The Nether-World

July 7: The Truth Starts To Emerge

2007-04-30T21:47:00.000+01:00

There has been a long gap in any reporting of the London bombings of July 7 2005. One of the reasons for this is the wait for the verdict in another trial which is related to the 7/7 atrocity.

The plot was to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent and the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London (amongst other targets) with ammonium nitrate fertiliser. The plot was foiled in 2004 by the police who had the gang under surveillance.

Five British men with close links to the July 7 bombers were today jailed for life after being found guilty of a plot to set off a wave of fertiliser-based explosions around the country.
The judge, Sir Michael Astill, told the ringleader, Omar Khyam, he would serve a minimum of 20 years in jail. He warned all five they may spend the rest of their lives in prison.
"You have betrayed this country that has given you every opportunity," he said. "All of you may never be released," he said, while noting it was not "a foregone conclusion".
Condemning "preachers of hate who contaminate impressionable young minds", Sir Michael labelled 25-year-old Khyam, who boasted about links to al-Qaida, "ruthless, devious, artful and dangerous".
After the verdicts it emerged that police had monitored Khyam repeatedly in the company of two of the July 7 bombers more than a year before the London suicide attacks, but that officers failed to act on the information.

Now that the trial is over some restrictions on reporting have been lifted. What emerges is a recognition that two of the July 7 bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan (the ringleader) and Shehzad Tanweer were linked to the people behind the Fertiliser Bomb Plot. What is also coming out is that the July 7 bombers (like the fertiliser bomb plotters) had been followed, filmed and bugged by the security services in what is known as Operation Crevice , something that many of us have been saying for some time. The surveillance uncovered links between the gang and Islamist militants abroad, including al-Qaida.

MI5 secretly monitored two of the London 7 July bombers four times before the 2005 attacks, it emerged during the fertiliser bomb plot trial.
Details of how much the security services knew about suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer emerged at the trial.
The trial linked the bombers to an international network which was watched a year before the 2005 suicide attacks.

This of course makes a complete mockery of the the statement made by the Home Secretary at the time, Charles Clarke, a day after the London bombings:

"This was a vicious and cynical attack out of the blue in a way that there was no knowledge of beforehand in any respect whatsoever."

The spinning has now gone up a gear with both MI5 and the Government trying to clarify their positions. MI5 have published their explanation on their website while the government is going out of its way to tell us why we still can't have a full public inquiry into the atrocity. Instead it is offering us the lame alternative of a parliamentary committee revisiting the case and trying to pass that off as somehow 'independent'.

This just isn't good enough. We need a public (or at least independent) inquiry into July 7 if we want to have the best chance of preventing a repeat of that atrocity. Once again I'm calling on everyone to sign this petition calling for such an inquiry. By everyone I mean not just ordinary people but politicians of all parties (the opposition parties are also calling for a public inquiry) and media organisations. If you have a blog, please link to this petition and ask visitors to sign it. Many thanks to those who have already signed. With enough pressure we may eventually be able to force the government to investigate this event properly. As Rachel says:

I do not blame people in the security services for their mistakes and failure to use intelligence. It is failing to admit mistakes and then trying to cover up mistakes which is unforgivable and inexcusable.

Now that the Fertiliser Plot trial is over, the government can no longer hide behind sub judice rules and the excuse that a public or independent inquiry would take up too many resources and prevent further counter-terrorism measures is frankly ludicrous.

Related Bloggage
Blairwatch
Chicken Yoghurt
Rachel From North London
D-Notice
Obsolete

More as I find it. Previous postings on 7/7 can be found here.

Tags: 7/7, London Bombings, July 7, Terrorism, Fertiliser Bomb Plot

April Foolery

2007-04-01T06:52:00.000+01:00

Last year a story that I suspected was an April Fools joke turned out to be real which is a reversal from the norm where a convincing story turns out to be a prank. So this year I've been a bit more careful in reading the news. I'm sure there are lots of April Fools jokes going around, but my favourite so far is this one from the Telegraph which almost had me for a minute:

Revealed: cash-strapped London ready to share Olympics with France
The Government is drawing up plans to "farm out" several events at the 2012 London Olympics - including the showpiece opening ceremony - to Paris.
Steeply rising costs and unexpected delays in developing the London site have forced the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to draw up the radical contingency proposals.
Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, is understood to have set up a top level, inter-departmental working party to consider the options.
One idea is to stage some of the events in Paris, which was narrowly beaten by London to host the Games when the International Olympic Committee made its choice in 2005.
Miss Jowell is adamant that London will not lose any of the major athletics events, but some of the track and field heats could take place in Paris.
The opening ceremony, which is costly and not truly sports-related, could even be transferred to the Stade de France. A memorandum from the Foreign Office to the working party, seen by this newspaper, notes: "The French are very good at fireworks."
Read on

Of course considering the pig's ear that Tessa Jowell has made of the financing of the Olympics so far, and Britain's performance in completing Wembley Stadium, it was only remembering what day this is that stopped me believing this story. Once you get further down the article there are some other clues such as Ken Livingstone denying that he was:

in favour of allowing some of the "softer" Olympic events, such as beach volleyball and synchronised swimming, to be transferred to Caracas, as a mark of his admiration for Venezuela's Left-wing president Hugo Chavez.

Ho Ho, very droll... And then there is the name of Avril Bouffonnerie as being the spokesman for the original French bid. So I'm fairly confident this time that this is an April Fools joke (even though it's a damn good idea - in fact I'd go further and give the whole thing to Paris; Britain under New Labour proves every day that it couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery). It's nice to see that Iain Dale has also gotten into the spirit of the occasion, and, I have to say, did it very well too - it had me going for about as long as the Telegraph article did.

