Blair’s election strategy threatens democratic rights


NEW LABOUR’S general election strategy is now clear. They say "vote
Labour" for tough measures on law and order and to fight the ‘war on terror’.
Blair and Co are proposing a huge raft of repressive legislation which
they say will tackle serious social problems, as well as helping prevent
future terrorist attacks.

New Labour believe this law and order card will win them support from
so-called ‘middle England’, cutting the possibility of a Tory recovery; and
also from working-class Labour voters who are threatening to abandon the
party.

Like Bush’s Republicans in the US, Labour’s leadership believe their best
chance of being re-elected is to play on people’s fears and try to push the
issues of jobs, crumbling public services, privatisation and living standards
to the side.

But these laws won’t provide better security for Britain’s population.
Instead they dramatically reduce our democratic rights, giving the government
and police sweeping new powers and providing even less accountability to the
public.

New Labour’s proposals are a charter for abuses of power by government and
police. They will allow the rich and powerful, including big companies, even
more freedom to do what they like without worrying about protests or campaigns
from their workforce or the local community.


ASBOs – making peaceful protest illegal

IMAGINE YOUR local hospital is being shut down and you want to organise a
campaign against it. You get your mates, co-workers and fellow trade unionists
together to do some leafleting in your neighbourhood’s shopping centre to get
more people involved and set the campaign rolling.

Christian Bunke

Some of your colleagues brought their kids along, the shoppers are
interested in what you’re saying. There is a relaxed atmosphere on a Saturday
morning. Then, out of the blue, the police appear.

They say "you’re behaving in an anti-social manner," and apparently you’re
intimidating the shoppers. So you’ll be banned from the shopping centre for
the next 24 hours.

And don’t even think about coming back an hour later to do your shopping.
This would be a violation of the law and you could end up in prison for up to
five years. Congratulations, you have just been ASBO’d.

An ASBO, short for Anti-Social Behaviour Order, is the newest buzz-word
from Tony Blair’s governmental machine.

According to a press statement from the Home Office from 31 October, it is
all part of a "fight back" in the communities. They say an ASBO can be issued
"to disperse intimidating gangs who may be out on the streets threatening
local people, with police powers to take home any young people out and about
after 9pm".

The government claims that ASBOs are a great tool to stop youth crime but
there is no evidence to back this up. Greater Manchester tops the list with
422 ASBOs being issued since 1999 – the percentage being issued in the same
area is up 232% since 31 March 2003.

The Socialist Party is currently campaigning for more and better youth
facilities in Wythenshawe, Manchester. "There is nothing for us here, and what
we got is crap," a local young teenager told me. In fact, the area only has
two youth clubs for 8.000 young people.

Public and green spaces have slowly been eroded so it’s no wonder that
young people are hanging about on street corners being bored. It will take
strong community campaigns – against the same government that is currently
introducing the ASBOS – in order to get the services ordinary people deserve.

Trade unionists threatened

THAT’S WHERE a crucial point of the ASBOs comes in. ASBOs are already being
used against a number of campaigning organisations. On 26 August for example,
two women were given an ASBO for peacefully handing out leaflets against a
major arms company in Richmond town centre.

During the firefighters’ dispute, some firefighters went into town centres
to collect money for their strike fund and to tell local people about their
struggle. Under the definition of "dispersing intimidating gangs" you can
easily imagine ASBOs being issued against campaigning trade unionists in the
future.

At this year’s TUC, Tony Blair told trade unionists that secondary
picketing and solidarity action should be considered a thing of the past.
There is a bitter legal reality behind Tony Blair’s smiling face and ASBOs are
a part of it.

ASBOs are also being used against animal rights campaigners protesting
outside managers of Huntington Life Sciences, a company conducting experiments
on animals. ASBOs are used in this context to "stop individuals from being
terrorised at home" (The Daily Telegraph, 29 July).

While the socialist does not support the more violent harassment methods
used by a small minority of animal rights campaigners, this law’s possible
repercussions could be far reaching for all campaigners, removing people’s
right to protest in many cases.

A protest outside the office of a political party could be seen as
"intimidating" behaviour and give the police legal justification to remove the
protesters.

Strikers "visiting" one of their bosses’ homes to make their point during
campaigning against, say, job cuts would be especially "intimidating" in such
a context. Police and courts could also treat mass pickets as a form of
anti-social behaviour.

Solidarity

COMMUNITY CAMPAIGNS and workers’ struggle provide the basis for building a
spirit of solidarity and friendship among ordinary people. The 1984-85 miners’
struggle provides the best example for this – entire towns experienced a level
of unity unknown until then when fighting Thatcher’s attacks.

Yet, the government is creating the very laws which could seriously
undermine and criminalise such campaigns. Meanwhile, all major political
parties who cry out for ‘law and order’ force through the cuts in public
spending, the school and hospital closures and the attacks on pensioners’
rights, which make community campaigns a matter of survival for ordinary
people.

So ASBOs are anti-social by their very nature. With trade unionists gearing
up to fight the equally anti-social job cuts in the public sector, trade
unionists, socialists and community campaigners have to unite to fight the
increasingly repressive nature of the British state as well.


How local communities can fight anti-social behaviour

ST MICHAELS Ward has the highest unemployment in Coventry. Outside the
city’s main areas investment in community and youth facilities has suffered
and issues involving young people and local residents have grown.

