BJP understands Mattsson was detained today under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 in Central London, near Buckingham Palace, after taking photos of cadets. Mattsson had received approval from the cadets’ supervisors as he was shooting images for the cadets’ website, BJP has been told.
BJP also understands that the photographer was searched and his details recorded.
The incident comes less than two weeks after the same photographer was stopped and detained by police officers claiming he represented a terrorism risk.
A 15 year old photographer getting stopped twice in two weeks is insane. What’s even more insane is the reason:
Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 requires reasonable suspicion that a person is a terrorist. Its usage is more limited than Section 44, which doesn’t require suspicion. However, the European Court of Human Rights recently found Section 44 to be illegal.
The act’s Section 43 reads: “A constable may stop and search a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist to discover whether he has in his possession anything which may constitute evidence that he is a terrorist.”
Unfathomable. After the Section 44 ruling it’s hardly surprising that they should change their tactics, but to suggest Jules is a terrorist is just plain bananas. Proof yet again that the police’s institutional prejudice against photographers will use any means necessary to get expressed. The Home Office may have become more liberal under the ConDemNation coalition when it comes to asylum, but they still don’t have the Metropolitan Police under control. Will anyone ever?
The ConDemNation coalition set its sights on returning government to adhering to the rule of law, and Deputy PM Nick Clegg has promised a wholescale rollback of New Labour’s authoritarian project, but of course their record is already patchy – check out prisoners’ voting rights, the DNA database and control orders as just three examples. One unexpected partial step in the right direction involves the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA):
Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that [ISA] registration, due to begin next month, has been put on hold.
There will be a review of the entire vetting and barring scheme, with a scaling back to “common-sense levels”.
The government says the vetting scheme would have been “disproportionate and overly burdensome”.
Mrs May told the BBC that the measures were “draconian”.
“You were assumed to be guilty until you were proven innocent, and told you were able to work with children,” she said.
“All sorts of groups out there were deeply concerned about this and how it was going to affect them.
“There were schools where they were very concerned that foreign exchanges could be finished as a result of this, parents were worried about looking after other people’s children after school.”
The government is now contacting 66,000 organisations, including charities, voluntary groups and education authorities, to tell them that the planned registration is being cancelled.
Excellent news, really quite an impressive step in the right direction, particularly by a Conservative Party which in the past has been so succeptible to moral panics. In fact it’s highly impressive that May has used the term ‘draconian’ to describe the scheme, but it remains to be seen what this ‘scaling-back’ will involve. The ISA has already caused significant damage to the social fabric, presuming as it does that everyone is a paedophile unless they can prove otherwise. The Vetting and Barring Scheme was one of the most serious blights on the rule of law under New Labour, allowing the ISA to decide on people’s suitability as ‘safe’ to work with ‘vulnerable’ people (which would inevitably widen in its scope and definition over time) based on heresay and personal prejudice, with the most threadbare of rights of appeal.
The ISA, left unchecked, will send the message to younger people that everyone older than them is a potential threat, will make it more difficult for younger people to learn how to risk assess meaningfully for themselves, and will allow government to make decisions which are best suited to local people and local communities. After all the Soham murders, which the ISA was set up in response to, weren’t caused by an absence of child protection at the school which Ian Huntley worked at. And Huntley would never have worked at that school if existing protection provisions had been properly adhered to, and only gained contact with Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells because of their association with his girlfriend. The ISA could never have prevented that, indeed such a bureaucracy will never adequately be able to detect child abuse, which is invariably perpetrated by someone children already know (and who won’t be on a database). Is there a problem with paedophilia and child abuse? Of course, but it’s not best tackled through over-reliance on a database, nor by subverting the rule of law. We can only hope that the coalition really has understood that it can’t prevent risk, can’t protect everyone, and must allow employers and voluntary organisations to exercise their own expertise and discretion.
The only credible solution would be for the ISA to be wound up.
Sorry for the short time away, regular readers. I got thrown off by a nasty chest infection but I’m back now and it’s time to open up Simon Jenkins’ latest CiF piece:
The toughest lesson to draw from the Whitehaven tragedy is that there might be no lesson at all. We cannot stop people having rows at home or work, taking leave of their senses, finding a gun and going berserk. Such things rarely happen. But even the most authoritarian state must allow some personal liberty, and everyone accepts the resulting risk. No free community can be wholly safe without losing its freedom.