What I'm wondering now is whether or not this is an April Fool's joke:

Clarke ready to run for leader
CHARLES CLARKE is ready to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership if David Miliband fails to mount a bid.
Confidants of the former home secretary say he will consider a leadership challenge to deprive the chancellor of a “coronation” for the top job if the environment secretary refuses to do so.

I suspect that ludicrous as it sounds, it isn't, but then I've already commented on on his plotting and his prospects as well as the song that came to mind when I first heard of the possibility.

Tags: April Fools, Olympics, Charles Clarke

Is the Safety Elephant Toast? If not, why not?

2006-05-02T02:30:00.000+01:00

It is looking more and more likely that Charles Clarke’s tenure as Home Secretary is pretty much over. Revelations over the weekend that Clarke withheld from the Prime Minister and the police for three weeks the fact that foreign murderers and rapists had been released from prison and not deported according to judges' recommendations, made his position even more untenable than it already was. On top of this it seems possible that Mr Clarke lied when he said that he had offered to resign, further infuriating an already angry Tony Blair.

The cries for Clarke’s resignation or sacking are turning into screams as police are now investigating the claims of a woman that her murdered son would still be alive if the Jamaican killer had been deported after serving a previous sentence for drugs offences. Police are also investigating a rape case that may have been committed by one of the foreign prisoners. If in either or both of these cases it turns out that the perpetrators were marked for deportation, it is impossible to envisage a scenario where the Home Secretary keeps his job; Tony Blair has said as much.

Graphic from The Times

Political pundits are already guessing who Clarke’s successor might be with Alistair Darling seen as the favourite followed by John Reid. Despite all this Clarke is still refusing to go and is resisting demands to make an urgent statement to the House of Commons. Even if Clarke does manage to hang on until after the local elections, he has lost any credibility he might have had and is likely to go in the next cabinet reshuffle. Tony Blair is going to have to take action in order to deflect pressure on him to announce when he will step down. The longer the current situation continues, the more unstable the entire government looks with two top ministers in such trouble and a host of other problems. Tony Blair is looking more and more isolated every day as he runs out of options and faces an increasingly angry electorate.

One cabinet minister put it graphically: "Our moral authority has collapsed. It's everything from Cherie's hair to cash for peerages, from Tessa's offshore mortgages to John Prescott's trousers. They think we abuse power and it's no good listing all we have delivered. It only makes them rage. They accuse us of arrogance and corruption and it leaves you silenced."
Guardian Article

If that is typical of the reaction canvassers are getting on the doorstep, then Labour is in very deep trouble indeed.

Tags: Nu Labour, Blair, Charles Clarke

Vultures Circling over Nu Labour

2006-04-30T07:21:00.000+01:00

There is a sense that things are coming to a head in the Labour Party. Two out of the three cabinet ministers caught up in last week’s ‘triple whammy’ are just about hanging on to their jobs and are at the mercy of events. Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott is waiting to see what the reaction is going to be to whatever revelations emerge from his mistress’ kiss-and-tell story in the Mail on Sunday. He may well be able to weather more sordid details of his affair with his secretary, Tracy Temple, but if stories about abuse of his position get more attention, or other sex scandals become public, he may have to quit in order to save the Government from further embarrassment.

Charles Clarke’s position as Home Secretary hangs in the balance as more news about the foreign ex-prisoners re offending comes to light. As the police frantically try to round these people up, journalists are frantically looking for evidence of further violent crimes committed by them since their release, and they seem to be having more success than the police. The Prime Minister seems to be washing his hands of the affair as the baying for blood gets louder.

The context for all this drama is, of course, next week's local elections when Labour is expected to get a serious drubbing. Because of this, attention is finally starting to focus on the ringmaster of the New Labour circus. The loudest calls so far for Tony Blair to announce the time of his departure are ringing out around Westminster with threats of a leadership challenge if he doesn’t. We are hearing that there will be a cabinet reshuffle after the elections which the Government hopes will calm things down. Having the reshuffle before the election will, the Government argues, add to the sense of crisis. And there is the problem. Tony Blair is still in denial that there is a real problem with his New Labour project. A purely cosmetic reshuffle after the election will not reverse his fortunes. To use a tired old cliché, it will seem like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Tony Blair does not want to quit, at least not while things are going so badly; in Iraq, in the NHS, with the cash for honours scandal, and in just about every other department in his Government. He has not yet made the connection that the longer he hangs on, the worse things get. Like a hopeless gambling addict he appears to be thinking that ‘one last flutter’ will change his fortunes. Blair seems to fear that Gordon Brown will not continue his ‘reforms’ and playing for more time will allow another candidate more enthusiastic about his policies to emerge. Gordon Brown seems to playing the ‘give him enough rope and he’ll hang himself’ game. He is keeping a relatively low profile while letting his supporters stir up trouble from the sidelines. The tactic may be sound but Brown too is running out of time and he is in danger of inheriting an irreparably damaged party faced by an overwhelmingly hostile electorate. At the moment the Tories are failing to capitalise on the mess, but as the exasperation with New Labour continues that may change.

Needless to say, while all this is going on normal government (if there is such a thing) seems to be suspended. The reshuffle will be another battle between ‘Blairites’ and ‘Brownites’ and will be viewed as an indicator as to the direction New Labour will take and fuel more discussion as to when Blair will stand down. One of Blair’s problems here is that he is fast running out of credible allies to fill vacant seats in his cabinet. If Blair continues to put in place people whose only qualifications are undying loyalty to him, then he is storing up further problems of incompetence in the future. The support of these Blairites are all that is keeping him safe for the moment because they realise that they will lose their jobs once Brown gets into number 10 (if he does get in).

