It’s like a cancer that we can battle against but never truly defeat. As it creeps purposefully through our national lymph system some of us can summon up the courage to fight it back and, for a while, it can appear as if we are in remission. But then comes the hoping and the praying for the final ‘all clear’ that signals a rebirth and a new lease of disease-free life.
It never comes. The cells are corrupted again and the cancer returns to devour us:
Sweeping powers for Government agencies to carry out covert surveillance, run agents and gather the telephone data of private citizens were contained in legislation published yesterday.
State bodies ranging from the police, intelligence services and Whitehall departments to local councils, the Postal Services Commission and the chief inspector of schools will be able to authorise undercover operations.
The measures were activated by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, under the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which became law three years ago. They need to be approved again by both Houses of Parliament before they can be used.
These horrors first made their appearance about a year ago and set off a call-to-arms that, in turn, caused the Home Office to drop the proposals. Or, at least, they made an appearance of dropping them because, like that lurking cancer, they never really went away. They were merely stacked neatly in the pending trays until an another opportune moment presented itself. Seems that the moment is now.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said the British people were “the most spied upon in the Western world”.
I reckon that’s a pretty fair prognosis. But why? Why are our political elites so determined to construct this panopticon? Why are they so single-minded about this project that they appear immune to sweet reason, protest or appeals to decency? What exactly is driving them? Are they so riddled with paranoia and insecurity that they see monsters and assassins lurking behind every curtain? Is that how they see us? I cannot think of any other reason why a democratically elected government would come to think of themselves as colonial occupiers of their own country.
What has led to this calamitous collapse of trust? Is it repairable? I rather fear that it is not.
Questions, questions. Answers may come in due course but I suspect none will be satisfactory or stop the cancer from spreading. Time for palliative surgery?
[This has been cross-posted to White Rose.]
To be strictly accurate, the relevant horrors first made their public appearance under this Government in the run-up to the RIP Act 2000, which was initially to have included the spying powers for all the bodies now quoted. So more than 4 years ago.
I’d suggest that it wasn’t written specially for this Government, but is part of the independent growth of the surveillance state. Glimpses of the anti-cryptography powers, for example, were to be seen at the same time as public-key cryptography first became widely known. Watchers of this sort of thing will recall the Major Government entertaining the idea of compelling us all to lodge our private keys with a “trusted third party”. New Labour, with its inexperienced ministers and statist assumptions, has been more easily house-trained by Whitehall than any previous administration.
It’s not clear that the bodies concerned don’t already have the power to conduct “undercover” investigations, but the Government may wish to suppress challenges under the Human Rights Act by making sure the powers are “prescribed by law”. The other thing to look out for in the final legislation will be whether agents provocateurs are to be permitted as part of the undercover investigation powers. I’m sure HMCE and all its little chums were dissappointed when a judge threw out a prosecution because of the “massive illegality” of the entrapment operations Customs had conducted.
The last attempt to put the spy powers in place was by an order under the RIP Act issued in summer 2002, nut withdrawn after adverse publicity. If at first you don’t succeed…
I think the real thing that’s driving them is pique. It annoys a governmental type to be balked. So they just keep trying. I doubt they even really have a reason for wanting all this stuff – the “conspiracy” view credits them with implausible amounts of both malice and foresight. They just thought it would be nifty, and they don’t like having their idea shoved aside by the press or the proles.
Oh, I don’t think it is a conspiracy. It’s a policy. It is quite the reverse of malice or pique. Though, of course, policy is all about planning and foresight.
No; the attitude of Whitehall is not one of annoyance. More Olympian and detached–at least in their own eyes–even than their counterparts in Brussells, Senior Civil Servants know that politicians, press, and public (and the courts, too) are obstructive and short-sighted. It is a fact of life.
However, it is the sort of temporary difficulty in formulating and executing policy that they are trained to cope with. If the powers are clearly necessary to the effective pursuit of the goals that the bodies concerned were set up for, then the problem is merely how to circumvent the foolishness of short-term political imperatives for the greater good of sound administration.
Politicians, Bernard, are always concerned with how things look. So they are never prepared to pursue an objective wholeheartedly or for the long-term. It is up to the Civil Service to ensure the baton is never dropped if the political runners are distracted by the cheers of the crowd.
I do think Guy Herbert is correct when he says that when this gang that couldn’t shoot straight got elected, they were the most inept, amateurish and inexperienced in recent history and were thus easily housetrained by Whitehall. This is an administration that came in, changed the curtains, rearranged the furniture and then settled down to seven years of making announcements.
Sounds a lot like contents of the “Patriot Acts I & II” here in the USA; they’ll stop at nothing to try to be the most advanced at being able to see and control the lives of all the little peon-ants that comprise their view of us mere peasants. A pox on both their houses!
It’s creeping socialism. You vote yourselves largesse. The only way for the State to create equality of outcomes is by control.
You should all know this, being Libertarians. I guess it’s hard to admit when it’s so close to home.
Take back your country, men of England. And if ever you’ve truly lost the fight, come here to the USA. We have our own battle to fight against the Statists, and if any soldier is a match for an American, it is an Englishman.
AS they are not stupid,they are afraid of Radical Islam, but they are also afraid of giving “offence” to the wider Muslim community and are too hamstrung by political correctness to enact measures targeting the Islamofascists.So they have to hide behind blanket measures covering everyone.
dave fordwych – I agree with you re the blanket measures to disguise the intent, but why, oh why, oh why are they hamstrung by the self-imposed chains of political correctness? That is like locking oneself in a box and throwing away the key? How can you be effective when you’re locked in a box?