And this is at the entire core of what’s not working in society right now, isn’t it? A zero-sum game has been forced up into cabinet decision-making about the prevention of risk, about ‘safeguarding’ those who can’t be safeguarded, about ‘protecting’ everyone by throwing the civil liberties of everyone away. What’s brilliant about Jenkins’ article is that he takes issue with the concept itself. You can’t protect children by presuming every adult is a paedophile, it’s just absurd. You can’t protect every politician by presuming every voter is a terrorist, and demonising the exceptions to the rule only teaches society that there are easy answers to be had where there may be no answers at all. He goes on:
When the bossy Labour minister Ed Balls banned pictures of children in schools and vetted parents for sex crimes, the bounds of public sanity were strained. Yet no one stopped him. People muttered, “Well, you can’t be too safe.”
On every First Great Western train, an announcement is made after each stop telling passengers to look about for suspicious people or parcels and report them immediately to the police. It makes for a miserable journey. If you enter a government building, you are told that the current alert status means an imminent terrorist attack is “highly likely”. This serves no purpose but to frighten people into conceding the Home Office ever more power.
Yup entirely right, and this is what’s important to remember. New Labour wasn’t alone in creating the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). This belief that a super bureaucracy could possibly vet and safeguard every (any?) credible threat to children’s safety didn’t only originate with super-authoritarian Balls – he just went along with it. Did the rest of parliament stop the ISA in its tracks? Not at all. Has the media really had the balls to question the social damage that it’s continuing (under Nick Clegg’s new socially liberal era) to inflict? Not at all. We decided, and government decided it was in its interests to accept, that we wanted to prevent any sort of risk at all, and contracted out the implementation of our decision to government. It was completely ignorant of history, it has taught the upcoming generation nothing at all about how to risk assess wisely and has perversely led us (as Jenkins points out) to request ever more control of us by government.
Was it because of the absence of long-held certainties, like the Cold War, or pre-globalisation economic orders? Maybe. With society itself now marketised, not just economies, it’s entirely possible that the resulting discomfort (and government-propagated fear after 9/11) has led us, sheep-like, to ask our political masters to provide us with one cornerstone to put our trust in – safety. But Jenkins goes on to say:
There is no such thing as safe. There is only safer, and safer can require the greater watchfulness that comes with taking risks, witness new theories of road safety. Removing risk lowers the protective instinct of individuals and communities, and paradoxically leaves them in greater danger. But there is no government agency charged with averting that danger. There is no money in it.
Entirely right, and it’s worth remembering that although Nick Clegg has promised a groundbreaking bill, repealing the authoritarian excesses of New Labour, he hasn’t actually put his money where his mouth is yet – noone in the ConDemNation coalition has. Control orders? Unchanged. The Digital Economy Act? Unchanged. Any changes to the ISA, when quangos are apparently a ‘bad thing’? Nope. Jenkins argues that this is all motivated by money. When you compare what the coalition has promised to change with what’s actually going to change it seems like he might be right. It’s time to stand up for allowing risk to resume in society, for ‘protection’ to be proportionate and the need for it assessed by individuals once more. The industry promulgating this trend has to be torn down, but in an age of extraordinarily craven politics, the means can only come from us. Why should a profitable industry wind itself up, after all?
As well as the disruption caused to ordinary workers and tourists who are prevented from going about their daily business and enjoying the Unesco world heritage site, the police have been diverted from policing local communities and tackling crime. It is clear that the present legislation is not working and new laws are required to ensure everyone can enjoy the square and give other groups the opportunity to legally protest there. New legislation is urgently needed to enable the police to intervene effectively in cases of prolonged demonstrations, or where there are real public order or nuisance problems. We need powers to regulate and police the square.
It’s a shameless attack on the right to protest of a man whose continuous presence shames the government, and who is disapproved of by the now lead governing party. It’s really simple. It’s not a public safety or health issue, this is political vindictiveness. New Labour restricted the right of protest of people they didn’t like, and now the coalition is doing exactly the same. No-one’s ability to protest has been infringed by Haw or the Peace Camp, there’s no public order or nuisance problem, and the police haven’t been diverted from anything. Barrow’s claims are a complete load of utter garbage, and nowhere does he acknowledge the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.
From twitter:
STWuk Johnson says Parliament antiwar protest did “considerable damage”. Nobody mention “damage” of 1m dead in #Iraq and #Afghanistan. #brianhaw
hangbitch Such lies about Haw. He had a tiny camp that interfered with nobody. Thousands of Tamils managed to protest around him for weeks.
jackofkent I wondered if there were any good reasons to remove Brian Haw from Parliament Square; so I read around; and nope: they’re all bullshit.
The controversial SOCPA legislation was introduced largely to attack Brian Haw’s right to protest, and to remove an embarrassing, constant reminder of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars from the government’s front door. Not only is there no indication of repeal or replacement of SOCPA but the strongarm tactics under Labour’s Home Office haven’t changed one iota. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Don’t expect much change under ConDemNation.
“We’re not going to repeal it,” the new UK government’s Conservative culture secretary Jeremy Hunt told paidContent:UK.