So what to do? I think it is safe to assume that there will be little change before next week’s vote, unless, of course, events overwhelm Charles Clarke and/or John Prescott. Labour are desperate to stress that the local elections are just that; elections about local issues. With the chaos happening nationally and internationally you can see why they would stress this. However, local elections have always been used as a chance for the electorate to give the Government a kick in the teeth when it’s needed, and on this occasion a kicking is more than necessary. If the vote goes particularly badly for Labour as is expected, it may well give backbenchers the courage to initiate a leadership challenge.

That would be a starting point for things to improve. The party leadership recognises this hence all the scare stories of the BNP doing so well. It probably will do better than usual, as will many of the smaller parties like the Green Party, UKIP, Respect etc. as well as independents. This might actually be a good thing for democracy in Britain. If people are so disenchanted with Labour that they will actually go out and vote for a bunch of racist, fascist thugs like the BNP then that is the most damning indictment for Labour than anything else I can think of. And it is a problem of Labour’s own making. All the same, Labour can be severely punished without giving racist morons any credibility and I would like to see the BNP consigned to history’s dustbin.

Voters will have the chance next week to do what backbenchers should have done ages ago by pronouncing their verdict on Blair’s leadership without actually removing the governing party. Whoever wins in local elections, garbage will still be collected and council tax will continue to rise. But sweeping Blair from power would make a real difference. I for one cannot bear the thought of Blair crowing that the election results vindicates him and proves his policies are correct if Labour does do well (and we all know that he will do that). Until we get the electoral reforms we so desperately need in Britain so that peoples' views are more fairly reflected in government, tactical voting in elections (even local elections) is the only way for us to make a point.

The stories we have been hearing in recent weeks, whether its cash for peerages or Departments of Health and Education and Home Office incompetence, or the removal of civil liberties, are all symptoms of a greater rot that has set in a government that has been in power far too long with the same leader. Yes, Charles Clarke obviously has to go, but the buck stops with the Prime Minister whose bad judgement put Clarke and his ilk in positions they are patently not suited for.

*UPDATE*
There is so much more coming out in relation to these events and, of course, different aspects are being covered by other bloggers. Rachel and Blairwatch are on the case with some excellent posts, and many others no doubt. I'll post more links as I come across them.
Bryan Gould on Austin Mitchell's weblog (via Blairwatch) expresses his feelings about New Labour.

Tags: Britain, Nu Labour

Curtains for Clarke?

2006-04-29T05:46:00.000+01:00

"I believe I have the ability, knowledge and talent to lead the Home Office in the best way to deal with those issues and that is what I intend to do" - Charles Clarke 28 April 2006

No matter what he said in his ~~swan song~~ statement, it is starting to look like 'game over' for Charlie the Safety Elephant. After the Prime Minister's show of support for the Home Secretary when he rejected Clarke's offer to resign and asserted that he is the only one able to sort out the mess of 1,023 foreign prisoners on the loose in Britain who should have been deported after their release, there was a general consensus that if it transpired that any of these people had committed further violent crimes after release, then Clarke would have to resign.

There has been a frantic search for the ex-prisoners, but so far only six have been found. Police have been focusing on the 79 most dangerous of the foreign nationals, 63 of whom are marked for deportation.

Seventy two violent former prisoners remained at large last night, of whom at least ten are murderers, rapists or paedophiles. Only six foreign nationals had been found by police as Mr Clarke issued his statement, shortly before 6pm. One murderer was back in prison after breaking the terms of his release licence.
Times article

In what could be the last straw for Charles Clarke, stories are now emerging that some of these released prisoners have indeed re offended and some of the offences may have been violent. Five of convicts have since been prosecuted for drugs, violent disorder and inflicting bodily harm. In further developments, it seems that two of the foreign prisoners have been accused of rape.

Two more prisoners have been accused of rape. One of the prisoners being investigated by police is alleged to have committed rape since July last year, when Mr Clarke was informed of the fiasco. The other allegation of rape was dropped owing to lack of evidence, but remains on file.
Times article

One case dropped because of a lack of evidence and the other currently being investigated by the police. After Clarke's statement on TV in which he declared that none of the prisoners had been re convicted of the most serious offences like murder, rape or paedophilia, this really could be the end for him.

Tags: Britain, Nu Labour, Charles Clarke

Charlie the Safety Elephant’s Intellectual Laziness

2006-04-26T04:14:00.000+01:00

"I would impose restrictions on those suspected of being involved in organised crime. In fact, I would generally harry, hassle and hound them until they give up or leave the country." - Tony Blair April 2006

Less than 24 hours after the well publicised rant in which Charles Clarke lambasted the media for it's “intellectual laziness” over reports that his illiberal policies were removing civil liberties, the tables were spectacularly turned when it transpired that 1,023 foreign prisoners, after finishing their sentences, walked free instead of being deported and are now at large with the Home Office having no idea where many of them are. In many cases judges had expressly recommended deportation for the prisoners at their sentencing.

Such is the chaos in the system for dealing with "foreign national prisoners" that Home Office officials were unable to say last night whether they had found three foreign murderers - who should be on life-long licence - nine rapists and five paedophiles among the 1,023 prisoners released since 1999.
Telegraph

Mr Clarke said he was not going to start pointing the finger at who was to blame for the error.

