The four remaining British Guantanamo prisoners have been released. And new Home Secretary Charles Clarke admitted there is no basis for the continued detention of the Belmarsh internees held "indefinitely" without charge or trial.
But any celebration will be muted. Clarke simultaneously announced a brace of new draconian powers, openly brandished them as a threat to both sets of detainees.
Meanwhile there are other Guantanamo detainees (noncitizens who had resided here) for whom the government has done nothing.
Hundreds of others are still incarcerated. And there are dozens more gulags scattered round the globe, not least in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them secret and undoubtedly engaged in torture and abuse.
At the time of writing, the Belmarsh internees have yet to be released despite the highest court in the land ruling their detention unlawful and the government eventually accepting this. In other times or places, this might
Mainstream
politicians and
judges have made
direct comparison
with apartheid
South Africa and
Burma.
George ChurchillColeman, head of
the Met's antiterrorist squad for 7
years, has
expressed his fear that "we are sinking L into a police state". -have led to riots.
By not immediately releasing the Belmarsh detainees New Labour is providing a crash course in the class nature of the state.
It violates the ancient principle of Habeas Corpus to which every politician, judge and parliamentarian from Margaret Thatcher leftwards regularly pays homage.
Forget what you've heard about neutrality and independence or "checks and balances". The velvet glove is off. The state is revealed as a "body of armed men". Or in this case contracted out private sector security guards.
A delicate position for any government with "democratic" pretensions.
Nonetheless these are victories. Neither the US nor British governments envisaged holding these detainees forever. They imagined rapid success in the "war on terror", through the pacification of Irag.
They assumed a domestic opposition marginalised and tainted with the "terrorist" brush. There would be a gradual, quiet, controlled release process - ideally accompanied by "confessions" and public castigation.
Instead the releases were forced on them at a time of weakness (the week of the single greatest day's loss of US military personnel in Iraq) and without anything to show for it. BLAIR The decision will be by a politician, not even a mock "court". A range of orders will allow for house arrest, curfews, tagging, surveillance, and restrictions on phone and internet use.
The government thinks it is being clever by, legalistically, attempting to crash course in defuse some of the Law Lords objections - concerning discrimination against foreign nationals and "disproportionality". But already there is a tidal wave of denunciation. This is fundamentally a political, not a legal crisis.
The objections are identical to those previously - particularly that house arrest is no better than detention and there is no "emergency. This time it will be worse, with every citizen a potential "suspect" in the new McCarthyite nightmare.
Consequently the opposition will be more robust and more widespread - the communities "suspects" come from will be able to make their own minds up whether
Coleman, head of the Met's anti-terrorist squad for years, has expressed
By not his fear that "we are immediately sinking into
police state". releasing the And David Belmarsh Bickford, former
chief legal advisor detainees New of MIS and MI6 has Labour is denounced the
"nonsense of house providing a
arrest". There is therethe class fore reason to hope
that this new batch nature of the
of terror laws can be
state. rapidly defeated.
Clarke has already been forced to retreat on his game plan of banging the new laws through parliament in a matter of weeks - the normal procedure for "anti-terror" bills. There must be a fight for the immediate and unconditional release of the detainees. Pressure on MPs is needed to maximise the inevitable revolt when this is voted on. If passed into law mass mobilisation could even make the powers unworkable. Unlike prison, communitybased punishment is only possible with the acquiescence or consent of the community.
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Christine Blower has been elected the next deputy general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT).
She defeated John Bangs, the bureaucracy's candidate by a respectable margin. Blower won 27,569 votes (54.8%) and Bangs 22,753 votes (45.2%). The turnout was 19.7%. strike action to defend pensions.
Blower is on the left of the union, though her election literature was not notably left wing. Her base of support was in branches with a Socialist Teachers' Alliance leadership.
This result will be an important boost to NUT activists looking for a positive vote for