Civil Liberties

Fascist Britain.

Via Last Ditch.

Over at Our Kingdom Guy Aitchison reflects on the proposals for a new Bill of Rights for Britain. On devolution Guy writes:

Unlike the Government, the [Joint Committee on Human Rights] recognises the "difficulties associated with establishing a Bill of Rights on the basis of a statement of "British" values which may or may not be accepted by the people who consider themselves to be for example, "English", "Scottish", "Irish" or "Welsh", but not "British". For this reason, and so as to break the link with citizenship and include Northern Ireland, the Committee recommends the term "UK" Bill of Rights rather than "British" Bill of Rights. Devolved governance does not preclude the enactment of a UK-wide bill, but the devolved administrations should be involved as soon as possible in debating its content. They would then be free, like Northern Ireland, to develop their own more specific and perhaps more generous human rights instruments should they choose to do so.

So what does it tell us about the commonality our "shared British values" if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are free to diverge from the "United Kingdom" (sometimes called "Britain", but known to the people that live there as "England") and also from each other?

According to the Joint Committe the Bill of Rights should enshrine common British values:

We suggest that a Bill of Rights and Freedoms should give lasting effect to values shared by the people of the United Kingdom: we include liberty, democracy, fairness, civic duty, and the rule of law.

And therein lies the difficulty. The Scots, Welsh and Irish have more democracy than the English, who have no democracy at all as "the English". When it comes to fairness the UK Government annually lavishes the Scots with a £1,500 per head bonus, for no other reason than being Scottish. And when it comes to civic duty the Scots and Welsh will opt in or out as they see fit, or change the frame of reference from Britishness to Scottishness and Welshness. Even on liberty there is a divergence because the Scots suffer less surveillance than the English and are afforded some protection by the Scottish Government from the excesses of New Labour's ID card scheme. Under the circumstances it all sounds like complete hypocrisy from the British Establishment.

Upon taking office the judges of England pledge to "do right by all manner of people, after the law and usages of this realm". Gordon Brown's suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus seems to me to be so fundamentally subversive to the common law and usages of this realm that if I were a judge I would have no hesitation in ignoring 42-days detention, especially since this draconian legislation is directed against a certain manner of people. But then what do I know of the law.

I may not be a student of jurisprudence, but I do know what I like, and this exposition of what it means to be English, from the aptly named Tom Paine, is one that I wholeheartedly endorse:

our patriotism is not so much to do with "blood and soil." At its best, it is a matter of values. Those values are rooted in Magna Carta, which set the laws of England above her rulers. They are rooted in habeas corpus, a simple writ which forces our rulers to account for their prisoners and to justify their detention to the courts. These things made Englishmen free long before democracy gave them the right to choose their government. They set limits that even a monarch could not cross. If you don't take pride in them, you simply don't understand what it is to be a freeborn Englishman.

On 11th September in the year 1648 the Levellers presented to Parliament their largest petition, signed by one third of all Londoners. 363 years later, to the day, al-Qaeda attacked mainland America and the subsequent "War on Terror" provided New Labour with all the political justification they required to embark on a comprehensive and systematic erosion of England's hard won civil liberties. Free-born John has been spinning in his English grave ever since.

"Last Sunday was the anniversary of Magna Carta", David Davis informed the Question Time Audience, "and Habeas Corpus, the fundamental thing that we gave away last week, is actually something that underpins what it is to be British". David Davis' view of Britishness is one that Gordon Brown apparently shares:

For there is indeed is a golden thread that runs through British history of the individual standing firm for freedom and liberty against tyranny and the arbitrary use of power. It runs from that long-ago day in Runnymede in 1215 to the Bill of Rights in 1689 to not just one, but four Great Reform Acts in less than 100 years. And the great tradition of British liberty has, first and foremost, been rooted in the protection of the individual against the arbitrary power of first the monarch and then the state.