Instead, the administration will wait to see how the act’s measures perform and, if alterations or something more is needed, take action later, Hunt said.
That means the graduated-response anti-piracy action – which would level education or warning letters against freeloading ISP customers, leading to possible account suspension – will remain in place, along with all the bill’s other measures (see our recent quick-hit guide).
But the proposal for blocking sites containing infringing material was never part of the act, it was part of a separate parliamentary process instituted by Labour in the previous government’s dying days; so it is unlikely to see light of day.
The section of the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government’s detailed joint plans about media contains no reference to the Digital Economy Act.
Opposition to the act during its bill stage was vociferous from some online quarters, and the campaign is still going even though the act is law. Some party members of the coalition Liberal Democrats appear to still favour repeal.
But many sections of the media and cultural creation industry will welcome the retention of measures that seek to protect their intellectual property.
It’s a painful reminder that the coalition won’t speak with one consistent voice – Clegg may be pushing civil liberties and rollback of the surveillance state, but he’s still in coalition with the Conservative Party. The Deputy PM may have insisted on repeal of the Act before the election, but it does appear to be something he’s traded off in the coalition agreement. It’s a good lesson that we must all vote for whom we want at election time, but must then get involved in civil society pressure groups in order for what we voted for actually to get implemented. Sadly it also suggests that the coalition’s claims to want to roll back state intrusion aren’t quite as total as they want us to believe.
There’s a fight under way behind the scenes between the ConDemNation coalition partners over the Human Rights Act. The Tories have long wanted to supplant the Human Rights Act (HRA) with a British Bill of Rights, on the one hand not trying to extract the country from the European Convention on Human Rights, but also trying to, as Helena Kennedy puts it:
“protect our freedoms from state encroachment” on the one hand and “encourage greater social responsibility” on the other.
She then goes on to add:
No explanation is given as to how to achieve these triangulated aims without weakening the protections we now have in the HRA.
It’s also not quite clear what those aims actually mean in practice. The language is quite reminiscent of New Labour’s similar idea of a British Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, although when discussed at the Convention on Modern Liberty early last year the idea was kicked thoroughly into touch for failing to identify what additional responsibilities should be codified other than to obey existing criminal law. Both parties have in recent years tried very hard to conflate civil rights with human rights, and have notably attacked the latter when rulings under the HRA haven’t been to their political benefit. But that’s not a sufficient reason to replace the Act, quite the opposite in fact, particularly, as Richard Norton-Taylor acknowledges:
All the Human Rights Act, brought in by the Blair government, really did was incorporate the convention into UK domestic law, avoiding long and expensive delays in disputed European court cases.
And as of an interview in the Times yesterday morning the Deputy Prime Minister wasn’t having any watering down of the HRA or any suggestion of its repeal. Clegg said:
“Any government would tamper with it at its peril.”
In response, Theresa May, the new and already illiberal Home Secretary has seemed to back down:
May was asked about the manifesto promise in an interview on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, she downplayed the significance of this pledge. “We did say that we thought the Human Rights Act was not working in certain areas,” she said.
She went on: “We are currently in discussions with our coalition partners about what we will be doing in this area.”
‘Discussions with our coalition partners’? We can only hope they went along the lines of ’you tamper with it at your peril’, but there are pressures for both sides to do just that. The HateMail has unsurprisingly gone on the offensive:
A flagship Tory pledge to tear up the Human Rights Act has been watered down in the coalition pact with the Liberal Democrats.
In opposition, the Conservatives repeatedly promised to replace Labour’s controversial legislation with a Bill of Rights.
But Government sources said last night that an independent commission would now be established to examine the ‘feasibility’ of the move.
‘Are we going to replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights? Very possibly,’ said one. ‘But the commission is going to look into all that.’
“A coalition that has attempted to tie itself together with the language of civil liberties cannot now renege on fundamental human rights.
Given the way in which Liberal Democrats all the way up to the Deputy Prime Minister vowed to defend our Human Rights Act, any attempt to dilute it would spell the end of this Coalition – and rightly so.
Governments like people are bound together with common values not vested interests. There is nothing more British than the free speech, fair trials, personal privacy and rule against torture protected by the HRA.”
Yet the final coalition agreementaccepts this commission. We have to hope that its findings aren’t against retaining the HRA – both for our sakes, and for the Deputy Prime Minister’s political future. Helena Kennedy concludes:
it may be very tempting for the Liberal Democrats to carve out victories on some areas of reform by making concessions elsewhere. This is why we have to make it clear that the terrain of human rights must not be the ground on which any further deals are done. Human rights have to be non-negotiables in this new political landscape.
