Reid's 'stop and question' powers for police are 'UK's Guantanamo'
John Reid, New Labour's astonishingly right wing Home Secretary, has proposed giving the police the right to stop and question anyone in the street in an attempt to combat terrorism.
Human Rights groups and politicians from all political parties have condemned his proposals as "draconian", with even Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, warning that it could become the "domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay".
There have been several times over the past few years when I have thought John Reid is literally losing his mind as his rants have taken him ever further towards the loony edge of the political spectrum. There are almost no rights that Reid doesn't think we should sacrifice in our war on a noun.
Of course, Reid is merely reflecting the same mindset that Blair represents. That we must all be prepared to sacrifice human rights for the right to be safe, even though every time he has made proposals to do so in the past, he has been unable to show how what we are sacrificing will make us any more safe.At the moment, police can challenge people, regardless of whether they are suspected of breaking the law, in areas which are considered at risk of terrorist attack, such as Westminster and around political party conference venues.
The new anti-terror proposals would extend that power nationwide, giving officers the right to demand anyone's name and address or details of where they have been if police suspect terrorist involvement.
Anyone who refused to co-operate could be charged with obstructing the police and fined up to £5,000.
In a typical Blairite rant, the Prime Minister yesterday accused the courts of putting the rights of terrorists before the protection of citizens. It is startling to realise that the three men who absconded whilst under control orders have never actually been proven to have any involvement in terrorism at all, so for the Prime Minister to talk in this way regarding them is almost libellous.
Blair simply doesn't get it and never has. Most people in Britain lived with the threat of the IRA for 37 years and have become quite accustomed to living with risk. Blair and Reid are asking people to give up their rights whilst failing to demonstrate that the risk to their lives will in any substantive way be reduced.He said: "We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong."
He added: "Over the past five or six years we have decided as a country that except in the most limited of ways, the threat to our public safety does not justify changing radically the legal basis on which we confront this extremism.
"Their right to traditional civil liberties comes first. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgement."
As he marches out the door Blair continues his ridiculous rant that we must somehow give up our attachment to "traditional civil liberties".
Blair apparently fails to understand that many of us don't feel these rights are ours to give up. They were won by other brave British people on the fields of Normandy. London endured a blitz in order that we may enjoy the freedoms that Blair seems so keen to take away from us.
He fundamentally misunderstands the British character if he thinks that four bombs on London's tubes and buses will force the British to hand him rights that were fought for by their grandparents.
He can shout all he wants, but there are graves all over Europe that are a symbol of the price that Britain was willing to pay to ensure that no-one took those rights away from them.
It is Reid and Blair who are out of step with the mood of the British people, it is Reid and Blair who seem to think we should cower and give up all that we believe in because of some Afghans sitting in caves.
They seem to forget the old saying, "No war was ever won by bombing London". It means that by attacking Londoners, you only strengthen their resolve.
As Blair heads for the door, muttering like an angry old man about how foolish we all are, I wonder if he ever understood us at all?
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