The paradox seems to be that having shown unbelievable indulgence towards violent Islamicists for over a decade - allowing the supporters, for example, of the Algerian GIA (as was) to flourish here - the British state is now engaging in such a ham-fisted approach.

Gaoling people for Internet activity of any kind always struck me as a slippery-slope. In any political dimension, (British extreme-right, Islamicist extreme-right) is becomes a potential block on free-speech. If some of the recent police actions could be interpreted as 'anti-Muslim', however, others (such as the West Midlands Police) have tried to restrict freedom by defending racist Islamicists (in their reeaction to the Channel Four programme, Undercover Mosque). It would be mistake, therefore, to give credence to the notion of the reactionary multi-culturalists and Islamicists that there is some kind of 'plot' against islam. In any case, as Dave says, there definitely is a terrorist threat, and we should not underestimate it. Nor come out with the usual weak-minded excuses for such murderers.

What is important is, rather than section off one group to defend, that there be a general defence of civil liberties. I would put it in the context of a widespread administrative effort to 'discipline and punish' right across the board. There is a tendency for the neo-liberal state to make its own iron cage, around people's behaviour. The strong state and the free economy as Andrew Gamble called it under Thatcher. At the heart of this is a strongly repressive attitude towards anything foreign (illegal workers, asylum seekers) or against trouble-makers (remember our ever-tightening restrictions on protest, and the existing anti-union laws), as well as, real or presumed, terrorists, and we have something far deeper than an attack on 'Islam'.

As Dave rightly says, the 56 Day limit on detention without trial is an outrageous step towards internment. It is a scandal: if the police have any indication of wrong-doing surely they can come up with charges in the first place.

Good post. I think, though, that heightened racism and xenophobia since 9/11 have already bathed large swathes of public life in a reactionary atmosphere, legitmated by the state and the media apparatuses. It's not something that's about to happen; it's a process that is already well under way. To have darkened skin (or to wear a hijab) in Britain in 2007 is to risk being physically threatened or verbally abused not just as 'Paki' but as 'bomber' 'terrorist' or even 'bin Laden'. That's how racism works as "the ideological moment in a process of domination", to quote Robert Miles.

David,
Are you sure the PTA was responsible for the cases you cite?
Many of the same people and methods were behind the Bridgewater case amongst others.

Dave, i know civil liberties are important and its your blog, and you have offered to publish a piece on wlefare, but the last ten(more) pieces have all been about civil liberties, political parties,and political processes. There is some really bad stuff happening to working class/poor people, stuff the left used to prioritise, now the (liberal middle class?) hierarchy of oppression means these concerns are largely going unheeded, time for a rethink? back to basics?

John R

Of course you are correct, there is some bad stuff happening to working class people, and even more will occur if this legislation goes through, for never forget it will be mainly working class muslims who will suffer under its draconian terms. Just as it was working class Irish men and women who were targeted under the PTA.

When governments chip away at our civil liberties, 9/10 times it is we working class people who will become the victims of these new laws. This is why Dave is correct to remind us of just how flimsy our freedoms can be..

http://organizedrage.blogspot.com/

You say "if the secret state has any justification whatsoever, it is to monitor those planning the mass slaughter of ordinary people"

You also say "I am not disputing the need for determined counter-terrorist measures"

Can you not see the problem here? That however honorable your intentions may be, supporting the state in fighting "terrorism" will lead you into being seen by some as being on the wrong side. The state makes no difference in what we would call legitimate military and economic targets and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. They condemn all with equal vigour.
So you in supporting the state in taking these measures and taking your views to their logical conclusions can I and others assume that you are just as happy when the security forces prevent attacks on legitimate targets and convict those who carry them out and also plan to carry out an attack lets say on an air force base from where bombing raids on Iraq and Afganistan take place?

So you in supporting the state in taking these measures and taking your views to their logical conclusions can I and others assume that you are just as happy when the security forces prevent attacks on legitimate targets and convict those who carry them out and also plan to carry out an attack lets say on an air force base from where bombing raids on Iraq and Afganistan take place?

So, Paddy, it's your position that security forces are subhuman somehow and deserving of death? That's some ethical theory. And what are you backing it up with? Is killing air force members is OK because they kill people? Isn't that a little hypocritical?

Where's the difference between your position and that of ultranationalists and old imperialists who thought it was OK to kill certain inferior groups - in your case the military - for their own good?

"So, Paddy, it's your position that security forces are subhuman somehow and deserving of death?"

They join up on their own free will, there's no conscription here. So if they jackboot round the world and oppress others, that will inevitably piss some people off, and they will fight back.

I had a chance to read the "Marxism & Terrorism" pamphlet put out by Pathfinder the other night and was struck by how coherent and frankly simple Trotsky's arguments were against terrorism.

He argues that as a tactic it is the inability to involve that masses in any given issue and an attempt to substitute themselves for the masses that lies behind acts of individual terrorism.

Trotsky rejects this out of hand as an afront to the working class and also notes how the state security forces are strengthened by such acts.