The 'golden thread' of liberty is of course English, not British; as is the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus, a writ that is unknown to Scots law but which dates back to the 1200s in England. For Scots these things form part of their constitutional inheritance, what Tony Blair might patronisingly term a "union dividend". They are not a spiritual inheritance as they are for the English because they do not form part of what it means to be Scottish. I would love to believe that a spiritual connection to the ideals of England - the idea of England itself - is what led English MPs to vote, by a majority of 19 (which would have been more had it been a free vote), against 42-days detention. But who knows, for it seems that the Englishman representing the English constituency of Haltemprice and Howden is content to ape Gordon Brown and couch the debate in firmly terms of Britishness.

For all the merits of his campaign it is depressing that Davis can't (or won't) define his opposition to New Labour's totalitarianism as a freeborn Englishman, to tap into that rich English tradition and appeal to his constituents' Englishness. Would it really be too much to ask for an English MP to appeal to England as England in opposition to Brown's dystopian Britishness, just as Scottish politicians have used Scotland as a bulwark against government control?

Someone needs to speak for England in this civil liberties debate. But who will it be? My past disagreements with the English Democrats have been too frequent to mention, and much of the antagonism - at least on my part - stems from the fact that the very existence of an English nationalist manifesto ties what should be a cross-party case for English self-determination to other policy areas. But in Haltemprice and Howden there is a real opportunity for the EngDems, and uniquely a real need for an English party. Of all of the elections since the English Democrats Party was founded it is this one that presents an unrivaled opportunity to campaign positively for England, to fight for the very heart and soul of England: Our liberty. For the EngDems there is a chance here to slay the ghosts of previous negative campaigns, and present a positive vision of what England should be; a chance to prevent an English election being fought on a "Best for Britain" platform; a chance to make the points of reference English, in defiance of those that claim Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus for Britain.

So much has been made of Brown's shady backroom dealings with the DUP, but the fact that all New Labour's Scottish MPs (with the sole honourable exception of Katy Clark) voted with their boy in Number 10 was decisive. This is not the West Lothian Question because Scottish and Irish MPs do have a constitutional right to vote on reserved legislation. But it is The English Question. It is about English sovereignty - national sovereignty and individual sovereignty - and it's about England's right to contradict Britain as the other nations of the union so frequently do.

I've always described myself as an English nationalist, but not, necessarily, a separatist. Constitutional sovereignty, the right to determine our future, was, I thought, enough. But I must admit that this civil liberties debate has had me seriously considering the case for English independence. To argue that Scots and Irish MPs should not be permitted to corrupt England's proud tradition of individual freedoms is to argue logically that they should not vote on reserved matters. So perhaps the enticingly named Free England might be better suited than the English Democrats to freeing England from the attentions of a prime minister who has never faced the public vote in England.

Any English nationalist party that does join the fray will benefit from the absence of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and UKIP. The field is wide open and the platform will be theirs to take. Questions concerning David Davis' u-turn over his call for an English Parliament will be perfectly valid because the democratic deficit that results from the absence of an English parliament perverts the most important civil liberty that a democratic people hold - the ability to choose and remove the government.

Our Kingdom has a list of Freedoms lost under New Labour. David Davis outlines the issues here.

In all the various revolutions, with their dark and dreary scenes of violence and bloodshed, through which England has passed, the people have clung to their ancient laws with a devotion almost superstitious. -- Samuel Tyler

Labour Home: More than a third of respondents said Gordon Brown should lead Labour into the next general election.

The other two thirds thought he should sit in a gaol for 42 days and take stock of his life.

In a speech to the IPPR Gordon Brown today called for a "new chapter" in Britain's history that would protect both citizens' security and individual rights.

In a nutshell the tyrannical power of Muslim terrorism needs to be tackled with oppressive, authoritarian tyrannical impositions on the civil liberties of the British people. 42 days detention without charge is necessary to combat Muslim terrorism, and the imposition of a DNA database, ID cards and surveillance techniques will protect us all and help eliminate you from their enquiries.

Civil liberties are freedoms that protect the individual from the state. Gordon Brown's idea of protecting of civil liberties is diametrically opposed to individualism. He is a collectivist who thinks he can save us from individuals by removing individual rights. Collectivism, as I mentioned earlier, is a defining trait of a fascist.

