when Thatcher and her ilk were in power. Who decides who is and is not a "terrorist"? Of course the government.

_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com. For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com (replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").