As a party founded to protect the working classes from oppression one would have expected the Labour Party to be a staunch defender of civil liberties and human rights. Over the past 12 years, however the Labour government's record on civil liberties and human rights has been atrocious.
54) The terrorism Act 2000, replaced previous temporary measures with a permenant set of rules. The act defines terrorism in a very broad way. An act of terrorism is defined as an action or the threat of action that is made for advancing a cause, that attempts to influence the government and that falls into one of several categories including serious damage to property or disruption of an electronic system. Under this definition any "direct action" protest group, such as Cymdeithas yr Iaith, can be prosecuted under terrorism legislation.
The Act has been used against anti war protesters, protesters against expansion of Heathrow Airport and the Government of Iceland
55) The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act 2000 a snoopers charter, which makes it compulsory for ISPs to record every customer's e-mail contacts and web browsing habits and to hand that info over to the authorities on request.
56) The 2003 RIP extension, in which David Blunket extended the right to access of records your telephone and internet activities to any government agency including jobcentres, local authorities and school inspectors.
57) Continuing extensions of the RIP Act. In 2000 only nine organizations, including the police and security services were allowed access to this data by 2008, it had grown to 792 organizations and is growing still. It is so wide now that it is even used by councils to spy on families suspected of putting their rubbish out on the wrong day
58) Keeping the DNA of innocent people on police databases
59) Ignoring a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the "blanket and indiscriminate" retention of suspects' DNA is unlawful.
60) The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 extended the offence of incitement to racial hatred to cover criticizing another person's religious belief seriously undermining the right to have a legitimate debate about the rights and wrongs of religious beliefs.
61) The Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005
62) The Government being complicit in the torture of British Nationals by foreign agencies
63) Wanting to extend the time people can be held in custody without trial. Of course it is claimed that this would only be used to combat terrorism, but see how wide the definition of terrorism is in (54) above.
64) ID cards, again apparently being used to combat terrorism, despite the fact that a consultant to one of the Governments own spying factories saying that this was absolute bunkum.
65) Gordon brown suggesting that all these encroachments of civil liberties are actually a defence of civil liberty.
This is only a small selection of examples of Labour abuses of Human Rights and Civil Liberties, many more examples could be added. Further details can be found on the Liberty website
Not half as serious as the examples you list, but two minor thing have/will affect me this fortninght, both imposed since Labout came to power I assume
ReplyDelete1. I went to watch Wales play Estonia (at football) last friday at Parc y Scarlets, in Llanelli. It was a meaningless friendly held at a rugby ground, and the corwd was only just over 4,000. There was no hint of trouble, it was mainly families there watching, yet during the game and as we all left, there were police officers filming the faces of everyone in the crowd.
2. Next friday I had planned to attend CAMRA's Great Welsh Beer festival at the CIA in Cardiff. But it was recently announced that there's gping to be an Oasis gig at the Millenium Stadium on the same day, so now there is a blanket ban on selling alchohol in glass vessels throughout the city centre.
Drinking real ale from a plastic glass really is the last straw!