The Home Secretary then proceeded to do just that, pointing his finger at the Prison Service and the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) and promising that he would not resign over the Home Office incompetence as it is his responsibility to clear it up. He did however accept his responsibility as the Minister in charge of the Home Office.

"I do take responsibility for this," he said. "It is a shocking state of affairs. I take it extremely, extremely seriously in every respect. The concern, possibly anger, that people will feel is entirely understandable. It was a basic administrative failure."
Mr Clarke could not say "hand on heart" that all those involved would be found. He refused to resign and said he did not expect others to go either. "I do not think it is a resigning matter," he said.
Downing Street supported him, adding that it did not expect ministers "to know what is going on in every nook and cranny in their department". But it was hardly welcome news to Tony Blair in the middle of a local election campaign.
The Guardian

Tony Blair might be backing him up on his decision not to resign but one has to wonder how long Charlie can hang on now that a major hunt is underway to find these ex convicts.

The fiasco - which only came to light after repeated questions from a Tory MP - plunged Mr Clarke into the worst crisis of his 16-month spell in charge of the department and dismayed Labour chiefs hoping to highlight the party's law and order credentials in next week's local elections. The pressure on him intensified last night when it emerged that 288 of the prisoners were freed after August 2005 when MPs first alerted the Home Office to the problem.
Independent Article

In other words the worst of this was happening on his watch when he was aware of the problem and was supposedly dealing with it. Not only that, but the full scale of the blunder had to be prized out of him by MPs and journalists. What an honourable way to behave!

Poor Charlie isn't going to like the newspaper headlines today and this time he’s going to have to take it on the chin.

While the tabloids will obviously have a lot of fun with this story and use it to reinforce their generally xenophobic views with over simplifications and assumptions that all those prisoners should have been deported, which might not be the case, the fact that the Home Office is guilty of huge incompetence remains true. It could be argued (and probably will be by the Government) that this story is being overblown as the prisoners had finished their sentences and were released as many British ex convicts are. The Home Office, however, should have been aware of the particulars of each case and known whether deportation was necessary or not. I also wonder what the reaction would be if this had happened to another Home Secretary (in a way it has because this started on David Blunkett's watch and he seems to be calling for heads to roll). Charles Clarke's well deserved unpopularity earned by his lack of manners and illiberal agenda may cause this issue to be his undoing. A more sensible Home Seretary might have received more sypmathy. But then a more sensible Home Secretary would have dealt with the problem properly in the first place.

Blairwatch has more on this with links to a very worried looking Charlie giving abysmal performances on Channel 4 News and Newsnight.

Tags: Blair, Nu Labour, Charles Clarke

The Pernicious Poison in the Government

2006-04-25T03:25:00.000+01:00

Following the media debate on the erosion of civil liberties started by The Observer’s Henry Porter, the government is striking back, apparently stung and offended by the temerity of a small hand full of journalists who dared to suggest that their policies are overly authoritarian and bringing Britain closer to becoming a police state. New Labour has come out on the offensive in an attempt to convince us either that they are not removing our civil liberties or that removing our civil liberties is the only way to preserve them.

First up was Tony Blair on Sunday telling us that he

“would widen the police powers to seize the cash of suspected drug dealers, the cars they drive round in, and require them to prove they came by them, lawfully. I would impose restrictions on those suspected of being involved in organised crime. In fact, I would generally harry, hassle and hound them until they give up or leave the country.” (my emphasis)

No amount of spin can alter the fact that this is completely contrary to the long-established principle of being innocent until proven guilty. It gets worse; The Observer also reported that:

Even if they are not convicted of a crime and there is insufficient evidence to try them, suspects could be banned from associating with certain individuals or travelling to certain places, in order to disrupt trades such as human trafficking.

So that is the end of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is it? Not according to the Safety Elephant who at the end of a speech yesterday said:

“And let me conclude with one of the more ridiculous statements: "The presumption of innocence is no longer a fixed legal principal". This is complete nonsense. In this country that you are innocent of an offence until proven guilty.”

Sorry Mr Clarke, the only response to that is “Bullshit!” Not only does that statement contradict what the Prime Minister said, it contradicts the facts on the ground. Control orders, for example, where people have been put under house arrest without having been charged with a crime let alone been found guilty of one. And that was only because the Home Secretary was forced to have them released from Belmarsh where they had been illegally incarcerated.

Mr Clarke’s speech was a response to articles in The Observer and The Independent which reasonably pointed out that New Labour’s policies are increasingly authoritarian and are attacking civil liberties. ID cards, the ‘anti-terror’ legislation, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, DNA database, ASBOs, severe limits on ‘unauthorised’ demonstrations, tapping the phones of MPs, the depressing list goes on.

“But I believe that a pernicious and even dangerous poison is now slipping into at least some parts of this media view of the world. In the absence of many of the genuinely dangerous and evil totalitarian dictatorships to fight - since they've gone - the media has steadily rhetorically transferred to some of the existing democracies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, some of the characteristics of those dictatorships.”

That’s because The United States and the United Kingdom now share some of the characteristics of the old dictatorships. I never dreamed that America and Britain would support torture, ‘extraordinary rendition’, illegal wars, anti-democratic legislation and even changing the Geneva Convention. Don’t shoot the messenger Mr Clarke; look at what you are doing!

“So some commentators routinely use language like 'police state', 'fascist', 'hijacking our democracy', 'creeping authoritarianism', 'destruction of the rule of law', whilst words like 'holocaust', 'gulag' and 'apartheid' are regularly used descriptively of our society in ways which must be truly offensive to those who experienced those realities.”
Full Speech

Yes, that’s right; it’s calling a spade a spade. And yes it is offensive; it is as offensive now as it was then. What else is this if not ‘destruction of the rule of law’?