Experience shows that a taste for human rights acquired in opposition can soon wear off in government. Once comfortable behind their desks, new ministers tend soon to find the very repressive and authoritarian measures they decried in opposition rather congenial and useful once they sit in government. Let’s hope that the novelty of coalition government can buck that trend.
And it’s why we will abolish the Human Rights Act and introduce a new Bill of Rights, so that Britain’s laws can no longer be decided by unaccountable judges.
It’s a second gripe about the HRA, it isn’t related to the first, and is a common refrain from the Right – ‘unaccountable’ or ‘activist’ judges must be stopped from interpreting codified, semi- or actual constitutional laws, because it interferes with the legislators’ political agendas. But to suggest the Act is at fault because judges have been free to interpret the European Convention on Human Rights from a British perspective makes no sense other than a political one – the judges and the Act get in the way, and the Tories would prefer they themselves had control over human rights law in the UK. Except the UK would still be covered by the convention.
The immediate effect would be to effectively deny access to the European Court for those who really need it because they simply wouldn’t be able to afford it – it’s dog whistle politics, Tories agreeing amongst themselves that some people deserve access to human rights, and not others. But Helena Kennedy is right – human rights are human rights – they are (and must be kept) universal. A replacement, which the final Coalition Agreement hints at, would water down the principle of universality and endanger those most in need of human rights protection. Clegg surely understands that, and given the rumours that all other disagreements in the coalition are being referred to similar ‘commissions’, it does look as though this battle will remain at stalemate. Any other outcome would surely smash the coalition into smithereens.
Landmark legislation, from politicians who refused to sit back and do nothing while huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests.
Who stood up for the freedom of the many, not the privilege of the few.
A spirit this government will draw on as we deliver our programme for political reform: a power revolution.
A fundamental resettlement of the relationship between state and citizen that puts you in charge.
‘Much in this new Government statement accords with the BHA’s policies we set out in our own manifestos ahead of the election and with the principles of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. We particularly welcome moves to increase freedom of speech, and a reformed House of Lords which, by being fully elected, would necessarily remove the right of Bishops to sit in our second chamber.’
‘We also look forward to making our case for the repeal and revision of unjust, restrictive and discriminatory laws, such as those which require compulsory worship on our school children – a clear violation of their freedom of conscience – and those which unfairly restrict the right to free speech and protest.’
I think Copson is generally right but there are serious problems here. Clegg’s ideas are laudable, but there are as yet no indications as to how he thinks he’ll implement them – moving children of asylum seekers from one detention centre to another (particularly one with a notorious reputation) is not a remotely adequate solution. Much of the push towards ID cards came from within the civil service itself, and there is still an entrenched authoritarian culture in government agencies which needs urgent tackling; just yesterday the new government took the same stand on control orders as its predecessor.
I don’t just expect a repeal of New Labour’s surveillance state laws, I expect a change in culture to uphold the rule of law and to abide by evidence-based policy making. That means not just accepting the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling on the National DNA Database, but abiding by rulings against denying prisoners the vote and on the legality of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. I’m worried that now in government Clegg is going to pick and choose what works for him and what doesn’t and not challenge the vested interests, defeat of whom really would make the “most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great enfranchisement of the 19th Century” much more than overexcited hyperbole.
Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives have said they would scrap ID cards, and this is good news. What is equally important, however, is the way in which ID cards are used. Citizens in some countries with national ID cards (such as France or Spain) rarely show them on a day-to-day basis. Paradoxically, we don’t yet have cards, but we do have a culture of routine ID checking. “Do you have any ID?” is a question we increasingly face when going about our business in the streets or at work.
A Manifesto Club survey found that people in their late 20s and 30s are being routinely checked not just for buying alcohol, but also for attempting to purchase items such as barbecue skewers, bleach, paracetamol, UHU glue, matches, cigarette papers, even a “gentleman’s manicure set”. Two women in their late 20s had been ID-checked for bottles of wine so frequently that they now carry their passports to go to the supermarket.
Passport checks are becoming routine in working life too. Some organisations have started collecting passport details from staff of 10 or 20 years standing to check they have the right to work in the UK. Universities including Nottingham, Southampton, Lancaster and Lampeter have asked visiting lecturers and external examiners to produce their passports before they can be paid. The musician DJ Moth reports that one of London’s major jazz clubs in Hackney now requires performers to give passport details.
Then there is the downright bizarre. A reader of the magazine Today’s Railways Europe wrote in to say that he was asked to produce his passport in the Luton branch of Thomas Cook, when attempting to buy a copy of Cook’s European rail timetable. He was told that this was for “security reasons”.
