I have to ‘fess up to being a freedom of speech fundamentalist. Personally I’d be in favour of a British equivalent to the first amendment. Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech? Sounds good to me.

But having been a working journalist for nearly 20 years, I am well aware that there are plenty of rules about what people can say in the UK.

There are the libel laws, for a start. Contrary to popular belief, bloggers do not enjoy any immunity. Oliver Kamm has already fought off one libel action from Neil Clark, at his own expense. Clark has in the past said nice thing about my book. Kamm hasn't. Nevertheless, my sympathies in the matter are entirely with Oliver.

Personally, I have lost a libel case in the Greek courts, with a six figure Euro-denominated fine ultimately footed by my employer’s libel insurance. That was before the bill from Carter Ruck & Co, who let’s just say don’t come cheap.

So rest assured, I will resist the temptation to write anything on Dave’s Part that isn’t covered by justification, privilege or fair comment. Call me a wuss. I just don’t care.

But libel laws are just the start. There are a plethora of other limitation, from D-Notices to the Race Relations Act and New Labour’s recent decision to outlaw what it defines as ‘incitement to religious hatred’.

It’s not that I don’t realise that incitement to religious hatred is a bad thing. Incitement to any kind of hatred is clearly a bad thing. But this legislation was simply unnecessary. Incitement to violence is already an offence. Anything short of that – even if it is uttered by the British National Party - should not be.

Finally, I have been a member of the National Union of Journalists since 1988. The NUJ operates a binding code of conduct, which can be read here. I will observe it fully while writing this blog.

Basically, this is institutionalised self-censorship. All entirely voluntary, old chap. Little notes like this one are part of the reason readers often do not get the full story:

ADVISORY - NOT FOR PUBLICATION:

Andrew Vallance
Air Vice-Marshal
Secretary, Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee

Astonishing, isn’t it? Assuming that any terrorists or foreign intelligence agencies are for any reason interested in the identities of the two spooks, all they have to do is walk into the Stationery Office and buy a copy of the Stevens report. It will probably even be available for download.

But information that Vallance himself admits is ‘widely available in the public domain’ won’t be featuring in the British press.

This is the fifth attempt since 2003 to get this particularly noxious piece of legislation onto the statute books. The Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General are clearly ‘never say die’ kind of guys.

Fortunately, the Lords – that standing insult to democracy that most of the left would either put on an elected footing or scrap altogether, remember? – will almost certainly curb yet another authoritarian initiative from the government and throw the damn thing out.

And then? And then Lord Falconer - pictured left - and Lord Goldsmith will wait until just before the summer recess, invoke the Parliament Act, and impose the law anyway.

The justification for the move is that the average random selection of 12 good men and true are too thick to understand the complexities at issue in a major fraud trial.

Supporters point to such fiascos as the acquittal of the Maxwell brothers, the three Guiness trials, and most recently – in March 2005 – the collapse of the Jubilee Line fraud trial after two years.

But it is clear in the latter case that the ability of the jury to grasp the essentials at stake were not the issue. The blame can largely be laid at the door of the defence team and the way it presented the evidence, as a subsequent investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service admitted.

You can read a summary of the findings here. In no way does the evidence offer any justification whatsoever for curtailing the vital protections the government is manifestly so keen to take away.

Of course, defendants in major fraud trials will be - almost by definition - major league businessmen and women of the fat cat stripe. It’s tempting to argue that the left should favour anything that makes it easier to bang up suits. After all, they have to be guilty of something.

Tempting, but wrong. If New Labour succeeds in abolishing trial by jury for one class of offences, the only question is which class of offences will be next, and which class of offences will be the next after that.

It can’t be that long before we run out of civil liberties for New Labour to crack down on. The three successive Blair administrations have effectively torn up the Geneva Convention on refugees, and repeatedly contravened the substance and spirit of the European Convention on Human Rights.

House arrest, arbitrary and punitive deportation, a shoot to kill policy on the streets of London? New Labour has flirted with them all. Even where it has been knocked back – Blair’s first defeat in the Commons came over his attempt to introduce detention without charge for up to 90 days – the government just keeps coming back for more:

Home Secretary John Reid has outlined a raft of proposals to toughen counter terror laws - including reviewing the 28-day limit on pre-charge detention.

Plans also include a sex offender-style terrorist register, and a review into courts using intercept evidence.

Although Reid will not confirm it, the likelihood is that the Brown administration will seek a second bite at the 90 day detention cherry. That would be tantamount to the introduction of internment without trial by any other name, in a manner clearly targeted at ethnic minorities.

Civil libertarians among us now have to rely on the likes of David Davis – yes, that’s right, hard right Tory leadership contender David Davis – to point out that such measures are indeed ‘draconian’.