In this case, the judge said, Charles Clarke had made his decision to issue the order based on "one-sided information", but he was "unable to envisage the circumstances" allowing the court to quash the home secretary's decision. As a result, the judge said, he would have to leave the order in place, even though he ruled that it contravened human rights law ... "Controlees' rights ... are being determined not by an independent court ... but by executive decision making untrammelled by any prospect of effective judicial supervision ... If you erect a structure where people in the position of your client, to be frank, don't have a chance, the secretary of state is always going to win."
Source

And the pictures of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib make the term ‘gulag’ seem mild to me. Bringing in legislation that allows laws can to made, altered and changed by a Minister WITHOUT having to go through parliament for a vote or even a debate, cannot be anything else but ‘hijacking our democracy'.

Attacking the media for belatedly expressing concern for what is happening is further proof of the fascist direction this government is taking us in. Thankfully, at the moment at least, we still do have a robust relatively free media, but from the tone of Charles Clarke’s speech I doubt it will stay that way for long. I say ‘relatively’ because the mainstream media too has been guilty of gross media distortions which do not seem to attract the ire of the Government when they support their position.

Unsurprisingly, many blogs have commented on this important issue and will continue to do so, unless they too are somehow silenced. There is more excellent coverage from (amongst many):

Blairwatch, Bloggerheads, Chicken Yoghurt, Curious Hamster and Devil's Kitchen

Tags: Blair, New Labour, Civil Liberties, Democracy

Tim Worstall in The Times on Charlie the Safety Elephant

2006-04-21T15:24:00.000+01:00

For anyone who was interested in the very memorable piece Tim Worstall wrote a couple of days ago about Charles Clarke wanting to severely limit the compensation paid to victims of miscarriages of Justice, there is a follow up in The Times. Obviously the language is a little more restrained but the sentiments are exactly the same. The views shared by much of the blogosphere are now in the mainstream.

Given that more and more laws have been passed that hack away at our rights, and given that the courts rule, time and again, that these are illegal and in breach of the Human Rights Act, perhaps he expects a logjam of cases of wrongful imprisonment to come before the courts? A series of wrongly jailed innocents, people jugged by one or other restriction, will be freed by the first appeal court they reach that declares that the very law under which they were convicted was itself illegal?

This is well worth reading in full.

Tags: Britain, New Labour

Charles Clarke the Infallible

2006-04-19T17:31:00.000+01:00

Home Secretary, Charles Clarke wants to save £5m pounds a year by cutting the compensation paid out to victims of miscarriages of justice.

Those who win their appeals at the first attempt will get no compensation. Others who have spent years in prison will see any pay-outs capped.

Individual awards will be limited to £500,000 to bring them in line with the maximum amount paid to victims.

Mr Clarke seems to believe that people who have been wrongly convicted for crimes they did not commit are not victims themselves, despite spending time in prison and possibly losing their jobs, their homes, and maybe breaking up their families, as well as ruining their reputations.

"These changes will save more than £5m a year which we will plough back into improving criminal justice and support for victims of crime."

The discretionary compensation scheme, which currently pays out £2m a year, is to be scrapped, meaning that no compensation will be paid to people who win their appeals on their first attempt, even if they have spent 20 months in prison. As it is, the cost of board and living expenses are deducted from compensation payments for victims of miscarriages of justice.

So why is Charles Clarke doing this? The £5m he is trying to save is a paltry amount in the grand sceme of things; it is about the same amount Parliament spends in catering and is 0.001% of public spending (thanks to Tim Worstall for that). It could be that recently there have been a number of high-profile miscarriages of justice and the Home Secretary is expecting more as his badly drafted anti-terror legislation comes into force. Whatever the reason, for the state not to pay adequate compensation after ruining someones life is deeply shameful and I echo the statement in the title of Tim's piece as well as his suggestion on what to do to Charles Clarke.

*UPDATE*

It gets worse, reducing compensation payments seems to be part of a concerted attack on the criminal justice system. Now he's after the lawyers too.

Tags: Britain, New Labour

Another 'Affront to Justice' from the Home Office

2006-04-13T03:00:00.000+01:00

The Government's scheme of putting terrorist suspects under house arrest using so-called 'control orders' has been condemned by a high court judge. Mr Justice Sullivan called the legislation "an affront to justice" and "conspicuously unfair".

Mr Justice Sullivan said yesterday that the Government had tried to apply a "thin veneer of legality" to bring in new measures that denied individuals the right to a fair trial.

Source

His comments came as he was making a ruling on the challenge to a control order issued against a British Muslim referred to only as MB, the first such control order. MB was arrested after security services and the Home Secretary alleged that he had been planning to go to Iraq to fight the occupation. Before the control order MB had been held at London's Belmarsh prison along with other suspects without charge or trial, until that tactic too had been found to be illegal contravening the Human Rights Act.

The judge, however, also said that the laws had been drafted in such a way that courts could not overturn them.

In this case, the judge said, Charles Clarke had made his decision to issue the order based on "one-sided information", but he was "unable to envisage the circumstances" allowing the court to quash the home secretary's decision. As a result, the judge said, he would have to leave the order in place, even though he ruled that it contravened human rights law ... "Controlees' rights ... are being determined not by an independent court ... but by executive decision making untrammelled by any prospect of effective judicial supervision ... If you erect a structure where people in the position of your client, to be frank, don't have a chance, the secretary of state is always going to win."