As a point of historical comparison, the Common Travel Area] has allowed passport-free travel between the Republic of Ireland and the UK since 1923, including throughout the Troubles. Now the Home Office is attempting scrap this agreement and oblige people to show ID documents or be refused passage. Regular travellers on ferries between northern Ireland and Scotland already report that passengers (usually of African origin) are now being pulled out of the queue and asked to show their documents.
Shops and businesses ask for ID under the threat of heavy fines for serving underage drinkers or for employing somebody who is not entitled to work in the UK. Yet like the ID card scheme itself, this is a policy looking for a justification. At base, this is less about combating specific social issues than about the growing state regulation of citizens.
The meaning of ID checks is that we are constantly being asked to (as the posters say) “Prove it!”: to prove our age or nationality, to prove that we are allowed to be where we are, doing what we are doing. The assumption is that unless we can produce documents we are probably not supposed to be here, not supposed to be giving a lecture or buying barbecue skewers.
This culture of checking calls forth ID cards of some kind (unless we just start carrying our passports around everywhere). Companies have sensed a business opportunity and produce proof-of-age cards under the banner of the officially accredited Pass Scheme, “the national proof-of-age accreditation scheme”. One of these cards has the horribly revealing name, Validate UK: “a voluntary proof of age scheme for all ages”.
The illiberal underpinnings of these schemes are clear. To be a UK citizen you must be validated. “No pass, no sale”, says the banner on the Pass Scheme website. And so the demand of “Pass, please!”, so beloved of authoritarian regimes, comes to the British Isles. You do not have a right to pass: you need to prove your legitimacy by proffering your documents. No pass, no sale; no pass, no job; no pass, no ferry crossing to Holyhead.
Challenging this culture of ID checking is as crucial as taking on the ID card scheme itself. As free citizens we should not have to produce our papers at the local supermarket. We must assert again our right to pass.
Of course we didn’t, but of course we can’t vote for a coalition – you can only ever vote for the one party you’d most like to represent you in parliament. So why the vicious diatribes are continuing is a complete mystery to me – we got the result we voted for, regardless of actual intent. But commentators are disagreeing, suggesting that the ConDemNation coalition is illegitimate and not reflective of the will of the people. From Johann Hari:
Elections are supposed to be an opportunity for the people to express the direction in which they want the country to travel. By that standard, this result is an insult. Don’t fall for the people who say the Lib Dem vote was “ambiguous”: a YouGov poll just before the election found that Lib Dem voters identified as “left-wing” over “right-wing” by a ratio of 4:1. Only 9 per cent sided with the right. Lib Dem voters wanted to stop Cameron, not install him. So before you start squabbling about the extremely difficult parliamentary arithmetic, or blaming the stupidly tribal Labour negotiators for their talks with the Lib Dems breaking down, you have to concede: the British people have not got what they voted for.
Clegg has betrayed progressives across the length and breadth of Britain. He had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to repair the century-old rift on the centre left and forge a radical and progressive alliance in favour of electoral and constitutional reform. I suspect Labour will now sit on its hands in any future referendum and the Lib Dems might be on their own campaiging for a “Yes” vote. Their new partners in government have already stated their plans to oppose any change to our dysfunctional first-past-the-post system.
Clegg has also betrayed the longer-term strategic interests of his party for crude and short-term tactical gains.
What neither of them calculates however is what the likely effects of forcing the Tories into a short-lived minority administration would have been. Getting blamed as the party which refused to underpin ‘strong and stable government’ would have been an appalling (and probably disastrous) moniker to enter an October election with, which remember the Tories could easily have fought and the Lib Dems not. It’s all well and good to decry the loss of a mythical ‘progressive alliance’ with Labour but a) that coalition would have been an unstable, minority alliance and b) has collective amnesia suddenly struck about Labour’s 13 year record? ID cards, abuse of the National DNA Database, attempts to lock people up without charge for 45 and 90 days, interference in inquests and the right to jury trial, destitution of asylum seekers and the detention of their children, the Digital Economy Act, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, denying the vote to prisoners, the Iraq War, RIPA and SOCPA legislation – were ANY of these pieces of legislation and invasions of privacy, breaches of civil liberties and human rights ‘progressive’? I think not. Why Hasan, Hari and others ignore these points is a complete mystery to me.
I don’t like the Tories in Number 10 - I really don’t. But we have a Great Repeal Bill on offer, which is likely to include some, if not all, of Deputy PM Clegg’s Freedom Bill, and indeed have seen initial successes such as the end of ID cards and the National Identity Register, not to mention the end of detention of refugees’ children. Is it entirely likely that early, and ‘savage’ budget cuts will cause serious social and economic disruption over the next 12 months? Yes, and the Lib Dems might well damage themselves beyond repair by being directly associated with them, but given that Labour rebuffed their advances to attempt a coalition with them, I don’t know why there’s so much sniping at a party which at long last finds itself to enact large swathes of its platform. It was the best out of a bad set of choices. How on earth is that a betrayal?
