I’m thinking of declaring the 29th of March 2006 ‘Freedom Day’, because it is the day that freedom died; or at least started to.

Maybe I’m being over-dramatic — even melodramatic — in these posts; but I don’t think so.

The House of Lords has been doing sterling work in standing up to the ID Cards bill, as have the few sane voices in the Commons: Liberal Democrats, some Tories, and a few brave Labour rebels. But yesterday the Lords accepted a ‘compromise’: from 2008, when we get or renew a passport, our details will be placed on the National Identity Register. However, we will have the option of opting out of getting an Identity Card.

Err, excuse me? Is it possible that their lordships have totally missed the point? The database is the whole problem. The database is the thing we can’t step back from. The database is the single point of failure. An identity card — just a card with some personal information, such as our parents or grandparents had during the second world war — would be bad: but the real problem in the modern age is that the card itself is just a key to the database¹.

What were they thinking of? For that matter what were the Commons thinking of in letting this through, and what were the government thinking of in introducing it in the first place? Are these people so dazzled by power — is the Labour party so intoxicated by its brief², unfamiliar taste of it — that they can think only of exercising it in more and more repressive and restrictive ways?

Welcome to the police state, people: maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

And while it might not be the end of the world — many people all through history and into the present have had to live under far worse conditions than we can expect here in Britain — it is the end of something we might call the British Dream. The idea of Britain as one of the oldest modern democracies, governed by ‘the Mother of Parliaments’; of Britain as any kind of bastion of freedom: that idea died a bit yesterday. And it will die a little more today, as the legislation is passed; and a little bit more in the future. It is dying by pieces; we may not live to see it choking its last breath out in the gutters; but our children will. And by the time that last gasp happens, it will be too late to do anything about it.

I only hope that our children will be able to find some way to resurrect it.

Technorati Tags: Freedom Day, ID Cards bill, National Identity Register, Identity Card, ID Cards, police state, freedom, uk government, politics, single point of failure

After my, perhaps over-excited, post about that bill, I had some discussion with zotz on this post. Graham is clearly thinking more clearly and calmly than I am on this one, and I wonder if — and hope that — things might not be quite as bad as I feared.

Still, it would be better if the bill did not pass in its present form, just to be on the safe side.

Technorati Tags: politics, Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill, backtracking

There is now a deadly danger to British democracy. One that is even worse than the ID cards bill.

Not for nothing are they calling it the ‘Abolition of Parliament’ bill. Its official name is the Legislative and Regulatory Reform bill, and it is, quite simply an attempt to take control of power in this country into the hands of the executive forever,and remove the possibility of parliamentary scrutiny from the exercise of that power.

The bill grants ministers the power to create, modify or strike down laws; and to introduce offenses carrying prison terms of up to two years.

It contains some limits: for example section 3(2)(c) requires that “the provision, taken as a whole, strikes a fair balance between the public interest and the interests of any person adversely affected by it”. However, remember that the bill grants the power to modify existing legislation; that does not exclude itself. So if this bill had become an Act of Parliament, there would be nothing to stop a future government from modifying the Act itself to, for example, increase the maximum sentence, or remove the limitations it contains.

This government has, after early successes in introducing the minimum wage and the Human Rights Act, been moving in a more and more authoritarian direction. Obvious examples are ID cards; the attempt to reduce the right to trial by jury; and the increase in the period of detention without trial.

But let’s not forget their support for US ‘extreme rendition’ flights, and the illegal detentions at Guantánamo Bay (they may not have actively and openly supported those, but they failed to condemn them, or do anything to stop them, which amounts to the same thing).

From ASBOs to the ‘Respect Agenda’¹, it’s clear that Blair and his spineless — or perhaps totally complicit — cronies are all about applying controls and limits.

If this bill goes through, there are, as far as I can tell, two possible escape routes. Judges — even the Law Lords — might strike it down as unlawful under the Human Rights Act, since they are required to consider all new laws in light thereof. The problem there, though, is that the bill — the Act, if it passes — does not directly infringe anyone’s human rights. Instead, it is an enabler. It is laws introduced or modified using this Act that may (that will, let’s face it) infringe our human rights.

The second escape route? I can’t see one short of revolution. And that means civil war. And that’s no escape at all.

If you’re reading this, please: don’t just take my word for it. Visit the Save Parliament website and look at the resources there. Do some other research. But when you are suitably terrified, write to your MP; write to the editor of your favourite paper and ask them why they are not kicking up a fuss about this. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell people in the street

If we don’t stop this, it may not mean jackboots in the streets and the knock on the door in the night; but it will mean the effective end of democracy in the UK.