I’ve yet to see any evidence – in either words or actions – that any Western government,anywhere,in any manner, is currently taking the Islamist movements in our midst seriously.Therefore,I find it hard to believe that the new laws in Britain are meant to be used against them.
Dave,unless proven otherwise,I can’t take your claim at face value.
If Guy is correct these “horrors”, as he calls the latest repressions, were planned well before Islaamofascism so bestrode the public consciousness. Of course it’s possible that our wise and always vigilant rulers may only have reintroduced them because of the present high level of threat. After all, what politician wants to be accused of prior inaction after a successful terrorist attack? But, equally, our rulers may have reintroduced them under the same, mysterious compulsion that gave rise to the original proposal.
They wouldn’t own up to it if they did.
On balance, I incline towards David’s view that the state routinely ascribes to itself powers beyond its needs. It does not do so from ambition to control and much less from some sort of fatal despotism that takes root in the soul of any politician who gets his hands on a red briefcase. It does so, I think, from fear. It tells itself that modern society is inherently prone to instability. Its extreme complexity means that such and such security measure is the only viable means of confronting that complexity. It tells itself that the excecutive is comprised of decent men and women whose motivations are honourable and though, yes, the new powers could be misused, that certainly won’t be by them. And so David’s panopticon is constructed.
The difficulty with opposing it is precisely that there is a present high level of threat, of which we are not kept fully aware for operational reasons. Even so, the White Rose should be brandished. There is too much incrementalism involved in this process for any of us to be so complacent, high threat or no.
I used to work for a state (USA) transportation agency. We conducted a vehicle licence plate survey where licence plates were filmed, then matched to registrants (using minimum-wage temporary workers). Post cards were then mailed out with questions regarding their travel habits. They were to return the cards (about 100,000 went out I think) and we’d analyze the info. I was the contact person, my work phone number was on the cards.
When the cards were sent out, they were mailed with the person’s license number, name, and home address exposed on the outside of the card for all to see.
I got over 1,000 angry calls within a week. Some death threats. People were looking for MY address. Police officers were calling, upset that their personal data was exposed. Several married men called saying their wives opened the cards and how they were busted (cards said something like “you were filmed traveling s/b on highway 101 on so-and-so date…..”).
I found myself telling upset callers over and over that this survey was not my idea, I didn’t approve, etc. I resigned shortly thereafter. The kicker? The data gatherd made not a bit of difference in solving any real transportation problems.
Couple of comments. Perhaps related to Guy Herbert’s mention of the Major government is that Tom King (IIRC) chaired the committee which oversaw the RIP Bill – a senior, highly respected (among Party rank & file) Tory…
Second, since my particular hobbyhorse is firearms legislation, I second his remider that the watchword of the State is “if at first…”: there was a Green Paper in 1973 outlining a raft of new firearms controls, so radical and oppressive that it was thrown out by Parliament as unacceptable.
Fast forward but a few years, and major elements of the same Paper (to which ACPO had contributed considerably in a consultative capacity) were revived for the knee-jerk 1988 Firearms Act following the murders at Hungerford the previous year, while more of the same surfaced for the 1997 Act. QED
Thanks Tony H, for the backing.
Some MPs are regarded as “safe” by the MoD and security apparatus. Tom King has long been one of those. (See, for example, Alan Clark’s diaries. Clark doesn’t really comment on the point directly but the indirect clues, which Clark’s narratorial egotism doesn’t allow him to pick up, are more telling–and more likely to be true.)
Ditto judges. As former Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, for example, Hutton will have been security-acceptable to deal with the sensitive edge of the Kelly enquiry.
who the hell do these pollies think they are?
palliative surgery isn’t drastic enough – what’s needed is a good amputation…
How to Destroy the Enemy Class: A Manifesto for the Right – Sean Gabb
Ron,
I haven’t done a detailed calculation but I think the estimable Dr Gabb underestimates the size and power of his Enemy Class at a million. Last year–and there has recently been a burst of expansion–there were half-a-million home civil servants in post. Retired civil servants, imbued with the same ideology and endowed with index-linked pensions and infinite free time, must amount to nearly as many. There are approximately 250,000 administrative staff in the NHS; 100,000 in other public corporations. There are 2.6 million local government staff–at least a third of whom fall into the category.
Then there are the quangos–some of them vastly powerful–the trades unions, the state supported charity sector, and lots of pressure groups.
Then (both directly in the service of government and of its hangers-on) there are the PR companies, lawyers, consultants, computer solutions providers, service companies, construction groups, manufacturers of health and safety posters, and all the other contractors at the trough.
At least 3 million. Probably nearer 6. At a guess, £250Bn a year used in sustaining the system rather than consumed outside it.
And support/encouragement for the current way of doing things from the EU, Council of Europe, OECD, and UN Agencies… and the US. Foreign funding of political parties is banned, of course; foreign funding of political activities to augment the “non-political” state is not.
Don’t argue with the arithmetic, Guy. I alays that Sean Gabb’s estimate was on the light side but, not having the article for a while, thought is might be more focussed on the committed liberal-left element rather than nurses and dustmen.
Anyhow, building a self-sustaining bloc within the electorate has been Labour’s purpose for many years. Do you remember the 1983 manifesto of Kaufmann fame, and the one in 1987. Both proposed a vast expansion of the public sector. The intention might, as they said, have been to defeat unemployment. But the effect, as every non-marxist economist knows, would have been the opposite.
No matter, we’re back in the same mindset now, indeed in it for real. Blair lacks the respect for his opponent that was natural to Gaitskill, Wilson and Callaghan. Knowing his control mentality it’s impossible to believe that his object in creating this public sector is purely policy-related, and pays no heed to electoral implications.