Control Orders: a pyrrhic victory for the Lib Dems?

bohodotcom

It's a start... maybe there'll be more Lib inspired policies in the New Year... after the rough ride they got at the end of last year...

Vulture

I think that when the inevitable happens and the authors of the next Islamist atrocity prove to be people like the Stockholm bomber who are home grown jihadists - then those who have agitated for the abolition of Control Orders will look very foolish indeed.

Recently one UK-based suspect subjected to a CO left the UK after writing articles in the Guardian bemoaning his plight which had allegedly left him wheelchair bound.

He somehow managed to heave himself out of his chair and make his way to the Yemen where he was killed by a US Drone.

Britain's policy makers really should stop stockpiling the explosives which will kill us all. F**K civil rights: we are at war.

Verity

Vulture, the walking commodes who carried out the bombing of London Transport were home grown jihadis. It's already happened.

TrevorsDen

Vulture all our terrorist atrocities have been home grown. The last lot of arrests are all probably home grown. You have no logic - but whats new?

Vital? How? We have no need for control orders - we collect evidence and arrest and try people. We have control orders because we are unwilling to arrest people.

Given that control orders cover people under constant surveillance and suspicion I fail to see how withdrawing them affects security.

We are though as Vulture says at war - since Sept 11 2001. In many ways we are not pursuing this war coherently.

strapworld

Vulture. Calm down dear!

I do agree that Clegg and co (Including Cameron and his clique who have agreed to go along with this ridiculous policy) will feel the real anger of the people WHEN, as it will be, the next islamist outrage is perpetrated on the UK!

Hopefully they will then resign! But that is what honourable people would do. Parliamentarians, these days, are all out for themselves.

Weakness and deceit is all we get from politicians of all parties now.

I think we are entering a very unsettling stage of our history.

charles hercock

Kinda shows where Tinsel Clegg and the wishy-washies are at

Let them have their little triumphs

Ben Lovegrove

According to The Sunday Times today "His apparent victory comes despite intense lobbying of Downing Street by MI5 and the Home Office to continue with control orders."

and

"Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, wrote to Cameron two months ago saying that if some suspects were released from house arrest, he could not guarantee that they would not resume planning attacks against Britain."

Still, nice to know that their civil liberties are now being upheld again.

stereodof

It's perfectly obvious that the police and security services will always lobby for things like control orders because it makes their jobs easier. It would also make their jobs easier to lock anyone funny looking away without trial. As a society we must at some point draw a line on security that we will not cross. When the police and the security services lobby for greater powers they do so not as a disinterested body but as a union. If we allowed the police 90 days detention and control orders they would ask for still more.

Dennis Churchill

Hostage to fortune.
When ,and it is when not if, the next bombing occurs the public will look around for someone to blame and our political class are becoming increasingly despised.
The Olympics are a likely target with the eyes of the world on London and the city packed with international media.

In2minds

"Control Orders, which many experts believe are vital" -

There are problems with citing 'experts' here or on any subject. In the recent past we have been told by climate experts that in the UK snow will be unknown and children will grow up unaware of what it is. So began the great global warming/climate change scam. Now I read that the whole world will come to an end unless Control Orders can continue. I don't believe this to be true.

David Lindsay

Both of what are now the Coalition parties have rightly always opposed control orders. They are unsafe. Terrorists should be convicted and imprisoned. A real one can easily remove a tag and vanish. Some controlees have already done so. Ed Miliband, Lib Dem backbenchers and proper Tories: over to you.

Occasional Ostrich

@Verity

"walking commodes"

Doesn't that describe them in excessively generous terms? Or were you concerned that your real feelings would have been moderated out of existence?

TomTom

Control Orders are an assertion that we British can send into "internal exile" foreigners we choose not to deport as "undesirable aliens". It creates a strange precedent in our law reminiscent of Rule 18B and is an imposition on our culture simply to accommodate our fear of ejecting foreign elements from our country back to their countries of origin.

It is a triumph of the alien to have undermined our heritage and freedoms by forcing us not to deport him and not to jail him but to create a quasi-judicial state of arrest in perpetuity

Victor Southern

Control orders amount to giving a power to the police to confine someone without any charge or evidence being brought against them.

They were used by the apartheid regime in South Africa and are used by the Burmese junta and by China.

They have no place in a democracy. If there is evidence aginst someone then they should be charged, brought speedily to trail and if guilty of terrorism imprisoned and then deported. If they are UK citizens than lengthen the term of imprisonment and if they acquired citizenship forfeit it.

Peter From Maidstone

How many people in the last 10 years have had their citizenship revoked and have been deported? 2? 3? I would be very interested to know the figures.

yank

Near as I can figure, this is about the only liberal policy supported by your Liberal Democrats, implying then that not only are you all bereft of a conservative party, but of a liberal party as well.

A monolithic Left isn't the way to go. Let's hope that situation changes soon.

Aubrey Herbert

First, the news that the Lib Dems have won the argument is under a David Leppard byline and therefore should perhaps be read with a certain amount of critical detachment through spectacles preferably not purchased from "CleggVision Express.

Second, Vulture, we are not "at war". To use the metaphors of war to tackle a serious but limited threat is to give legitimacy to the instruments of war, which leads you down the road to Guantanamo and waterboarding..sorry, "enhanced interrogation techniques". Some older Spectator readers, though fewer of the Coffee House crew, would rather take our chance with rights and liberty than 90 days and whatever other overreaction you had in mind.

Third, the argument for control orders is essentially one of convenience, as Stereodof points out. Home curfew means fewer surveillance teams aand less stress on the forces of law and order. That is a perfectly respectable argument, but one of tactics rather than first principle. The answer is a greater degree of surveillance for those who merit it, proportional to the threat and monitored under the law.

James

"9 men of illiberal intent"

Presumably 9 men convicted in a criminal trial?

What do you mean, 'no'?

Vanessa Deagan

Terrorism is big business. Follow the money (budgets) and you'll usually find those who are behind the "fear propaganda". All the "Control Orders" in the world won't stop a real organized terrorist.

To be honest, I'm not sure who I'm scared of more now - the terrorists or the police (after seeing police drag a cerebral palsy guy out of a wheel chair and drag him across a road, and riding into a crowd of kids on horses hitting one so hard on the head that he nearly died and required emergency brain surgery).

In the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither”.

Derek Pasquill

If and when there is another terrorist outrage surely this will offer yet another pretext for Muslim groups in the UK to demand more Government funds to prevent radicalisation of their misunderstood youth?

Or am I being too cynical?

Andrew Tennant

The choice being presented is a false one - it is not either facilitate the actions of suspected terrorists vs destroy fundamental civil liberties; instead we can investigate, charge, try and prosecute through courts and evidence, before imprisoning those who would do us harm.

Innocent individuals should not have to live in fear of an authoritarian government with no respect for 'innocent until proven guilty' who can, on a whim, impose harsh and indefinite punishments without even explaining what an individual is accused of, never mind having the grounds to prove it.

Any retention of control orders is an absolute travesty.