NO2ID celebrates the ConDemNation coalition’s abandonment of ID cards and the National Identity Register, but gives words of continual warning:
The Home Office, the Cabinet Office, and various other departments have cherished the idea of a population register for decades. The problem is not that it is not going quietly; it is that it is quietly not going. The tendrils of an official obsession with identity and information-sharing are everywhere: from the helter-skelter attempt by Connecting For Health to suck up 30m sets of medical records during the election period, to the secondary legislation that from this autumn requires pubs and clubs to ask for proof of identity in specified forms when checking drinking age.
No2ID started as a tactical response to a single initiative, but we rapidly found ourselves at war with a Whitehall culture of mass supervision that demands we be forbidden from trusting one another, but must trust official databases absolutely. Though I think their hearts are in the right place, I am waiting to see whether Messrs Cameron and Clegg have the stomach for that war. If they have, then there is much to be done.
Still, bravo to the new administration for taking the first step to protect our privacy and autonomy. Rolling back the database state remains a huge task, but it has started.
That assessment is pretty sharp, and it’s one I’ve wondered about over the last couple of years. New Labour’s ‘Safeguarding Identity’ document clearly came straight out of the civil service and just got fronted by successive, hapless Home Secretaries. It and other strategies smacked of officials presenting solutions for the sake of it, then needing their political masters to develop problems to fit into them. It’s very much a cultural problem in Whitehall, which I’m sure wants to sink its tendrils into the coalition, and it’ll be interesting, given the tensions which will affect the Tories and Lib Dems differently, to see how each party reacts to that over time. We’ve won the biggest battle in the war against the database state, but that war is far from over.
Two days ago I cross-posted that photographer Grant Smith had yet again been abused by police under Section 44, going about his entirely lawful business. Today it looks like he may sue them:
He said: “They took away my camera, notebook and phone so I could not record what they were doing. I thought their reaction was completely disproportionate. I found it was a publicly humiliating experience. It was a bit like being mugged by teenagers.”
Mr Smith said he was consulting lawyers about the legality of the stop.
A City of London Police spokesman said: “A man was spoken to by officers on Monday after police were called by security personnel. He was later searched under terrorism powers.”
One officer commented: “There are hundreds of people who take photographs in the City every day and they do not have any issues. Sometimes it would be helpful if people responded when asked what their business was.
“The risk of terrorism is always there and we do not intend to drop our guard.”
Dropping their guard, when there’s never been a terrorist on earth who’d been so batshit insane as to stand in front of a building with a DSLR with the intention of later blowing it up? Utter garbage – Smith had already stated his business, and the police had no right to interfere with it, nor even to stop him. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has been ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and the police have been repeatedly warned by ACPO not to abuse it in this way. Time will tell whether the allegedly civil liberties-friendly ConDem coalition responds positively to the ECHR. In the meantime I hope Smith sues the City police to death, because I don’t see them or their Metropolitan counterparts changing for anyone.
It was one of the many authoritarian disasters visited upon us under the New Labour surveillance state, but the ConDem coalition has just announced it’s over. And when I say over I mean over – even the Register has gone:
Both Parties that now form the new Government stated in their manifestos that they will cancel Identity Cards and the National Identity Register. We will announce in due course how this will be achieved. Applications can continue to be made for ID cards but we would advise anyone thinking of applying to wait for further announcements.
Until Parliament agrees otherwise, identity cards remain valid and as such can still be used as an identity document and for travel within Europe. We will update you with further information as soon as we have it.
The question will remain I suppose whether the coalition will tear up New Labour’s ‘Safeguarding Identity‘ document – their insidious attempt to redefine the relationship between the individual and state for the 21st century. If not then there’s scope for the scheme to return, but this augurs well, at least for this area of civil liberties.
Branch member Grant Smith has sent this account of a stop and search under s44 of the Terrorism Act. The incident happened earlier today in the City of London whilst Grant was doing some test shots for an environmental portrait of an architect. This comes just weeks after the Metropolitan Police issued new guidance to officers about using s44 on photographers.
The incident clearly shows how officers are continuing to abuse Terror laws and how security guards are abusing their position by calling the police every time somebody photographs a building, which they claim is not allowed, but is of course perfectly legal and legitimate.
Can I Please Have My Mobile Phone Back, Officer?
I spent the weekend in Derby at the National Photography Symposium and was involved in a panel discussion on ‘Photography, Security and Terrorism. How ironic that my first assignment back in London today saw me experience again the public humiliation of a detention and a physical search by a City of London police officer.
