Britain: Blunkett to legislate for “thought crimes” and guilt by
association

Richard Tyler |
April 25 2004

Twenty years
after 1984, the date for George Orwell’s dystopian vision, the British home
secretary hopes to introduce a new category of imprisonable offence—“thought
crime,” or guilt by association.

According to
two recent newspaper articles, David Blunkett is considering jailing those who
merely “sympathise” with so-called extremist Islamic groups or who continue to
“associate” with alleged terrorist suspects.

The Observer
wrote on April 11, “Sympathisers with extremist Islamic groups will risk jail
under controversial plans to make merely associating with a suspected terrorist
a crime.”

The next day,
the Times reported, “Those whose names were found on seized mobile phones,
computers or e-mails and who tried further contact would find themselves facing
prison.”

The paper
added that the home secretary would like a formal warning given to “every known
contact of a terror suspect or extremist Islamic group.” A source close to the
home secretary was quoted saying, “We are targeting support networks, the things
that enable terrorism to be perpetrated by other people. It is intended to deter
people from hanging around the fringes of undesirables.”

The latest
musings of Blunkett are a double attack on democratic rights.

Firstly, the
proposal to introduce “guilt by association” makes criminals of those who have
committed no crime. Secondly, by extension the so-called “undesirables” with
whom they associate face a form of banning order reminiscent of the apartheid
regime in South Africa, preventing them from coming into contact with
anyone.

Barry Hugill,
spokesman for civil rights group Liberty, said, “You cannot start imprisoning
people for what may or may not be going on inside their head.”

The Labour
government has introduced some of the most draconian “anti-terrorist”
legislation in Europe. Britain has declared a “technical” state of emergency,
enabling the suspension of sections of the European Convention on Human Rights.
This then makes possible the indefinite internment of foreign nationals as
“terrorist suspects,” without recourse to the normal juridical
process.

The 14
individuals who have been locked up under the terms of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime
and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA) enter a Kafkaesque world where they may not see
the evidence that supposedly justifies their incarceration, nor may they appoint
an independent legal representative to challenge their imprisonment in the
courts. They can only be set free if they agree to be deported back to the
country from which they have fled, where their life may well be in danger. The
choice is stark: indefinite detention without due legal process, or possible
death.

In February,
Blunkett proposed the introduction of a form of “pre-emptive” justice, where
suspects could be jailed based on charges for crimes they had not yet
committed.

It is a
measure of the disregard for longstanding democratic norms that permeates
official politics and most of the media in Britain that the home secretary’s
latest proposal passed largely without comment or
criticism.

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