14th
David Davis
The Tories campaigning for civil rights?
What the fuck?
Wasn’t it the Heath government who supported Internment in Northern Ireland in the 70s? You can’t go detaining 2000 people without trial for several years, and then, 30 years later, distance yourself from legislation which does the same thing but with a time limit of 42 days, can you? All the Tories are doing here is electioneering; it’s a sensitive issue which they think Gordon Brown could have suffered a demoralising loss upon; which they would have inevitably profited from. In fact, they did profit, due to the media coverage of the nature of Brown’s sickening victory.
A commentator on Channel 4 News, referring to the rumours that Brown bought the DUP vote with compromises upon various issues within the NI Assembly, asked ‘Is it not worrying that our civil liberties can be bought by economic promises?’ That was already a given before this debarcle, but still, I’d like to turn it on its head. The DUP voted for the 42 days legislation because they, themselves, largely benefitted from similar legislation thirty years beforehand (admittedly, there were blocks of Loyalist prisoners in Long Kesh; but the majority of prisoners were Republicans). What I think this event showed really was that ‘Is it not worrying that political parties base their policy surrounding our civil liberties upon competative, rather than moralistic standards?’ Here, the DUP didn’t change it’s metaphorical ‘spots’, the Tories did. The Tories supported the existance of Long Kesh right up until the Major government, and Cameron probably didn’t give a shit then. Now he’s saying things like:
“We must not stoop to illiberalism - whether at Guantanamo Bay, or here at home with excessive periods of detention without trial”
Bullshit. Unfortunately, New Labour’s move to the (pretty extreme - on this issue) right has prompted Cameron & co to come up with some smooth liberal moves relating to the fluxous of public & media political boredom (majority party go to the right -> media/armchairs go left (to an extent), majority go to the left-> media/armchairs go right etc etc). It’s a sorry state of affairs when this sort of legislation, in direct contradiction to many basic human rights, passes with a majority vote within parliament. However, it is fucking sickening when the only forms of opposition to this legislation comes from small factions of socialist mps (therefore, dismissed by the mass-media as ‘rebels’ and ‘renegades’), the Liberal Democrats and the transparent electioneering of a massive bunch of hypocrits, who, eleven years ago and in-power, would’ve been all-in-favour.
Gah.
