STALINESQUE; reminiscent of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; smacks of a police state; unprecedented; heavy-handed. Leading figures in the Conservative Party have been quick to slam last night’s arrest of opposition frontbencher Damian Green, who is suspected of leaking sensitive government documents to national newspapers.
Nine counter-terrorism officers searched his offices in the House of Commons and his constitutency, as well as his homes in Kent and London. Green himself spent nine hours in custody before being released on unconditional bail.
From what details have been made public so far, this appears to be a shameful display of New Labour authoritarianism, presumably designed expressly to put the frighteners on Green’s sources. It may be that details will emerge later that will vindicate the decision, of course, but nothing we know so far makes this come across as anything more than bullying on the most abject strain.
As Green points out, embarrassing the government is an important part of his job description. That brief will inevitably sometimes include putting information that New Labour wants to keep quiet into the public domain.
Yet just in case the Tories maintain their persistent pretence of perennial occupation of the moral high ground, it’s worth mentioning a couple of incidents from Britain’s last spell under Conservative rule.
Let’s not forget Foreign and Commonwealth Office clerical officer Sarah Tisdall, jailed in 1983 after anonymously sending photocopied documents detailing plans for the arrival of US cruise missiles in the UK to The Guardian.
Let’s not forget either Clive Ponting – a senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence – who in 1984 sent two documents concerning the sinking of Argentinian warship General Belgrano in the Falklands War to a Labour MP.
It transpired that the vessel had been sighted a day earlier than officially reported, was steaming away from the Royal Navy taskforce, and was outside the exclusion zone when it was attacked and sunk.
That a jury subsequently acquitted Ponting on two charges under the Official Secrets Act is not the point; the fact is, a Conservative government made damn sure the case came to court.
The reality is that no government happily tolerates leaks of any material that put them in a bad light, and will freely use the powers of the state to discourage the practice wherever they deem that to be in their advantage.
Green is a member of parliament, of course. But that does not confer immunity from common law offences. Yes, his arrest is a disgrace, but not a disgrace qualitatively different from those of two decades ago.
Posted at 14:24, 28 November 2008
Comments (14)
Ex Punk!!!! You're just a stuck up leftie ponce, mate!
Neither Sarah Tisdall nor Clive Ponting were a shadow minister or MP.
The use of anti-terrorism legislation to enable a search of an MP's office in Westminster is extraordinary and in my view very difficult for the police to justify.
Err ! What use of anti-terrorist legislation ?
Or is this yet another tory lie.
Personally I would have thought that provisions under the Mental Health Act apply.
GW
Yeah, but was it New Labour doing this - or the cops themselves?
Also compare today with news that the judge in the case of the Milton Keynes local journalist, Sally Murrer, has said that the cops "had breached the journalists' Article 10 rights" and so ended her prosecution.
When arrested she was "strip-searched and held in custody for 30 hours and because I had just moved and didn't have a telephone at the house, I couldn't contact my children or tell them what was going on." "I was told five times that I would go to prison for life."
Her alleged crime - writing stories showing up the cops with leaked information - e.g. An internal police memo in which police officers were offered overtime for tracking terrorists. Or as Jeremy Dear, leader of the NUJ said: "Let's be clear, this was an attempt to make a criminal out of a journalist for receiving information that the state didn't want to get out.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7750669.stm)
I can believe that Labour didn't know the Green case was happening - the cops do what the like - although it was complete bollocks for Labour to compare their 'cash for questions' arrests v Green's. Alleged sleaze = asking difficult questions - only in the parallel fucked world of New Labour.
I wonder if they kicked Green's door in? What precisely did all nine pigs do (apart from doubtless scaring everyone inside).
It's hard to guess which way capitalist politics will evolve in the UK but clearly one arm of the state is miles ahead and has slipped on its jackboots long ago.
We better prepare ourselves to defend against them - maybe including a broad based, civil rights, anti-police campaign or, if we let the cops get their way, we will eventually end up with their footwear stamping down on our face, forever. Fuck the police.
I will be posting on the above cases - and Marx and the state - over the weekend on my site
Defend the Tory!
what disgrace?
why's that?
it is the only good bit of news for the last few days, more the pity that they didn't take the whole of the Tory Front Bench into custody for a few days
Tories getting arrested is always a laugh, should happen more often
there's a radical thought :)
modernityblog:
"what disgrace?
why's that?
it is the only good bit of news for the last few days, more the pity that they didn't take the whole of the Tory Front Bench into custody for a few days"
Come off it, modernitititiny.
Of course I share your joy at Tories or fascists getting 'embarrassed'.
The way it was done and the legal and physical powers deployed, however, are not things to celebrate.
I do not enjoy it because it will be another nail in the coffin of democracy. and also the Labour party.
Mr Osler, as a journalist yourself, I wonder how you view the government's plan to create a massive database at GCHQ of all the electronic communications taking place in the UK e.g. all telephone calls, email, text messages sent and received as well as web sites accessed etc. Won't the government's access to this data impact on the ability of journalists to maintain contacts with sources and preserve their anonymity?
This database will let the government identify the regular contacts made via electronic communications systems between the following groups of interest:
i) journalists
ii) civil servants
iii) MPs and Peers
iv) campaign groups
v) policemen
vi) military personnel
vii) businessmen
The system could easily produce a map showing the communications passing between any of these groups ' members with the others, allowing the government to quickly determine the vector of transmission of a particular piece of information (from civil servant, governing party MP, policeman or military officer to journalist, opposition MP or campaigner).
Do you think this will impact on the practice of journalism in this country?
To a large extent, they are already there. Echelon has been in force in the EU for quite some time. Whether it can really hoover up all phone calls and e-mails the way it is supposed to, I don't know, but at least one Labour MEP was expressing concerns about it as far back as the late 1990s.
The idea that MPs should be above the law in any way shape or form, as promulgated by Denis McShane in connection with this case, don't float my boat.
What's good (or bad) enough for Ruth Turner whose arrest the Tory blog mob cheered though it was worse than this is good (or bad) enough for Damian Green.
Without fear or favour is the idea of the service surely. I can't say I'm that exercised by green's arrest or his treatment really.
And I don't like this "don't you know who I am?" schtick at all.
David,
Ponting and Tisdall did deserve outrage over their arrests but they were not part of the official oppositions. Green's job, constitutionally, is to hold the government to account. This makes it all the more outrageous.
Chris Paul.
Never allow parliament to get in the way of the party?
the fact you don't get it helps explain the deserved 11 point poll deficit.
Much more of this and you'll be looking at a 100+ majority that would be terrible for everyone.
I think there's a bit of "you scratch my back, I'll recognise your operational independence" going on.
Harriet Harman is taking a stronger line than Jacqui Smith, on important constitutional principles being at stake in the arrest.
I thought it was good that Andrew Marr pressed Smith this morning about if she had authorised any tapping of Green's phone/Blackberry.
Finally, no one seems to be hunting down the mole in the Treasury who keeps Robert Preston so well informed. Leaks suit Labour when it helps their "news management" cycles.
Well, they are now talking about lie detectors for benefit claimants, and special uniforms for minor offenders doing community service. I am thinking of opening a book on when in this century the UK achieves a fascist state model.