Source

The Home Office rejected the ruling saying that it would appeal:

"The Government believes that control orders are the best way of addressing the continuing threat posed by suspected terrorists who cannot currently be prosecuted or, in respect of foreign nationals, removed from the UK."

Source

The Home Office also said that

"The ruling will not limit the operation of the act,... We will not be revoking either the control order which was the subject of this review, nor any of the other control orders currently in force on the back of this judgement... Nor will the judgment prevent the secretary of state from making control orders on suspected terrorists where he considers it necessary to do so in the interests of national security in future."

Source

In other words the Government can do precisely what it likes without any regard for the law whatsoever, and this is from the Home Office, the Government department responsible for upholding the law. If the Home Office appeal against the ruling fails, the Government may be forced to change its position as it did with the so-called Belmarsh system. Human rights lawyers applauded Mr Justice Sullivan's ruling.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "This completely scandalous system of punishment without trial is definitely in tatters tonight. This policy - like its predecessor legislation, the Belmarsh disgrace - has been rightly and roundly condemned by the High Court. The Government now has no alternative but to go back to the drawing board."

Source

Tags: Britain, Democracy, Justice

Glorification of Bad Legislation

2006-03-23T12:48:00.000Z

The game of parliamentary ping-pong with the House of Lords over the government’s anti-terror legislation has now ended and “glorification” of terrorism is to be made into a crime. No attempt was made to define “glorification” let alone “terrorism”. As with the recent Education Bill in the House of Commons, this Bill was pushed through the House of Lords with the help of the Tories who either voted for it or abstained this time round on the advice of Lord Kingsland who feared the 9 month delay that would happen if the government used the Parliament Act to force it through.

Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland of Asthal urged peers to back the government, saying the glorification offence was easily understood by "the ordinary man in the street".

Source

Baroness Scotland obviously has a pretty low opinion of the intelligence of "the ordinary man in the street" if she thinks that such a draconian attack on freedom of speech can be disguised as “glorification of terrorism”.

Tony Blair has said that this legislation would allow the demonstrators who protested against the cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad with placards glorifying the 7th July bombings last year. These demonstrators are already being prosecuted under existing legislation so that argument falls flat. Also, Mr Blair seems to be missing the point that it is not demonstrators we are afraid of but the bombers themselves. His “signal of strength” does nothing to address those fears. If he is so concerned that that there could be a repetition of the July 7th bombings, perhaps he would be better advised to hold a full public inquiry into that atrocity, something he has so far refused to do.

Lord Kingsland said. "Home secretary Charles Clarke has given an undertaking next year to reconsider all the measures on terrorism that are at the moment on the statute book and introduce a new measure to replace them. "That will give [the Lords] the opportunity to examine a range of issues that have given us deep discomfort in the course of this bill: the definition of terrorism, the use of the word glorification and so on."

Source

Well we all know the value of Charles Clarke’s undertakings. This legislation is so vague that it poses a threat to the right to protest, satirise or dramatise subjects related to the undefined term of “terrorism”

Once again, an attempt to protect our freedoms has in fact removed them.

Charles Clarke's 'Apology'

2006-03-19T14:07:00.000Z

It looks like the mainstream media has finally caught on to the story of Charles Clarke rudely snubbing the father of one of the survivors of the July 7th bombings last year. The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph have both published articles on the matter some nine days after the original incident.

From The Sunday Times

CHARLES CLARKE, the home secretary, has had to apologise to the clergyman father of a survivor of the July 7 suicide bombings after an altercation in Norwich cathedral.

Clarke has written to the father of Rachel North, an advertising executive injured in the King’s Cross attack, to express his “regret” over the incident which occurred nine days ago, after the home secretary angrily rejected a demand from the clergyman for a public inquiry into the bombings...“My response obviously caused offence, which I regret.”

The article ends with this important and revealing paragraph:

Critics say ministers are reluctant to have a public inquiry because of fears that evidence will emerge that the police and MI5 missed vital intelligence that could have prevented the attacks which killed 56 people, including the four bombers.

Full article here

The Sunday Telegraph article covers the story quite well

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, has been forced to apologise after reducing the clergyman father of a July 7 victim to the brink of tears during an extraordinary encounter in a cathedral.

Canon Phillip McFadyen said he was close to crying and felt unable to take part in a communion service with Mr Clarke after the Home Secretary rebuffed him as he tried to ask him a question...

On behalf of his daughter, who survived the London bombings, Canon McFadyen, 61, had wanted to ask Mr Clarke, his constituency MP, why there was no public inquiry into the bomb attacks in London on July 7.

However, the brief question-and-answer session ended before he had the chance.

At the close he tried to speak to Mr Clarke directly, but was met with the abrupt reply.

Last night, Canon McFadyen, a parish priest in Norwich, said: "I was surprised and dumbfounded by his response and felt unable to go to the service with him.

"I was angry and upset but I was not some noisy heckler. I had promised my daughter I would ask this question and I thought the meeting was a good opportunity to do so...

Canon McFadyen added: "Most people don't expect a politician to say they're sorry, but he seems to have moved to a position where we can have some dialogue on this."

Full article here

Meanwhile, the call for a full public inquiry into the London bombings continues.

*UPDATE*

The Observer has also picked up on this story.

In an attempt to build bridges, the Home Secretary has invited McFadyen and North to another meeting to discuss the issue, but I am told that he still has no intention of ordering a public inquiry.

'It might detract from the ongoing investigations into the events,' adds the spokesman, 'but we accept we need to explain what happened and are preparing a narrative to be published later in the year.'

Full article here

No intention of ordering a public inquiry? We shall see Mr Clarke, we shall see.

