Shock resignation is a wake-up call to the British people

Friday, June 13th, 2008

David Davis’ resignation from his job as MP and Shadow Home Secretary yesterday, forcing a by-election in which he will stand again in protest over the issue of the 42 day detention of suspected terrorists, surprised everyone.

In two notoriously opportunistic and hard-nosed professions, politics and the media, in both of which personal convictions in the 21st Century are too often limited to expressing passionately-held beliefs over which restaurant serves the best caviare, it’s no wonder that we’ve since seen a plethora of career politicians on all sides, and political commentators, utterly incapable of understanding why Davis did what he did.

But nearly everyone who truly cares about what’s happening to our country can applaud Davis’ bold and brave move, and fully understand it. How many people constitute those who understand there is a war being waged against us by our own government is unclear, but Davis’ resignation certainly increases awareness. It is a wake-up call for the British people.

We must remove the Labour Party from office as soon as possible, which is unfortunately going to be when they are forced to give up power on the last possible day they can go to the polls, in 2010. Assuming they don’t change the rules in the meantime. Brown, and Blair before him—who was the principal architect of our descent into this Orwellian nightmare—have been, since 2001, insanely pursuing the destruction of our civil liberties that have been in place since the signing of the Magna Carta.

We no longer have freedom of speech in Britain, or rather, we can say what we like but we risk prosecution over it, and imprisonment. We no longer have the right to peacefully protest without first checking that the government and the police are prepared to allow such protests to take place. If the target of protest is some aspect of government policy, nuclear sites, or in some way draws attention to perceived injustice, permission is often refused.

Even celebratory parades such as Gay Pride—which abandoned any pretence of having a political dimension over a decade ago—aren’t allowed near the ivory tower of Big Ben any more.

We’ve had young people and the elderly arrested at vigils during which the names of civilian dead in Iraq have been read out loud from a list, at other demonstrations as well, and ordinary citizens even abducted by police straight off the street or from their homes, and held in cells overnight, or for longer; we’ve had tourists and professional photographers stopped in central London, bundled into police vans, and their cameras confiscated; we’ve got Muslims targeted by the State, stopped at airports and other public places, searched and interrogated.

Labour talks of tackling extremism while breeding it through unfair, unjust treatment of a sizeable community. Put the lid on, and then watch it boil.

And now we have Brown pushing for 42 days’ detention of suspected terrorists, longer than any other country in the world except the US (though Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp that operates outside mainland US law both literally, in physical terms, and legislatively) without reaching a decision on whether someone is believed actually guilty or not, and therefore to be committed for trial by a jury made up of ordinary citizens.

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, is a power-crazed nutter—nothing particularly unusual there within this government—and builds on the insanities instigated by David Blunkett and Jack Straw before her. Control is the order of the day, from cigarettes to alcohol to what we think, do, and say.

More and more fascist laws are passed every year since the 9/11 attack, and our police are now the compliant tools of state oppression and population control like never before. If we so much as mention the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘bomb’ during phone conversations, it is likely someone in the security services is alerted by advanced monitoring services and the calls listened into, data on the people involved scrutinised. This means even discussing the issues brings you, and your family, and your friends, to the attention of the State.

And yes, blogging probably does the same thing. You can certainly expect the State to be sweeping the Web 24-7 looking for ‘dangerous’ chatter, and paying special attention to web forums promoting anything deemed radical. It doesn’t have to be terror-related. It just has to have the potential for revolutionary banter to take place for spies to log in, pretend to make friends, and start asking steering questions…

All of this obscene madness is making inadvertent heroes and potential criminals out of all us who won’t be silent on what is happening. We become admittedly paranoid, but not without reason, while on the other side we have people who don’t think, who won’t act, who hide their heads and provide the gift of compliance to the Labour government.

We are watched everywhere we go. There are probably more British spies working in the UK, in companies, charities, and other organisations, than there are positioned around the world. Spies working in and ostensibly for Amnesty International, Greenpeace, even the RSPCA? Gods, yes. Don’t doubt it. It may seem laughable, and it is, but that doesn’t stop this government. Someone working for the RSPCA might conceivably become an animal liberationist aka terrorist, you see? All it takes is one small step. So, any group of people working together for any goal is suspect. If you don’t believe that, the government is pleased. Disbelief in the absurdity allows it to continue to grow, unchallenged.