Scouting for a location on London Wall for a portrait of one of the architect’s responsible for the City’s changing skyline, I went to One Aldermanbury Square. Loaded with a Canon g10, I wandered around the base of the building taking recce shots. A guard employed by the building waved his hands at me, asserting that I couldn’t photograph this building. As I stood on the pavement opposite the building I told him he was wrong, and I had every right to photograph, which I kept on doing. Another guard approached saying the same thing, and that if I didn’t move he’d call the police. (He recognised me from a previous occasion when he had warned me off, which had also resulted in a police response. On that occasion they were satisfied that I was within my rights and I had done nothing wrong. Thus the security guards had prior confirmation from the police that I was a photographer, not a terrorist.) I wandered back and forth, sizing up my locations and where I would place my subject. I walked along London Wall high walk, and saw the frenzied police activity below. Four officers had arrived and were in animated discussion with the guards. A police van with flashing lights sped out of Wood Street and eyeballed me, fixing my position. Uniformed police approached me from both directions. I continued walking and photographing. PC 374 walked towards me and greeted me with a cheery ‘Hello’. I responded in like fashion and continued to walk on as he spoke into his radio. He stopped me with his hand firmly on my chest. I asked if I was being detained.
‘I’d just like a word with you.’
Am I being detained? ‘Yes you are.’
Under what grounds? ‘Section 44(2) of the Terrorism Act.
Why? ‘If you’ll let me finish’, he responded. ‘And you are?’ He inquired the way a school bully might query anyone on their patch.
I wanted to know why I was being detained, and what were the reasonable grounds. ‘The guards at the building over the road alerted us to someone acting suspiciously. And under Section 44(2) we don’t need reasonable grounds.’
‘What’s suspicious about my behaviour. I was taking photographs.’
‘If you let me finish. The fact you were taking photographs, we’d like to know the reason. ‘
I said that I’m in the City, an area of iconic buildings and fascinating historical sites, that’s why I’m taking photographs. He replied with a cryptic answer:‘You’ve just explained it.’ I looked puzzled.
‘The very fact you were here at all is the reason we’ve stopped you.’
I explained that being in a public space I could not be prevented from taking photographs. He said the guards were wrong in trying to stop me. I felt relieved and thought that the whole affair would rest then and there. As I began to move away a second PC, PC29 moved from behind and took both my arms, preventing me from moving. PC 374 then told me he was searching me under s44, and he began to go through my pockets and pat me down. My phone was taken from me. The camera hanging around my neck was carefully removed and placed out of my reach. I asked several times if I could record this incident on camera and was denied this right, being told that under s44(2) I must do as ordered. The power was now in their hands. Mine were still being held.
PC went through my pannier, flipping through personal notebooks, gingerly peeking in a plastic bag that contained a towel and swimmers, still wet from my earlier swim. He located my wallet, and pulled out my drivers licence with obvious glee. Each time I attempted to move PC29’s grip on my arms became firmer. I moved to zip up my jacket, which had been unzipped in the search, and his grip tightened. I explained I was getting cold and would like to warm up. He agreed, but kept hold of me by one hand. I tried to move left or right and he blocked me. Repeated requests for my phone and camera were turned down. I asked to get pen and paper from my bag, and this was declined. I said I wanted to record the incident, only to be told that I will get their record at the end of the procedure.
Many times I asked why was I being stopped under s44. The answer I given was because of my obstructive and non-compliant attitude. Based on this observation, it then became necessary to treat me as a potential criminal suspect. I noted that s44 could be open to misuse, as it was so powerful and sweeping. PC374 replied ‘It has been said, but it is open for our use’ The implication being that it can be used on anyone who is non-compliant.
Waiting for the data base to give PC374 the all-clear on my record, I was kept hemmed against the barrier by PC29, repeatedly told that if I kept moving I would be handcuffed. This scene of public humiliation, as I was restrained and treated like a criminal, was watched by workers from the neighbouring building.
Once the all clear was given, PC374 tore off the pink slip of the s44 stop search form asking if I wanted it. I asked if I could carry on taking photographs, he turned his back on me like a petulant child, forgetting that his cap lay on the ground in the spot he had removed it earlier. Joined by a third PC, the posse then turned their back on me refusing to answer any further questions from me. I watched as the three of them walked away from me, with my mobile phone. Excuse me I called ‘Can I please have my mobile phone back?’
A 26-year-old man will go on trial today for allegedly posting a message on Twitter threatening to blow an airport “sky high”.
Paul Chambers denied “tweeting” the message about Robin Hood Airport, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, on January 6.
Chambers, of Byram Court, Balby, Doncaster, was arrested after the post was picked up on the social networking site by routine investigations.
He pleaded not guilty to a single charge of sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.