Just because a law is labelled ‘anti-terror legislation’ that does not mean it will actually succeed in preventing any terrorism. Victims so far have including an old man heckling at Labour Party conference, people guilty of the heinous offence of wearing T-shirts carrying anti-Blair slogans, and some young Indian guy denied the chance to board his flight after a taxi driver grassed him up for listening to the Clash on his iPod.

Will they now run the risk of ending up on New Labour’s ‘sex offender-style terrorist register’ too? And what good will a ‘sex offender-style terrorist register’ do anyway, other than act as a direct incitement to lynch law by tabloid instigation?

And are we really saying that the current security situation is today more perilous than it was in either of two world wars or the cold war? If not, these pernicious proposals should be immediately interned for an indefinite period.

Among the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech today is an Employment Bill that will reportedly enable trade unions to expel members on grounds of their allegiance to a political party.

It comes after the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year overruled British legislation, dating from 1992, that prevented train drivers’ union Aslef from kicking out a British National Party activist.

In principle, voluntary organisations in civil society have every right to decide who they wish to have on their books and who they don’t. Fascists clearly have no place in the labour movement.

But it strikes me that there are obvious dangers with the proposed new law from a civil liberties perspective. It all depends on the wording of the relevant clauses, I suppose.

Could we see a situation where general secretaries are allowed bureaucratically to exclude internal opponents who belong to Marxist groups, for instance? And if so, shouldn't we flatly oppose the Bill?

But the man widely regarded as one of the world’s leading moderate Muslim clerics openly argues that it is permissible for husbands to beat their wives and that gays should be killed, and let’s just say that I remain enough of a wimpish liberal to have one or two difficulties with this.

That al Qaradawi lays down strictly circumscribed conditions for smacking up the missus if she is giving you gyp – remember, guys, you can’t use whips, sticks or boards, and the punishment isn’t suitable if you think the chick will only get off on it – strikes me as of but marginal relevance.

Apparently, he isn’t clear on whether homosexuals should be stoned to death or thrown off the top of tall buildings; but however he slices the Qur’an on this one, it isn’t going to endear him to anybody who thinks that gay rights represent more than a shibboleth.

By the way, in the same interview, he opines that heterosexual ‘fornicators’ should suffer equivalent punishment. Many of us will have to declare an interest here.

But does any of the above amount to sufficient grounds on which to deny him a visa to enter Britain for medical treatment, which the government has done today? Even being the miserable Islamophobe I clearly am, I think not.

Remember, Britain was happy enough to allow the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – a man who ordered the death of 3,000 people - to come to Harley Street for that exact same reason. Sadly, Jack Straw even let him out again.

More recent guests in this country have included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, head of the wonderful petro-kleptocracy that presides over the public beheadings in Chop Square. Indeed, he is such a vital customer for BAE Systems that he even merited Her Majesty’s company for a coach ride to Buckingham Palace. Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf also qualified for the state visit treatment.

If David Cameron is going to get so exercised about ‘preachers of hate’ being allowed into this country, he should remember that French fascist leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has sometimes crossed the Channel to address rightwing pressure groups that include Conservative Party members.

Al Qaradawi isn’t seeking to come to London to buy billions of pounds worth of jet fighters, or even popping over for a quick spot of rabble-rousing; he wants to see a doctor. If that's OK for retired caudillos, why shouldn't it be OK in this instance?

The question of how far society should tolerate the intolerant is one of the oldest saws in political theory. But this time at least, al Qaradawi should be extended his human rights, even if he militates against the extension of human rights to others.

MAINLY I spend my time online seeking out delicious home baking recipes and downloading Bible study podcasts. But suppose I was the type of guy who waited until the missus was out and then frantically googled for hot Asian teens? Shouldn't my surfing habits should be for me to know, and not for Jacqui Smith to find out?

On general libertarian principle, then, the government’s plans to keep a record of every single phone call made, every last text message and email sent, and each website visited by everyone in Britain should be implacably opposed.

After all, I pay Virgin £17.99 a month from my post-tax income, and I am accordingly entitled to full access to whatever filth, depravity, lunatic conspiracy theory, finely honed polemic or government propaganda is out there in cyberspace, without this being recorded for posterity.

It’s none of the state’s business if I wish to watch footage of mature BBWs doing unfeasible things with vegetables, catch up on the latest announcements from the Belarus department of central planning, or even steal a furtive glance at www.labour.org.uk.

We already live in a country with more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the world, and a four million strong DNA database that contains details of thousands of UK residents who have committed no crime. I am being entirely serious when I say that I cannot thing of a single state in history that has possessed technology with such obviously repressive potential.

Moreover, the government is determined to force through such tried-and-tested traditional dictatorship faves as ID cards and de facto internment, in the form of 42-day detention without charge.