No community, business or social, and no individual, is safe in Britain today. You might feel safe, but that isn’t the same as being safe. Yet we are peddled the knowing lie that in order to be safe, in order to secure our long-term freedom, we have to give up our freedom. It’s not just a lie. It makes no sense at all.

It is now illegal to write anything that could be deemed as ‘glorifying’ terrorism—an incredibly muddy way of censoring the arts, putting poets, fiction writers, and dramatists at risk of being locked away. But what counts as glorification? It isn’t a legal term. Whether anything is glorified by a piece of writing or artwork is a matter of opinion, not fact. Our legal system should deal in facts only. Without facts to consider, there can be no justice.

Allow opinions to be sufficient grounds for the prosecution and imprisonment of the people, and you create a climate of fear at the same time as ensuring people can be locked away for not thinking and acting the way the government says they must.

There are many, many more examples of post-9/11 oppression and injustice here at home in the UK. Too many to list. The big winners in all of this are the political class in the UK and US, and, of course, Osama bin Laden and his fellow Islamic fundamentalists advocating terror. They don’t need to bomb us, though of course there’s still the risk that they might. But our leaders are achieving their goals for them, escalating fear—the raison d’etre of all terrorist activity, that’s why it’s called terrorism—and pushing ‘guilty until proven innocent’ as an entirely acceptable reversal of the bedrock principle of our justice system. It isn’t acceptable. It is evil.

In an era of spineless politicians on all sides singing the same song, caring for their careers first, the people second, it is refreshing to see one of them taking a gamble based on his sincerely-held belief that this country’s social, legal and political architectures are being deviously and malevolently converted to a grand fascist design plan. And he’s a Tory. But he’s a libertarian as well. While the Tories have long been perceived as being for the rich, not the poor, they actually have a long tradition of advocating freedom—sadly tainted by those of us who see the free market as bad, by the inclusion of business freedom in the equation as well as personal.

Business should not be free to do as it will. People, however, should be free, need to be free, must be free for any nation to call itself civilised. Great Britain is no longer free, and therefore no longer civilised. It is Less Than Great Britain. It is Fortress Britain. It serves nobody for this to be the case other than the ruling political class and a few rich old men who run newspapers.

Davis has surprised me greatly, and I never thought the day would come when a Conservative would have my full and enthusiastic support. But Davis has achieved this where David Cameron, his party leader, never did and likely never could because he’s a smooth-haired, smooth-talking Blair clone chosen precisely because of his similarity to our former Glorious Leader. I know I am not alone today in wishing Davis led that party, and if he did, and showed the same courage as yesterday, the once-inconceivable idea that I’d ever vote Conservative would have entered my head, and stayed there until Polling Day when I could have marked an X next to Conservative.

Why? Because Davis gave me hope for the future of British politics yesterday. That’s no mean feat. I marvel that I have just typed that last paragraph above, but it’s true: faced with a choice between a reinvigorated freedom-promoting Conservative Party and New Fascist Labour, I could vote positively (in favour of) instead of negatively (just to get the current administration out).

Sadly, though, the Tories have made few commitments to dismantle Labour’s slew of post-9/11 anti-freedom, anti-democracy laws if they win power. They will scrap identity cards, and the 42-day detention limit. Although these promises are both welcome, there needs to be more. A lot more.

Self-serving dinosaurs, including some who call themselves Davis’ best friends (I, Brutus) are describing him variously as ‘bonkers’, ‘mad’, ‘egotistical’ and worse. But they cannot understand the conviction that has driven him to act so controversially after Brown abused democracy in the House of Commons on Tuesday night by paying off Democratic Unionists to vote his way.

I do understand, and applaud the most courageous action taken by a senior British politician in a very, very long time. I hope most every British citizen wakes up and does so as well.

categories: in the news