28 Sep · Wed 2005
An Ugly Incident
These days, one would expect a certain amount of stage-management at a political party conference, but this episode today reveals an ugly side of this year's Labour event.
82-year-old Walter Wolfgang, a Labour party member since 1948, heckled Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and was then bustled physically out of the conference by five stewards. Steve Forrest, sitting next to Mr Wolfgang, complained at the stewards' conduct and was promptly manhandled out of the centre himself. This being a party conference, it's not that improbable that Mr Forrest is actually the chairman of a Labour constituency party... so he started trying to phone his MP, John Austin, who (naturally) was also at the conference. Mr Forrest made three attempts to call, and was then threatened by the stewards with confiscation of his phone.
Mr Forrest and Mr Wolfgang subsequently had their conference passes taken away; when Mr Wolfgang tried to get back into the conference, a policeman detained him, citing Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.
Section 44 provides a blanket authority for a police officer to stop and search a person and their belongings "in an area or at a place specified in the authorisation". In other words, like one of the "10 most secret cases" (the suffragette petition) I mentioned in my previous blog entry, it is not based on the conduct of the person involved, and there is no burden on the police officer to produce evidence of reasonable suspicion: it can be invoked purely on the basis of where you are.
That might sound like a law ripe for abuse, and indeed instances have been reported where the police have made deliberate use of Section 44 to inhibit and obstruct protests, where there was no reason to connect the protest to terrorism.
Whatever the intent of the Act, a shameful episode like this reveals the danger of framing legislation in ways which make such abuses possible. The Terrorism Act is five years old, but there's plenty of new legislation (both actual and proposed) which is equally open to abuse. Laws on exclusion, deportation, identification, prevention of 'anti-social behaviour', 90-day detention without trial, laws which outlaw incitement to terrorism and incitement to hatred. The list is extensive and growing.
The politicians assure us that these laws are well-intentioned, and that they won't be abusively enforced. I am not inclined to take their word for it.
Britain's Oldest State Secrets
At the beginning of this year, a Freedom of Information Act came into force in the UK. One of the things it did was rescind a provision called a "Lord Chancellor's Instrument". It was probably also the first time most people had been aware that such a thing existed. The Lord Chancellor's Instrument was a mechanism for extending the secrecy of particularly sensitive documents beyond 30 years. Naturally, the BBC wanted to find out what could possibly be so secret that it should not be revealed for 100 years. Early in February they published the list.
Looking through it, I was struck by two thoughts.
First, several of the themes in question are just as topical now as they evidently were all those years ago: the rules and process for deportation of foreign nationals (two cases); the question of whether someone should be arrested just because 'she wishes to walk up a certain street' (in this case, handing a petition in at 10 Downing Street); law enforcement access to personal communications (interception of telegrams); the governance and accountability of monopoly utilities (the Post Office); trades union unease about the transparency and fairness of public sector procurement practices.
Second, why on earth were some of these documents so classified? The BBC report doesn't go into a lot of detail about any of the cases, but here's the 10th one in full, as an example:
"10. POACHER'S SENTENCE CONFUSION
A minor wrangle over the way a sentence was handed down to a poacher has been a closed file since 1909.
Thomas Joy, from Shrewsbury, convicted for carrying a gun without a licence and "night poaching", lost out on prison privileges and potential early release because the judge gave no direction on whether his sentences should run consecutively."
Now, if you can tell me what about that is so sensitive that it should be buried for a century, I'd love to know!
I wish I could believe that, now we have a Freedom of Information Act, this sort of apparent absurdity just couldn't happen any more. The Act, though, contains quite enough exemptions to ensure that anyone with a strong enough incentive can bury information as before.
Am I being paranoid? I don't think so. After all, our government is on record as having reversed the burden of proof, proposed detention without trial for 3 months, and deported people to countries with a record of human rights abuse. Stacked up against those, what's the big deal about 'losing' a few documents? Especially if it's something really critical... like a decision on concurrent jail terms for a night-time poacher.
Posted by racingsnake
@ 11:27 AM GMT+00:00
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