BBC NEWS | Politics | Anti-terror plans go to MPs' vote

BBC NEWS Politics Anti-terror plans go to MPs' vote

An open letter to the politicians and people of England

Wake up!

These may be the last days of Liberal Democracy. If we do not stand up and be counted, in parliament and all areas of our lives, the freedom under law which has made this country the highest ideal for many of the citizens and countries of our world will be gone, and probably forever.
History is about to repeat itself. A charismatic leader, dismissed by many as a second rate mind, is positioning himself for permanent power.
"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in history," proclaimed Hitler, 72 years ago this week, standing in front of the burned-out Reichstag, surrounded by national media. "This fire," he said, his voice trembling with emotion, "is the beginning." He used the occasion - "a sign from God," he called it - to declare an all-out war on terrorism and its ideological sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their origins to the Middle East and found motivation for their evil deeds in their religion.
Bush used 911 as an excuse for "Homeland Security" which will keep his family in power indefinitely in America. Bush's people were as likely to have been behind the fallen twin towers as Hitler was behind the Reichstag fire. But this is England I am describing.
Our most senior judges have almost unanimously voted that Blair's terror laws are unjust, and one has spelled it out in the starkest terms. This Government is a greater threat to our way of life than all the terrorists.
Blunkett was the most reactionary and repressive Home Secretary in my life time. Now his successor proposes an end to our most fundamental Human Rights
In Germany, two weeks after the Reichstag burned out, the first detention centre for terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist. In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's flag was everywhere, even printed large in newspapers suitable for window display. Blair now portrays his Jewish Tory opponents as flying pigs on New Labour posters.
Blair will now fight an election by frightening us with a false terrorist threat. Perhaps a small attack terror will be arranged. It probably will not be necessary. It is utterly clear that Blair lied about weapons of mass destruction, and took the Nation to war on a false prospectus.
In Germany, within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the nation's now-popular leader had pushed through legislation - in the name of combating terrorism and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it - that suspended constitutional guarantees of free speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected terrorists could be imprisoned without specific charges and without access to their lawyers; police could sneak into people's homes without warrants if the cases involved terrorism.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism act, his federal police agencies stepped up their program of arresting suspicious persons and holding them without access to lawyers or courts. In the first year only a few hundred were interred, and those who objected were largely ignored by the mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and thus lose access to a leader with such high popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the leader in public - and there were many - quickly found themselves confronting the newly empowered police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off in protest zones safely out of earshot of the leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was taking almost daily lessons in public speaking, learning to control his tonality, gestures, and facial expressions. He became a very competent orator, just as Blair is today.)
Don’t laugh and say it cannot happen here. No one would have believed, 10 years ago, that a leader could deceive the country as badly as Blair has done, as transparently as Blair has done, and not be forced to resign. Twenty years ago it would have been inconceivable that anyone modelling such a bizarre personal lifestyle could remain as Home Secretary as Blunkett almost managed to do.
The Blair Government has been undermining our Civil Liberties for years, attacking Habeas Corpus and the right to trial by jury, the fundamentals of our democracy. At the point where the judges have condemned him as a threat to our National Heritage, he uses their very judgment as an excuse to take liberty away from every one of us. We are about to have inflicted upon us all manner of restrictions on our liberty, on the whim of the executive.
Charles Clarke insists that Liberty must be sacrificed for the sake of security. But the basis of these whims may be as phoney as the dodgy dossier Blair stole from a students 10 year old thesis on the internet. The opposition say that this law would be a victory for the terrorists. Even if that has a symbolic truth to it, the more fundamental truth is that it would be a victory for Blair's executive power. It would mean the end of the Judiciary as a political balance to the executive. Parliament is already cowed by his majority. His only real challenge might come from the billionaires who control our media, who have nothing to do with democracy, whose only concern for freedom is for their own. He has successfully cowed the BBC into submission through the Hutton Report.
Like Hitler, Blair has never had the majority of the People of this country vote for him. Most people have given up on voting. Both main parties are very right wing.
It is not too late to speak and to act. Very soon we have a chance to vote in a strategic fashion. We can vote against anyone who supports the continuation of the Blair Government. Right now we need to make our voices heard, so that our liberty is maintained. Speak to your MP. Speak to your local Councillors. E-mail all your friends. This is a crucial moment. Don't let it pass.