Much comment today about the fact that the government’s anti-terrorist bill only scraped through the House of Commons yesterday by one vote, which means that it’s in trouble. The Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is apparently now preparing to water down the provision to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days; a 28-day compromise is now being talked about. The comment has almost all been along the lines of the wheels coming off the Blair government bus. That may or may not be so. Much more important is the fact that powers that are needed to fight the menace of Islamist terrorism will not now be provided.

At present, the police can hold terrorism suspects for up to 14 days before charging them. As a wholly convincing paper written by the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorism Branch argued, the police need much longer because Islamist terrorism is a completely different beast from any previous terrorism. In the past, the police waited before making arrests until at or near the point of a terrorist attack, so that they could assemble enough evidence to make the case stand up in court. But unlike previous terrorists, the Islamists give no warnings and seek to inflict as many casualties as possible. So the police can no longer afford to take the risk of waiting. To protect the public, they are therefore forced to arrest suspects well before they have finished their investigations. Given the global nature of the terrorist networks, those investigations can involve inquiries on several continents, involving hundreds of computers and with many different languages to be translated. So clearly, unless they can hold suspects for much longer than 14 days, they cannot protect the country.

Yet this is precisely the risk that our parliamentarians have now endorsed, thanks to a bone-headed alliance between the supremely irresponsible left of the Labour party and — get this — a Conservative opposition that is making common cause with it. Dean Godson says what needed to be said in today’s Times:

The most unedifying aspect of the passage of the Terrorism Bill through the Commons has been the pleasure with which the Tory home affairs team, led by David Davis, has entered into a kind of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact with the do-gooding classes and Campaign Group crusties to dilute key elements of the Government’s response to the 7/7 suicide attacks...Yet despite a briefing from the Met on Privy Council terms, Mr Davis breezily waved aside such points at the second reading — asserting that government should not simply go along with what the police want. Instead, like some anguished Islingtonian from Matrix Chambers, he frets about draconian measures creating more 'martyrs'. Why?

Partly, it is because Mr Davis himself is a fairly crude beast who likes opposition for opposition’s sake. In his opportunistic way, he no doubt thinks he is pulling a brilliant stunt by citing such ultra-liberal judges as Lord Steyn — the retired law lord who has taken over as chairman of the civil liberties group, Justice. But there is a broader intellectual failure, too. Much of the Conservative Party has not fully grasped — as did the Prime Minister — the changed nature of the world after 9/11. Not even the murder of more than 50 Londoners has shaken it out of its torpor.

Just to complete this bizarre picture of a Conservative party in denial, David Davis is supposed to be the hard man of the Tory right-wing in the current leadership contest. But it’s not just the Tories who are in denial here. It’s most of the rotten establishment. The former head of MI6 gave the starkest imaginable warning this week in the Telegraph:

Sir Richard Dearlove, who retired last year as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, said chemical, biological and genetic terrorism was in prospect and a nuclear attack could not be ruled out. Acknowledging that the July bombings had been 'very lethal', he said they did not amount to a 'strategic terrorist event'.

Sir Richard, who was taking part in a debate on terrorism arranged by the City law firm Ashurst, said the July attacks 'bore the characteristic of a locally planned and carried-out event'.However we probably had to conclude that 'the clock is running on some much more dreadful events that could occur'.

In the medium to long term, terrorists would have access through the internet to 'some quite frightening dual-use technologies,' he said. These had not yet been used in the context of terrorism, but Sir Richard thought that they would probably eventually be used.'There is no question that bits of al-Qa'eda would have been extremely interested in biological weapons technology, chemical weapons technology, radiological devices and, ultimately, nuclear devices.'

Sir Richard expressed 'some sympathy' for the Government's approach to fighting terrorism through legislation, adding that there was 'extensive complacency' in Britain about the nature of the terrorist threat.'

Indeed. They just don't get it.

Posted by melanie at November 3, 2005