Brown's apartheid

On 1 May 1963, the apartheid government of South Africa enacted the General Law Amendment Act. Better known as the Ninety-Day Detention Law, it waived the right of habeas corpus and authorised any commissioned officer to detain - without a warrant - any person suspected of a political crime and to hold them for ninety days without access to a lawyer. This was followed in 1965 by the Criminal Procedure Amendment Act, which provided for 180-day detention and re-detention thereafter. While the Terrorism Act of 1967 allowed someone suspected of involvement in terrorism, defined as anything that might "endanger the maintenance of law and order", to be detained indefinitely without trial on the authority of a senior policeman.

This piece, however, is not about African politics. It is not about Mugabe's repressive regime. It is about the politicisation in the West - and especially in the UK, yes, the UK, not the US - of terrorism. There are no solid arguments for extending detention. None at all. Indeed, after the goverment was defeated on the 90-day proposal two years ago, ministers dithered for months before coming up with another proposed time limit. As Diane Abbott said:

"They did not have a number of days because this is not an objective, evidence-driven bill. It is the purest politics. It is about the polls and about positioning. It is about putting the Conservative party in the wrong place on terrorism."

When so many key figures in counter-terrorism have spoken openly against the need for this extension, one cannot help but wonder what kind of authoritarian state Gordon Brown is building purely for political purposes.

Lets not be too dramatic - no one wants to come across as a preening David Davis - the UK is not on this soil going to impose apartheid measures, surely. It would not be possible, for example, for a person to be detained without trial and without charge for several weeks, would it? One can only hope that the Lords kill the terror bill; and that both Davis and Brown lose their re-elections.

Just a thought.
Lord Goring

*Sources: Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom; Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; The Liberation Struggle: South Africa at War 1600-1994