Sure, it is entirely legit for the cops and the spooks to keep tabs on jihadi talkboards and kiddie fiddler picture exchanges, and maybe one or two other categories of website that don’t immediately spring to mind. But that’s about it.

Given the mindnumbing banality of 99% of the billions of texts sent every day - ‘not sure if turned off iron’, ‘luv u lots!@!!’ and ‘need anyfing from shops? onions?’ – it is highly doubtful that keeping them on file for up to a year takes the GWoT any further forward.

Anyway, only the most stupid al Qa’eda operative would use his own PC or phone for a crucial communication. That’s what nicked mobiles and internet cafes are for.

Or put it another way; if those bastards ever do get their hands on a genuine weapon of mass destruction, it isn’t likely to be because they were able to snap one up cheaply on eBay, is it?

BINYAM Mohamed may or may not have received firearms and explosives training from al Qa’eda or fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. He may or may not have been involved alongside Jose Padilla in a dirty bomb plot that may or may not have existed.

If there is evidence of involvement in conspiracy to murder and commit terrorism – and those are the charges Mohamed faces – it is right that the matter be brought before a court. If he is found guilty, it is right that he be punished.

None of this is in dispute. Yet the very same first principles underline that Mohamed, like any person standing in the dock accused of any crime, is entitled to justice. Even if the argument from the ABCs of jurisprudence were not so wholly persuasive, brute pragmatism points in the same direction too.

The sophisticated public relations wing of the Islamist terror milieu will inevitably seek to present the proceedings to the Muslim world as a politically-motivated a frame-up. That Mohamed will stand before a no-jury kangaroo court and could face the death sentence hardly complicates that task; it would be mistaken to render the publicists’ job even easier.

All the more vital, then, that his contention that the case against him is largely based on confessions extracted by torture be given proper consideration.

Mohamed says that he was seized by American and British intelligence officials in Pakistan in 2002, and thereafter taken to Morocco. During 18 months detention in that country, he claims that he was regularly beaten and scalded, and his penis slashed with a scalpel.

Following a spell in a CIA facility in Kabul – during which he says he suffered sleep deprivation, starvation and further beatings - he has since 2004 been held in Guantanamo Bay. Despite a formal request for his return in 2007, he remains the last Briton still in custody at the western hemisphere’s most famous interment camp.

Seven paragraphs in a report from the US government to the British government are widely presumed to provide strong documentary support for this story. Naturally, Mohamed’s legal team has applied to the High Court for publication.

The two-judge panel left no doubt that it thought the missing wording should be in the public domain. Nothing in the text exposes any intelligence agents to any risk, they stressed.

But the Foreign Office refuses to release the information, for fear that the US would then cease to share intelligence with the UK, and the judges say that they cannot overrule the Foreign Office.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband defended the position in the Commons today, arguing that:

… the disclosure of the intelligence documents at issue by order of UK courts against the wishes of the US authorities would indeed cause real and significant damage to the national security and international relations of this country.

This stance is myopic in the extreme. Not to allow publication would be massive counterproductive and a serious error from every standpoint. Such temporary embarrassment as the disclosure would cause will be more than offset by the long-term consequences of the cover up. Miliband should order the immediate release of all relevant material.

RETIRED though he was at the time, there can be no doubt as to the gravity of the crimes committed by Augusto Pinochet. Sadly, the government had no problem allowing the former military dictator to come to London for medical treatment in 1998.

Equally sadly, it had no problem with allowing him to return to his native Chile, even after the Spanish authorities lodged a provisional arrest warrant, charging him with systematic torture, murder, illegal detention, and forced disappearances.

Such a display of cowardice - motivated in part by then home secretary Jack Straw’s inability to stand up to the pressure exerted by the monetarist mass murderer’s extensive British fan club - was hardly this government’s finest hour.

More recent guests in this country have included King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, head of the wonderful petro-kleptocracy that presides over the public beheadings in Chop Square. Indeed, he is such a vital customer for BAE Systems that he even merited Her Majesty’s company for a coach ride to Buckingham Palace.

Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf and Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao have also seen the red carpet rolled out in their honour. No problems there, then. It is a matter of policy that heads of state or heads of government, past or present, be allowed free access to the UK, no matter what the gravity of the depravity they sanction, perpetuate or even personally perform.

That being the case, why baulk at two-bob hot gospel preachers, minor league shock jocks, Russian boot boys and the occasional radical Islamist? Such are the manner of men that appear on Jacqui Smith’s ‘least wanted’ list of those banned from the UK, because they have said things that foster extremism or hatred.