Gordon did offer one crumb of comfort to those of us concerned at his erosion of civil liberties:

I will never, neither here nor in any other area, seek to question the right of the judges to make decisions in individual cases, or try to undermine the role of the independent judiciary which has done so much over the centuries to safeguard British values.

Great. I'll sleep well tonight knowing Gordon isn't going to abolish our independent judiciary. Good of him to make that clear. However, Gordon Brown has already undermined our independent judiciary by signing the Lisbon Treaty, making British laws and British judgements subordinate to those of the European Union.

David Davis for Freedom is launched today, news from which will be syndicated on this blog.

Gordon Brown speaking back in July 2004:

For there is indeed is a golden thread that runs through British history of the individual standing firm for freedom and liberty against tyranny and the arbitrary use of power. It runs from that long-ago day in Runnymede in 1215 to the Bill of Rights in 1689 to not just one, but four Great Reform Acts in less than 100 years. And the great tradition of British liberty has, first and foremost, been rooted in the protection of the individual against the arbitrary power of first the monarch and then the state.

Four years later he has effectively repealed the Magna Carta. 28 days was too much. How do you win back hard won freedoms from a position of 42 days? The principle of that quaint "no detention without charge" is lost. The great tradition of English (not British but English) liberty that ran like a golden thread through English history has been severed.

And why? Because 9 DUP and 38 Scottish Labour MPs (all but one) voted for Brown's draconian and totalitarian legislation.

Gordon Brown has all the makings of a fascist: He's nationalistic; he sees himself as the father of the nation, safe-guarding us; he's authoritarian; motivated by a strong moral, religious conviction; he's busy ushering in a police state; he believes in shaping society through societal and economic control; he's a control freak; he's statist; he's collectivist, and; he has an inferiority complex.

The only thing he doesn't have, which is usually a prerequisite, is charisma. Oh, and popularity. But when you have huge ranks of spineless imbecilic careerist gravy-trainers in your parliamentary party, and when you can bribe a bunch of witless Irishmen, you can do pretty much whatever you want. I applaud the 32 English-constituency Labour MPs that voted against the Scottish Raj, and the two Welsh Labour MPs, and the one brave Scot - Katy Clark.

All those pussies that have applauded New Labour's piecemeal "Lords reform" through which Labour have removed the random hereditary principle, replacing independent-minded peers with placemen installed by patronage, will now be hoping that the Upper House does them a favour and rejects this legislation. But they know he'll just use the Parliament Act to ignore our bicameral system.

What will it be next - ID cards, stop and search, surveillance, data-mining, removal of the right to strike?

If Gordon Brown starts shitting buckets of blood out of his arse this evening, the only tragedy will be that it was a day too late.

Sir William Blackstone, who wrote his famous Commentaries on the Laws of England in the 18th Century, recorded the first use of habeas corpus in 1305. But other writs with the same effect were used in the 12th Century, so it appears to have preceded Magna Carta in 1215.

"No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor will we send upon him except upon the lawful judgement of his peers or the law of the land."

People will roll their eyes at my use of the word 'fascist'. But this is how it begins. This coming week, more than any other, is the time for English Labour MPs to pay more than just lip service to habeas corpus and the Magna Carta. It is time for English Labour MPs to show that they believe in England.

Please read Anthony Barnett on 42 Days.

From UK Polling Report:

The latest poll shows that 47% of people think the introduction of ID cards would be a good idea, 51% think they would be a bad idea - a straight 5% swing compared to the last ICM/No2ID poll in February and the first time (apart from a very strangely worded BPIX question a year ago) that a poll has shown a majority opposed.

This is excellent news. At last the public are waking up to the dangers and costs of a database state.

Keep up to date with the latest developments at the No to ID cards blog.

Lord Levy's spokesman, commenting upon the arrest, said:

the police used their arrest powers, totally unnecessarily, apparently in order to gain access to documents that Lord Levy would quite willingly have provided without this device.

He's lucky that he didn't get extradited to America or detained for 90 days without charge.