Rob Windsor

St Michaels was represented by three Socialist Party councillors, now it’s
two – one was lost by a hair’s breadth in the last election. A year ago these
problems came to my attention as a Socialist councillor.

A group of young people were playing ball games and bothering residents
including a man with a heart condition. Local residents were fuming. There was
a clear possibility of an "Us and them" situation between them and the youth
involved.

I helped set up a meeting attended by over 35 local residents. The police
and community wardens also came. The meeting was angry but constructive,
partly due to the tone we set that there was a lack of local facilities for
young people.

It would have been easy just to demand that the police turned up
heavy-handedly but instead we used the local warden service to approach the
youth. They did so and discussed with them – one young lad was excluded from
school and had nothing to occupy him. The wardens helped set up a course for
him and helped occupy others.

The police were involved and their presence increased but not in a
heavy-handed way. Within a month the problems had dissipated in that area.
There were sporadic problems and news that problems had shifted to other
streets but for a good few months the area was quieter.

A heavy-handed approach would not have got this result – it may even have
exacerbated it. Stretched police resources would in any case have made such an
approach impossible to sustain.

Whilst New Labour’s Anti Social Behaviour Bill had measures that working
class people would support, such as closure of crack houses and measures
against prostitution and fly-tipping, it helped to create a myth that deep
rooted social problems can be tackled by bits of paper and bureaucracy.

In reality the prisons are overcrowded and the courts can’t cope. And the
more ASBO’s are used for low-key offences, the more swamped the system to
enforce them will become. But New Labour spinners try to use these issues to
grab votes and deflect people’s attention away from the real robbers, like the
capitalists who run Fords stealing the livelihoods of Coventry workers.

Socialists have to be careful – simply blaming capitalism won’t help
communities having to cope with the "Do what you like and stuff the others"
approach of Thatcherism and with less and less hope for a secure future for
working-class youth.

The community should be really ’empowered’ to deal with these issues by
strong residents’ and community groups that would seek to help young people as
well as deal with problems.


New Labour’s crackdown plans

ID cards:

  • biometric identifiers/database, incorporated in passports and
    driving licences from 2008 and possibly compulsory by 2010-12.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill

(likely to become law before the general election) gives the police new
powers including

  • the power to take DNA samples and fingerprints from minor offenders
    arrested on the streets.
  • the power to arrest the suspect for any offence, including minor crimes
    such as littering. At present they can only arrest someone suspected of an
    offence that could result in a prison sentence of at least five years.
  • strengthen existing police power to stop demonstrations outside people’s
    homes.
  • new offence of incitement to religious hatred.
  • the setting up of a national crime agency modelled on the FBI.

Drugs Bill

  • gives police the powers to test offenders when they are arrested rather
    than when they are charged.

Anti-terror bill

  • trials without jury on anti-terror charges.
  • use of wire-tap evidence in courts.
  • civil orders for people suspected of "acts preparatory to terrorism", e.g.
    fundraising for terrorist groups (up to now these had to be prosecuted under
    criminal law, where the burden of proof is much higher).

No to ID cards

IDENTITY (ID) cards are a license to print money for fraudsters, and will
give another lucrative business opportunity to organised crime.

Even biometric ID cards are open to forgery; the only thing that will
change is that the price of forged ID documents will go up, and the
stranglehold of organised crime on the production of forged ID will become
tighter, as only large criminal gangs will have the resources to create
believable copies.

ID cards won’t stop terrorism. Compulsory ID cards in Spain didn’t prevent
the Madrid bombings in March this year. For terrorists with the money to get
hold of fake ID it could even make evading the authorities easier.

ID cards will be used to help destroy public services. New Labour say they
want ID cards to be shown in future before people can access public services
like health, education and welfare benefits. We don’t want a system like the
US, where you have to show that you have medical insurance to cover your
treatment before you are admitted to hospital.


Blunkett increasing the power of the state

NEW LABOUR’S attacks on democratic rights such as the anti-terrorist bills
and the 2003 Criminal Justice Act have greatly extended the power of the state
and reduced the rights of the accused.

Michael Wainwright

The amount of time allowed for detention without charge has increased from
36 hours to 48. Some people have been detained without charge in British
prisons for over two years now under anti-terror laws.

The new criminal justice bill aims to dismantle the principle of "innocent
until proven guilty" by shifting the burden of proof onto the defence as
opposed to the prosecution.

It would introduce hearsay evidence and allow previous convictions into
jury trials, which could prove hideously prejudicial.

New Labour intend to scrap the double-jeopardy rule which, in effect, will
mean that even if someone is acquitted by a jury for a particular offence,
they can still be tormented again and again by police. This is at a time when
a huge number of miscarriages of justice – people convicted of crimes that
they did not commit – are still coming to light.

Home Secretary Blunkett claims that he’s shifting the balance of the
criminal justice system towards the rights of victims of crime. But the
ultimate needs of victims cannot be properly catered for by building more
prisons to lock up petty thieves, drug addicts and the wrongly accused.

Only by getting to the root causes of crime can we begin to improve the
lives of victims and offenders of crime. Those causes lie in a system that
ravages the world’s resources for the benefit of a privileged few, while
leaving war and poverty for those that it leaves in its wake.