27th November 2005

Rebecca Horwood in her 'Youth Voice' is right about many people's fears about taking away civil liberties and right that people don't want another terrorist attack (SNJ 30th November 2005). However her conclusions "that until the terrorist threat had passed we should give the police the support they need" is questionable.

The police always want the widest possible powers; it is for the rest of us to ensure they are limited to those which are strictly necessary. We already have some of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in the democratic world and recent measures have done little to ensure Britain is safe and secure from terrorist attack. Yet since 9/11 we've seen successive erosions of the Human Rights Act, and of other, older individual freedoms secured by common law, such as habeas corpus.

The latest laws look more like an attempt to suppress political expression rather than to prevent violence. A 90 day detention without charge would have been over twenty times the pre-charge detention time limit for murder and have a severe impact on community relations. If the police have genuine difficulties in gathering evidence we should look for more proportionate ways of dealing with the problem.

It is always a difficult trade-off between liberty and security, but for too long we have been erring too much on the side of security. Worse still: we are becoming less safe as a result. It is long overdue that we should be helping to create conditions in which people don't become suicide bombers in the first place. We could start by apologising for our breaches of international law in Iraq and look at ways to amend the terrible situation we have helped create there.

Philip Booth, Stroud District Green party