I do not know full details of the CV of each individual. But let us take the charges as proven. It seems clear enough that without exception they promote viewpoints anybody on the consistent left is certain to find execrable. Does that mean they should be debarred from Britain? I’m not convinced by the argument advanced by Mr Straw’s successor:

… Ms Smith said granting free speech did not provide a licence to preach hatred and that those banned had "clearly overstepped the mark" with the attitudes they had expressed.
"[Naming them] enables people to see the sorts of unacceptable behaviour we are not willing to have in this country.

"Coming to this country is a privilege. We won't allow people into this country who are going to propagate the sort of views... that fundamentally go against our values."

At the purely practical level, there must inevitably be some limitations on freedom of speech, if only to prevent people shouting ‘fire!’ in crowded theatres. But to allow the state to set the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable in political and religious debate is inevitably problematic.

When Smith talks about ‘our’ values, to whom exactly is she referring? In all cases, there are fringe groupings of Britons who share precisely the beliefs propagated by those she wishes to exclude. Logically, should she not propose that they somehow be gagged, too? And do not the values liberal Britons espouse, at least nominally, include precisely the right to express abhorrent viewpoints?

In the internet age, isn’t it simply ridiculous to suppose that it is possible to shield citizens from exposure to invidious sentiment, anyhow? For those attracted to the rantings of white supremacists or deranged jihadists, the content is only a click away.

Ultimately, free speech for moderate British residents is better served if UKIP supporters hear Geert Wilders, Dyab Abou Jahjah appears on Stop the War Coalition platforms, and the home secretary is not permitted to control of which foreigners are allowed to address the public.

After all, if mass murdering caudillos are welcome to see a Harley Street specialist, what can possibly be the issue with giving sundry whackjobs access to Speakers’ Corner?

SAY someone of Basque extraction, working in London, hangs behind his desk a flag obviously based on the Union Jack, save that the crosses are white and green and the background red. Just for clarification, we’ll add here that all his colleagues know that to refer to him even casually as ‘Spanish’ is making a one heck of a mistake.

And when the story breaks that Euskadi ta Askatasuna tried three times to assassinate Jose Maria Aznar, failing on each occasion, our hypothetical friend maintains in conversation that they were right to do so, and that he hopes that they have better luck next time.

Alternatively, anyone old enough to remember the days of lock ins at Irish pubs may have found themselves standing to attention at some point in the small hours, as the show band played a passable version of Amhrán na bhFiann and the buckets started passing round and filling up with cash. If someone told me that whiprounds of this type are to this day routine for the benefit of the Realers or the Contos, I would not be able to profess myself shocked.

We can even take the more recent example of the numerous demonstrations staged by Tamils in Parliament Square last year, in which banners bearing the emblem of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam were in the hands of every other protester.

Overt expressions of sympathy for ETA, the IRA and the LTTE – all of which, whatever one thinks of the causes for which they stand, have indubitably killed many people - are common enough within some communities, and in practice tolerated by the law within certain bounds. Yet all three are on the Home Office list of proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000.

So, as of tomorrow, will be Islam4UK. The difference is that Amjem Choudary’s outfit firstly does not have any noticeable degree of popular support among Muslims, and secondly has never planted a bomb. To outlaw them is manifestly unjust.

Organisations can fall foul of the Terrorism Act if they ‘commit or participate in acts of terrorism, prepare for, promote or encourage terrorism or are otherwise concerned in terrorism’. It has not been shown conclusively that Islam4UK has done any of these things, within the legal meaning of these terms.

If there is evidence of direct terrorist involvement, then those suspected of it should rightly stand trial. Throw the book at them, I say. But the government appears not to feel that that it has such a case.

The reasoning behind Alan Johnson’s ban is rather that Islam4UK is held to ‘unlawfully glorify the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism’. That is an interesting choice of word. The restriction is not upon advocacy, justification, or even mere apologia, but upon glorification.

Meaning what, exactly? Well, in the words of the legislation, ‘“glorification” includes any form of praise or celebration, and cognate expressions are to be construed accordingly.’

But isn’t there a difference between writing a pornographic novel that glorifies rape, conspiracy to commit rape, and rape itself? If you make a movie that portrays the life of an East End gangster as impossibly glamorous, and may arguably encourage some kid in Bethnal Green to take up a life of crime, that is hardly the same thing as being a diamond blagger. If it was, Guy Ritchie would long ago have been banged up for unlawful glorification.

It boils down to this; to be in a group that takes a positive view of any project deemed terrorist by the government of the day becomes a criminal offence punishable be ten years in prison. That’s a decade behind bars on the say so of the state, for what amounts to nothing more thoughtcrime.

Were New Labour so minded, those strictures could theoretically be applied against much of the existing far left. Come to that, there was a time when the African National Congress enjoyed mainstream support in the Labour Party, even though Thatcher famously branded the ANC as, well, terrorists.

Any notion of ‘unlawful glorification’ as a serious offence is monstrous in its ramifications. In a democracy, it has no place on the statute books.