As I said after his arrest, it’s an absolute insanity that an ill-judged comment, intended only for his Twitter followers, should then be put on trial for sending a ‘malicious message’. Absolutely insane. Hopefully Allen Green is right and there’ll be a not guilty verdict or better momentarily.
The anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was almost certainly killed by police at a demonstration in 1979, according to a secret report released today.
Documents published on the Metropolitan police’s website shed new light on the death of Peach, a 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, whose death marked one of the most controversial events in modern policing history.
A campaigner against the far right, Peach died from a blow to the head during a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London.
A crucial report into the death, which Peach’s family have campaigned to see for more than 30 years, was finally released today. It said it could “reasonably be concluded that a police officer struck the fatal blow”. A police van carrying six officers was identified as having been at the scene when the fatal blow was struck.
Except of course this doesn’t tell the whole story. The Met want you to think that it’s all gone murky, that the killer can’t possibly be found and that releasing this report should draw a line under the matter once and for all. The evidence suggests otherwise:
• suspicions centred on the SPG carrier U.11, the first vehicle to arrive on Beechcroft Avenue, the street where Peach was found staggering around and concussed. [Commander John] Cass said there was an “indication” that one officer in particular, who first emerged from the carrier but whose name has been redacted from the report, was responsible;
• the criminal investigation into Peach’s death was hampered by SPG officers, who Cass concluded had lied to him to cover up the actions of their colleagues. He “strongly recommended” that three officers should be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, giving detailed evidence to show how they were engaged in a “deliberate attempt to conceal the presence of the carrier at the scene at that time”. None were ever charged;
So the Met knows who murdered Peach, and knows who covered it up? Can someone in the know explain why they aren’t being charged now? The problems continue:
It was already known that when Cass raided lockers at the SPG headquarters he uncovered a stash of unauthorised weapons, including illegal truncheons, knives, two crowbars, a whip, a 3ft wooden stave and a lead-weighted leather stick.
One officer was caught trying to hide a metal cosh, although it was not the weapon that killed Peach. Another officer was found with a collection of Nazi regalia.
In his report, Cass said the arsenal of weapons caused him “grave concern”, but claimed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the officers involved.
A total of 14 witnesses told investigators they saw “a police officer hit the deceased on the head” but, according to Cass, there were discrepancies in their evidence and most could not identify the officer.
Insufficient evidence? What should we make of Commander Cass, when he’d seen what seems abundantly sufficient evidence, yet labelled it ‘insufficient’? And why then should it be abundantly clear to others who killed Peach:
The six officers with the SPG (the forerunners of today’s brutal and equally notorious TSG) are known to be Insp Murray, PC White, PC Richardson, PC Scottow, PC Freestone and PS Lake. Although the published version has been censored by the Met to obscure the truth it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that Blair Peach was killed by a blow from Inspector Murray’s police radio.
It is shameful that it has taken so long for the report to be published. It would be more shameful if the lessons in it – about honesty and transparency and about the dangers of creating an elite force-within-a-force like the SPG then and the Territorial Support Group now – were not recognised.
They’re still not being recognised, just as the lessons of the G20 protest last year haven’t been learned. Indeed just recently Sergeant Delroy Smellie was acquitted for his attack on a peaceful protester, following the Met’s killing of Ian Tomlinson. Not only was Smellie’s defence palpably absurd, but the reasons for his violent behaviour were never questioned. The current TSG might not be quite as bad as the SPG but having this elite force-within-a-force seems still to lead to a serious level of needless brutality, serious injury and death. And just what is happening about Ian Tomlinson? Any charges anyone?
Scouting for a location on London Wall for a portrait of one of the architect’s responsible for the City’s changing skyline, I went to One Aldermanbury Square. Loaded with a Canon g10, I wandered around the base of the building taking recce shots. A guard employed by the building waved his hands at me, asserting that I couldn’t photograph this building. As I stood on the pavement opposite the building I told him he was wrong, and I had every right to photograph, which I kept on doing. Another guard approached saying the same thing, and that if I didn’t move he’d call the police. (He recognised me from a previous occasion when he had warned me off, which had also resulted in a police response. On that occasion they were satisfied that I was within my rights and I had done nothing wrong. Thus the security guards had prior confirmation from the police that I was a photographer, not a terrorist.) I wandered back and forth, sizing up my locations and where I would place my subject. I walked along London Wall high walk, and saw the frenzied police activity below. Four officers had arrived and were in animated discussion with the guards. A police van with flashing lights sped out of Wood Street and eyeballed me, fixing my position. Uniformed police approached me from both directions. I continued walking and photographing. PC 374 walked towards me and greeted me with a cheery ‘Hello’. I responded in like fashion and continued to walk on as he spoke into his radio. He stopped me with his hand firmly on my chest. I asked if I was being detained.
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