Mike over at Vox Political has written this piece, Whatever happened to ‘innocent until PROVEN guilty’, David Cameron? discussing David Cameron’s intention to prevent people, who are only suspected of terrorist sympathies or connections, from working with children or vulnerable adults under new, anti-terror legislation. It begins
Public Relations Prime Minister has shot himself in the foot again, with a plan that mocks the very bedrock of the British justice system.
David Cameron wants to ban suspected extremists from working with children. Suspected? In what way? Because they read a different holy book? Because they follow a different religion? Because their skin is a different colour? Because they ‘don’t look right’ in the eyes of parents who may be prejudiced themselves?
There is a reason British justice holds that a person is innocent of any crime until they are proven to be guilty of it – it’s there to prevent exactly the kind of extremism that this Cameron policy will provoke – extreme paranoia; sectarianism; racism.
Perhaps Cameron thinks he can get away with it because he’s been doing this to the sick and disabled for years. The assessment system for incapacity and disability benefits takes as its fundamental assumption the idea that claimants are making up their illnesses in order to have an easy life – and they are taken to be guilty of this until they are able to prove their innocence.
Mike goes on to point out the potential harm this piece of legislation could do by mistakenly stigmatising perfectly innocent people as terrorists, simply based on racial or cultural prejudice against their skin colour or dress. He goes on to point out that this could well have the opposite effect than intended by radicalising young Muslims, who feel victimised because of their religion or ethnic origin.
He goes on to conclude that this is ‘divide and rule’ tactic to stir up resentments and divisions in order to prevent the emergence of a solid, cross-cultural opposition.
Mike’s absolutely right about the dangers of innocent people being targeted as potential terrorists for the most trivial reasons under his projected new law. There have been ample examples of this in the past, when the authorities and the secret state kept ordinary people under surveillance as suspected Communists. One of the Beeb’s journalists wrote a piece in the Radio Times in the 1980s about a man, who had been blacklisted by the intelligence services as a Communist traitor simply because he was seen talking to one in the pub. In that same decade, the Beeb also broadcast a series on the British secret state and governmental secrecy, which revealed that in the 1970s the police were required to note down potential troublemakers. They did so, often for the most trivial reason, such as being a Punk. One young woman was earmarked as a potential criminal, who needed watching, simply because she 16 and pregnant. Now, this is probably not the most ideal situation for a young girl, and teenage pregnancy is a social problem. But they aren’t criminals or a dangerous threat to undermine society. Or at least, not unless you’re a Tory MP. Then they need locking up as a threat to the ‘stock’, as Sir Keith Joseph put it.
If you want an example of the terrible consequences such prejudices can lead to in times of crisis or national threat, there’s the case of the killing of civil servant as a suspected German spy during the Second World War. The bureaucrat was sent round to assess farmers’ fields as part of the government’s wartime agricultural policies. The local people noticed him writing in a notebook, and concluded that he was a German spy. A group gathered to arrest him, and a member of the Home Guard was sent for. The civil servant began to argue his innocence, which the locals refused to believe. Then he made the mistake of trying turn to run. The Home Guards soldier raised his rifle and shot him. It was later revealed that rather than being a Nazi spy or Fifth Columnist, he was indeed just a bureaucrat doing his job.
This looks like it’s just an incident from the past, but similar events to this have occurred much more recently. Way back in the 1990s the IRA exploded a bomb in Warrington, resulting in the deaths and injury ordinary people at work or simply out for the day. Apart from the victims of the bomb, workers from a nearby branch of McDonald’s were also attacked and abused. Some of the burger chain’s employees were the first on the scene, genuinely trying to give aid to the bombs victims. They were attacked because they were seen as IRA sympathisers, based on the rumour that McDonald’s gives money to the IRA. There was even some totally spurious proof of this, in that the deductions column of the workers’ payslips included ‘IRA’. This was, however, ‘Internal Revenue Account’, and referred to a pensions scheme, not the Irish Republican Army.
Now think what could happen today. ISIS and al-Qaeda have declared war on Britain, just like Nazi Germany and Irish paramilitaries. All it takes is bomb outrage, such as that suffered during 7/7, and frightened and angry people will naturally turn to find and punish those responsible. And in attention to those murdered by the terrorists could be perfectly innocent British Muslims, who were lynched because somebody decided to blacklist them because he was once overheard criticising Rushdie’s Satanic Verses or something equally trivial.
I’m well aware that there may be problems tackling genuine terrorists because of problems of collecting evidence that would stand up in a court of law. And I’m not complacent about the threat to human lives terrorists like ISIS and the Islamist terror groups pose. But the reason we have the principle of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is to prevent terrible miscarriages of justice and the persecution of the innocent by the power of the state. And it’s a principle that David Cameron and the other Tories have been determined to persistently undermine.
And this isn’t just an issue for Muslims. If they can get away with doing it to them, they will do it to the rest of society, just as they’ve done it to the sick and disabled and to trade unionists. This is part of their campaign to craft a totalitarian state.
The article’s at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/10/19/whatever-happened-to-innocent-until-proven-guilty-david-cameron/ Go and read it.