While he doesn't hide which side his sympathies lay with in the case of the individual shooting of a Nazi by Grynzpan, it is clear that it is not a "moral" but a "tactical" and revolutionary view that he takes.

I think many of these debates on here revolve around two sides of the moral issue instead of the question of tactics or broader effects on the class. We can go on forever about the morals or lack or morals invovled in individual acts - but to me the point is to look at why are people doing these things and what role the left has to play in discouraging these acts while encouraging class consciousness and rebuilding left movements.

It is precisely because the left is so weak internationally that individual terrorism has gained the hearing that it has.

Good shout, TWP. There was an old Militant pamphlet from the 1970/80s on 'Marxism and Terrorism' which I bought for a quid a while ago, and I too found Trotsky's view of the matter quite illuminating and refreshing in how straight-down-the-line it was. "Engendered by the absence of a revolutionary class, regenerated later by a lack of confidence in the revolutionary masses, terrorism can maintain itself only by exploiting the weakness and disorganization of the masses, minimizing their conquests, and exaggerating their defeats."

I think this ties in with what Gilbert Achar has written: "The resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism is not the culturally inevitable form of radicalisation in Muslim countries; until recently most people in Muslim countries spurned the ideology. It won out only by default, after its competition was eliminated by their common adversary." And that competition was often left-wing (hence the longstanding support for Islamic fundamentalism by the US and even Israel).

This kind of approach doesn't really go down very well on much of the "Left" at the moment though, does it? We're not supposed think or talk like this. We're supposed to throw our arms in the air and scream "Islamofascist!" Someone like Normas Geras would probably become hysterical if he saw what we'd written above, all this "morally indefensible apologia" etc. etc.

I was brought up in the old IS/IMG and I remember reading the Pathfinder pamphlet adverted to above. We always used to criticise the IRA for its individualistic acts of terrorism, and the phrase 'petty bourgoise despair' springs to mind. I don't know what happened, why the sea-change among the so-called revolutionary left? It's not completely a moral question, but, hell, how can you sleep at night knowing you've just slit the throat of a child, or blown up a mother or blasted a father trying to provide for his family? Actually, I do have an idea why it changed. The collapse of Stalinism, leaving a ideological vacuum and a political abyss into which certain elements were more than happy to rush into. What a price to pay for the overthrow of Stalinism, eh? As for the civil liberties argument. To be honest, my feeling as the woman on the Wood Green omnibus is that the police should be allowed as much time as they need to smash these gangs. Obviously, it may be necessary to have it reviewed but I don't know what kind of investigation they have to do, very complex I expect, so I would not want them to miss anything. If people are concerned about the effect, let them build a campaign in the unions and labour parties and win the mass of the population over to their point of view. As I said before, take your arguments to the class and let them judge. (You could also flog Ms Malik's poetry will you're at it.).

Why do you think the British police need more time than anyone else in the world? Are they more stupid?

I love Sue R's faith in the police that they won't mis-use their powers, despite all the evidence to the contrary (see the OP).

I hate to say it, but I'd have more faith in the Police than in a gang of Islamic cutthroats.

Fantastic false dichotomy there. Quite possibly the most specious reasoning I've ever seen on this or any other blog.

The choice is between giving the police more powers (which they will mis-use as always, as shown above) or not. It's not a choice between whether you trust Ian Blair or Osama Bin Laden more. That made me laugh out loud it was so unutterably stupid.

How about the point that we already have the longest detention of any Western country? Are all the other countries' police forces just more competent?

... So if they jackboot round the world and oppress others, that will inevitably piss some people off, and they will fight back.

Some of them are jack booted thugs. But certainly not all; I'd guess a minority.

But you aren't interested in that atall. You're using the same sort of stereotyping excuse as the many and varied Jew-killers of history, Milosevich, and Churchill when he decided it was morally OK to test poison gas bombing in Iraq in response to their rebellion.

You still haven't explained why it's not hypocrisy to support killing people because they kill.

Jeff wrote:
> How about the point that we already have the longest detention of any Western country?

I think we've gotcha beat with Gitmo. Nyah, nyah... Sigh. When they announced Gitmo, I was afraid it would turn into indefinite detention because there's no need for the bureaucrats to review your case atall, just like in the old Chateau d'If I read about as a kid in the Count of Monte Cristo. I was right for far too many years.

how can you sleep at night knowing you've just slit the throat of a child

Who are you addressing at this point, Sue?

All those people who slit childrens' throats.

Is that your working definition of 'terrorism'?

Sue R: " We always used to criticise the IRA for its individualistic acts of terrorism, and the phrase 'petty bourgoise despair' springs to mind. "

Well there was more than one school of though on that.

I think there was another strand in the IS/SWP that were much more fullsome on support of the IRA. Myself for one, and the current national secretary Martin Smith.

Phil: Is that your definition of 'resistance fighter'? @Suffer the little children to come unto me.' ('Suffer' in the modern sense not the archaic.).

Andy: Yeah, I remember all those debates about Latin American guerillas. Wasn't that one of the differences within the International between teh American SWP and the Mandelites. Violence is a male thing though, isn't it.

Sue - why on earth would it be?