*ANOTHER UPDATE*

There is a rather strange and oblique passing reference to this story which has appeared in The Sun. "The Home Secretary is willing to insult the bereaved dad of a 7/7 bomb victim, but he won’t lift a politically-correct finger to protect us against killers." Very strange, the last I heard Rachel was alive and well. I suggest The Sun should do more investigating and less pontificating, then it might actually come up with a real story.

More on the Charles Clarke Saga

2006-03-17T18:31:00.000Z

The spat between Home Secretary, Charles Clarke and the father of one of the survivors of the July 7th bombings continues. Dave Cross from Davblog, wrote to the Home Secretary on this issue and received a reply in which he expressed his regret at the exchange and denied receiving any previous letter from Rachel’s father. You can read the letter which Charles Clarke denies receiving here.

Charles Clarke said that Rev. Canon Phillip “was both hectoring and insulting in that he did not permit even a word's response to his comments about a public enquiry”. He also maintains that the Rev. was being “insulting without allowing any opportunity for discussion at all”. This was exactly why Rachel’s father was frustrated with Charles Clarke in the first place, for not allowing any opportunity for discussion.

The end of the letter is very revealing:

“Finally I well understand that many people believe that there ought to be a public enquiry, and I respect that view though I don't agree with it. I have of course considered the matter very carefully and I can tell you that the issues involved have nothing whatsoever to do with personal embarrassment or party-political matters.”

If Mr Clarke respected the views of the many people who want a public inquiry into the July 7th tragedy, surely he would be a bit more polite to those asking for one. Also, merely stating that he has considered the matter very carefully is simply not good enough. He needs to tell us how he reached this decision and what aspects of the matter he was considering. He tells us that the issues involved have nothing whatsoever to do with personal embarrassment or Party-political matters.

Well Mr Clarke, If you are reading this (The Parliamentary ISP on my stats shows you may have read my previous posts), demanding a public inquiry into a horrific attack that killed and maimed so many people has nothing whatsoever do with politics; however your refusal to hold one has everything to do with politics. If we want to learn the lessons from July 7th, we need more than your careful considerations. We would like to know, for example why it took nearly two hours for the ambulances to arrive when they were so close to the scene, and why rescuers had such inadequate communication systems. We want to know on what basis you made the assertion that this attack came “Out of the blue” when we now know that this was not the case. And we would like to know how the government can so easily and quickly assert that this attack had nothing at all to do with the war in Iraq. There are plenty of questions that need to be addressed and they need to be addressed outside of the political arena regardless of any embarrassment that may or may not cause. Denying us a public inquiry is to be insulting without allowing any opportunity for discussion at all.

A slightly more contrite Charles Clarke has now responded again to Rachel’s father and you can read his letter here.

And you can add your voice to those demanding an inquiry here.

*UPDATE*
Rachel is suggesting that we all contact our MPs and politely ask for an inquiry into the July 7th bombings. If enough of us do this it might make a difference, so lets give it a try.

Charles Clarke Follow-up

2006-03-15T06:25:00.000Z

Rachel from North London whose father was so rudely snubbed by Home Secretary, Charles Clarke (his MP), says her father has received a reply to the letter he wrote to the bad-tempered oaf. Needless to say, it’s not an apology, but he has invited her father and Rachel to a meeting. So it looks like they will be able to ask the question that they (and so many others) want answered. Rachel says in her post:

“If you have any questions you should like me to ask in the meeting, please do leave your suggestions in the comments box.”

That sounds like a great opportunity to question the Home Secretary to me, so why not give her blog a visit?

The Insulting Behaviour of Charles Clarke

2006-03-11T06:50:00.000Z

Home Secretary, Charles Clarke has once again demonstrated what an uncouth, ignorant lout he is. This time the “Right Honourable” gentleman managed to insult the father of one of the survivors of the July 7th London bombings in 2005. This story comes from Rachel of North London who was on the Piccadilly line tube from Kings Cross to Russell Square when the bombs exploded. Her father, a parish priest and honorary canon and also a constituent of Charles Clarke, was attending a clergy meeting at Norwich Cathedral where the Home Secretary was invited as a special guest.

“Clarke, in his speech to the assembled clergy, made much of the fact that he had spoken to the PM ''only yesterday'' and the PM was at the time considering the problem of an angry Sedgefield constituent about the closure of a school. Clarke remarked upon this system of top executives still being MPs and responsible to their constituents, how unusual this was compared to most Parliamentary systems.”

Rachel’s father, Rev. Canon Phillip, had a question for Charles Clarke, a simple question he had tried to ask before in a letter in December 2005 and had not received a response to.

“Dear Charles Clarke

My daughter was 7 feet from the King's Cross bomb. She survived, 26 others didn't. We all deserve a public enquiry so we can understand WHY this happened and what we can learn from it. My daughter has written extensively about this and set up a support group for over 90 survivors. To our knowledge not one member of Parliament has been in touch with a survivor to ask what the Government can do for them or even how they are coping. An enquiry would alleviate the sense of outrage we all feel when politicians presume to speak in the name of survivors and their families.

Yours sincerely

Rev. Phillip, [Rachel North's dad]”

Apparently, at events like these the speech is followed by ''30 minutes of reflection'' which are used for debate and questions from the floor. Unusually, according to Rev. Phillip, on this occasion there was no debate and only 3 helpful questions were allowed before breaking for Eucharist. Frustrated that he could not ask his question and that ''the Eucharist was being used as a filibuster.'', Rev. Phillip approached the Home Secretary and said:

"Congratulations on fixing the meeting so that nobody can ask questions! You will have heard about Rev Julie Nicholson who is so angry she cannot forgive the bombers who killed her daughter on 7th July , well, I have a question, my daughter was feet away from the 7/7 Kings Cross bomb, and she and some other survivors have said they are not angry with the bombers, but with the Government, because there was no public enquiry. Why is there no public enquiry?''

