David Cameron’s choice of Sayeeda Warsi to shadow Hazel Blears, further illustrates how far the Tories are moving away from a hawkish position on the war on terror.
Here is what she said soon after 7/7:
“We must start engaging with, not agreeing with, the radical groups who we have said in the past are complete nutters,” she said, suggesting a process akin to the Northern Ireland peace process that brought Sinn Fein into peaceful negotiations. “We need to bring these groups into the fold of the democratic process. As long as we exclude them and don’t hear them out, we will allow them to continue their hate,” said Ms Warsi, who lives in Dewsbury, Leeds, home to Mohammad Sadique Khan, one of the London suicide bombers. “It may not achieve results immediately, but it may stop the immediate violence.” The Scotsman, July 20th, 2005
And here are her thoughts on the balance between security and civil liberties and Iraq:
“Mrs Warsi, 34, the Conservative vice-chairman with responsibility for cities, asserted that the tightening of anti-terrorist legislation had turned Britain into “a police state”. The claims appear in an article that she wrote for Awaaz, a newspaper read by Asians that is distributed in the West Yorkshire towns and cities that were home to the July 7 suicide bombers. Readers were told by Mrs Warsi that the Government’s anti-terror proposals were “enough to tip any normal young man into the realms of a radicalised fanatic”. Her article asks: “If terrorism is the use of violence against civilians, then where does that leave us in Iraq?”
The Times, 15th May, 2006.
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