San Jose Adult Entertainment: Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights and the Rule of Law
Our old liberties have been submerged in the wash from the terrorism patrol boats. The police now have powers to arrest without a warrant for virtually any offence, however trivial. Anti-social behaviour orders are being used against prostitutes and beggars, and about 50 per cent of those who are served with them end up in jail. Stop-and-search powers have inadequate legal authority, while telephone and email interceptions are growing at an alarming rate. There is large-scale but unregulated police infiltration of protest groups, with no safeguards against informers turning into agents provocateurs. Police “kettling” (cordoning off) of demonstrators affects the right to protest, and MPs were so disturbed by Brian Haw’s solitary anti-war protest in Parliament Square that they passed a law empowering the police to remove him in the dead of night. “There is a continuing corrosion of liberty,” Ewing writes, all the more striking because it is happening on the watch of a Labour administration.