Anyone following the recent events in Parliament over the issue of banging people up without trial for 42 days and the resignation of David Davis will wonder if conviction politics has returned to Westminster. However, as with any kind of conviction there are always those who will knock it or buy it off for their own personal and political ends.
The erosion of our civil liberties to fend off a threat from religious extremists is a very dangerous path to tread. Our rights and civil liberties are cheapened by an obvious political game last played in the dying days of the former Conservative government to wrong foot the opposition.
What appears to go unnoticed is the misuse of such a threat to quell any form of dissent and the erosion of liberty in other areas of life. The recent complaint to the Office of Fair Trading concerning the abuse of the dominant market position of Eversheds (solicitors) having around 100 of the 130 or so universities in England and Wales as clients is an example. The resulting Student Complaints Scheme is blatantly obstructed and perverted, it takes away the right to a judicial revue, is unenforceable, and the findings kept confidential. Whoever thought that one up was not acting in the interests of students. Moreover, it is more repressive than the old Visitor system it replaced so that universities can maintain their ‘reputation’. No wonder students are given every encouragement to use it; its the best way to get rid of them.
This abuse of power by UK universities concerning complaints procedures that is just what extremists want to recruit others to carry out acts of terrorism and in that respect we have clearly learned nothing from our experience of the home-grown variety. What drives the ordinary people to commit atrocities is abuse of power by those in authority who then abuse the system to stitch people up to make them and the problem go away. 42 days detention without trial is going to be seen as a stitch up and an abuse of powers under the Prevention of Terrorism Act we have seen with the arrest of 82-year-old ‘political’ protesters. They have already banged up students for researching their thesis, when are they going to start banging them up for making a legitimate complaint?
There is a part of English culture that includes a fear of being caught and the inevitable inquiry and public humiliation. In Wales, there is no such fear for being caught, as it carries no consequences whatsoever. The Welsh Assembly Government has stated this is ‘all part of the tradition’ and so they have not only colluded with fraudsters but also banned the taxpaying public from being able to complain about it. What are they going to ban next? Complaints about schools and hospitals presumably! A change of government would make no difference as all political parties collude to keep such things from the public for fear of the Welsh Assembly being seen to be powerless in tackling such issues.