What was the Home Secretary’s response?

“Charles Clarke looked at my father ''in a very nasty way'', and then he said to my father
'' Get away from me, I will not be insulted by you, this is an insult".
And he stormed past, and Dad was so upset he could not share Eucharist with this man, and my father left the cathedral in despair.”

Whilst it is certainly not unusual for a politician to avoid an awkward question these days, Charles Clarke’s rude and insensitive response is pretty low even by New Labour’s standards. When an elderly heckler was roughed up by hired thugs at the Labour Party conference last year, the public outcry and bad publicity forced the party to issue a series of apologies. I think an apology is in order on this occasion too, and not just an apology. Rev. Phillip’s original question is still unanswered and he is not the only one asking it. Even MI5 are asking for an inquiry, is MI5 being insulting too? As well as being a bad-mannered, insensitive and disrespectful barbarian, Charles Clarke is also a liar. The bombings of 7th July last year did not come “out of the blue” as he asserts.

Mohammed Siddique Khan, featured in a surveillance operation carried out by the intelligence services last year... he was secretly filmed and recorded speaking to a UK-based terrorist suspect

Source

Tony Blair has said that a full-scale public investigation into the 7 July bombings would divert too much police and security service time.

The Prime Minister’s much publicised discussion with God and his assertion that it is only God who can judge him seems to fall a little flat when one of his most important ministers can be so disrespectful to a priest, and when that priest is also a constituent with a valid question for his MP it calls into question Mr Clarke’s fitness to be a member of Parliament, let alone a government minister.

Read the full article on Rachel’s blog and you can also read her father’s response to the Home Secretary.

If you think there should be a full public inquiry into the July 7th London Bombings, please sign this petition.

Still No Inquiry into July 7th

2006-03-07T01:46:00.000Z

It has been eight months since the London bombings of July 7th and there has still not been a proper public inquiry into that awful event. One has to wonder why.

Perhaps this article might shed some light on why the government seems so reluctant for the matter to be examined in the full public gaze. Anyone concerned should read this long article in full.
If after reading it you agree that there should be a full public inquiry ino that event, then please sign this petition demanding for just that.

Remember, according to the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, this attack came "out of the blue".

Special thanks to Rachel from North London for finding this.

No Inquiry for July 7th bombings

2005-12-15T01:00:00.000Z

Once again the British government is showing its aversion to public scrutiny. Today the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has told us that there will be no public inquiry into the bombings of the 7th July 2005. This was the deadliest terrorist attack on the British mainland since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, and the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. If ever an event needed a full public inquiry, it’s this one. Instead, what the Home Secretary is proposing is a written "narrative" of what happened, put together by a civil servant.

We already know what happened, where it happened and when. What we want to find out is how and why. A simple narrative of the attack will not sufficiently answer those questions. The reasons we are being offered for the decision not to hold a public inquiry into the events of July 7th would be laughable if the event was not so serious. We are being told that it would take too long and would divert attention and resources away from security issues. Another reason is that murder investigations are still ongoing and that it would be inappropriate to discuss sub-judicial matters. These excuses are wheeled out every time the public demand answers to an urgent matter that the government does not want to talk about. It is likely that after the narrative has been published, there will still be calls for a public inquiry and more money will have then been wasted.

Tony Blair’s administration has a poor record for open and honest, scrutiny into its dealings. It goes out of its way to avoid public inquiries and then often has to cave in to public pressure. It did not want to publish the attorney general’s legal reasons for going to war in Iraq; it severely limited the remit of the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly and also the Butler inquiry into WMD intelligence; it does not want a full inquiry into America’s extraordinary rendition cases and it is going out of its way to prevent publication of a memo where it is alleged the Prime Minister and president Bush discussed the bombing of Al jazeera in Qatar. We are living in an increasing climate of fear where it is possible to be arrested for reading out the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq at London's Cenotaph or roughed up for shouting “nonsense” at a Labour party conference. A government which was so quick to introduce draconian laws in the aftermath of the July 7th atrocity has an obligation to examine all the factors leading up to that event in public. The victims and their families deserve no less.

It is the height of arrogance for the government to assume that a civil servant can ask and answer all the questions the public want answered and very suspicious when Tony Blair continues to deny that the bombings in London had anything to do at all with his war in Iraq, a position described a “intellectually unsustainable” by John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington. Will a mere narrative of the bombings tell us why the security alert level was reduced just prior to the incident? Will it explain why Muslim youths are so disenfranchised in Britain? A narrative of the July bombings cannot call witnesses or cross-examine them, nor can it call the security services to disclose secret information. All it can do is give a limited, one-sided view of something that needs a much deeper examination. Tony Blair said today at Prime Minister’s Questions that a public inquiry would only tell us things we already know. Well that’s just what a narrative would do. A public inquiry might not give us all the answers we want, but it would give us much more than what is currently being offered and holding it would show some respect to the victims of July 7th.

UPDATE Sunday 18th December:
Since posting this article a petition has become available for anyone who wants to add their voice to the growing demand for a full public inquiry into the July 7th London bombings. Please sign this petition by clicking here.

For more information regarding this issue please visit the blog of Rachel from North London, a survivor of the London bombings. Special thanks to those dedicated people at Blairwatch.