It's true that "people the Daily Mail considers terrorists" is a larger group than "people I consider terrorist". It's also true that "people I consider terrorist" is a larger group than "people who slit the throats of children", and - more relevantly - that "people who could be charged under our current anti-terrorist legislation" is a larger group than any of them.

I think the last and largest group is the most relevant here, and harking back to the smallest group is neither useful nor relevant.

The larger group will contain some of the smaller group. Let's draw a Venn diagram to get it clear. There will be an intersection, I am afraid. Obviously not in all cases, but there will be some.

I'm sure there is an intersection - I'd be prepared to say they're concentric circles. The point is that what's true of those in the innermost circle (child-killers) isn't necessarily true of those in the next one out, let alone the much larger circles outside them.

Do you really mean to say that at the heart of the 'larger' group of people, there are always child-killers?

Not secure about the latin Amerian guerillas

When you said you were "brought up in the old IS/IMG"

I assumed by IS you meant International Socialists (IS) and you later switched to the IMG.

At me end of the SWP continuum, the only think
g wrong with the IRA was they could never kill enough brit soldiers to win, and we were rather less critical of the provisional IRA than Sinn Fein were.

I meant not sure ...

Mr Newman: No, you meant 'secure'. Still, no doubt, when you were leading your occupation in Bristol Poly, you spent a lot of time debating terrorism into the night.

I'm not sure what point you're making, Sue. What I'm saying is that

- lots and lots of people could qualify as 'terrorists' under the Terrorism Act 2000; call them Terrorists In British Law
- SOME BUT NOT ALL of that group (TIBL) would be likely to be labelled 'terrorist' by the tabloids; call them Terrorists In The Eyes of the Media
- SOME BUT NOT ALL of this group (TITEOTM) would actually deserve to be called 'terrorists'; call them Actual Real Life Terrorists
and
- SOME BUT NOT ALL of that group (ARLT) go around killing children.

Any statement you make about child-killing terrorists will have limited relevance to ARLTs, successively less relevance to TITEOTMs and TIBLs, and pretty close to sod-all relevance to TIBLs.

Phil: You obviously haven't got a visual imagination. Concentric circles contain each successive stage, while a Venn diagram has distinct sets. (Primary school maths.). Anyway, given that terrorists go in for a stratergy of indiscriminate terror, it is highly likely that young children will be caught up in the violence, and indeed, they often are.

Concentric circles contain each successive stage, while a Venn diagram has distinct sets.

Yes, I know. If it's any clearer, what I'm saying is that the set of child-killing terrorists is a subset of the set of all terrorists, which is a subset of the set of all people labelled terrorists, which is a subset of the set of all people who might be characterised as terrorists in British law.

We're talking about the effects of British law. It therefore seems appropriate to think about the group of people who might be characterised as terrorists in British law, not about the tiny subset of a subset of a subset who commit these particularly ghastly acts you're talking about.

i hate to be a controversialist

But why is it more morally repugnant to kill children than to kill anyone else?

And why is it more morally repugnant for "terrorists" to kill people than for governments to do so?

And isn't terror a legitimate strategy of war - and may actually lead to less sfuffering, if it leads to demoralistion and capitulation of your enemy sooner? For example bombing civilian population centres can lead to a catastrophic collapse in morale and industrial capacity (Thanks to US General Billy Mitchell for that insight),

Without General le may's terror bombing raids on manland japan from may 1945 onwards the USA would have had much greater difficulty in subjuagting the Japanese empire.

And if General Le may can set fire to Tokyo and kill 100000 i one night and make 400000 home less, then he is a sort of terrorist isn't he?

So why is someone who kills half a dozen people worse?

Andy newman: Isn't the lesser evilargument the one used to justify the dropping of the atom bombs? And, even the invasion of Iraq?

And why is it more morally repugnant for "terrorists" to kill people than for governments to do so?

To kill CIVILIANS. Because societies need police and militaries to survive (name any two surviving nations that don't either have both or guarantees from other nations). The deaths involved are still evil, I'd say, but a necessity of operation.

The result of a successful terror bombing is... dead, hurt, and annoyed civilians, with no improvement in the world. In fact, the world's likely to be worse, because reprisals are pretty likely, encouraging cycles of violence.

Now, I do certainly think the guerilla warfare that produced the United States, Columbia, and other Latin American states was good stuff. The lack of attacks on populations made it alot easier to get reasonable ends to those wars.

And isn't terror a legitimate strategy of war - and may actually lead to less sfuffering . . . For example bombing civilian population centres can lead to a catastrophic collapse in morale and industrial capacity

Not any more. Notice that the various Coalitions taking action in Afghanistan and Iraq have orders to mimize civilian and collateral damage. And it's not just to draw moral distinctions, but because alot of analysis, going back to after after WWII says that bombing civilians mostly only united sentiment among said populations. I mean, that goes a long way to explaining why Hitler had such broad support even after most of the world was lined up against the Axis. No, the only spot bombing seems to've helped was when used against infrastructure and factories. Le May certainly is a terrorist by contemporary standards, though, of course, not when he gave his orders.