MPs should vote down 42 days detention without charge. The innocent will suffer, the basis of law will be threatened and terrorism aided, as Brown follows Blair in counter-productive defiance of one of the fundamental principles of democracy writes Anthony Barnett, founder of Open Democracy.

It is not hard to imagine the situation. The police have uncovered a network of young, would-be terrorists and their supporters. It may be just after a murderous outrage they failed to prevent, or when they bust a conspiracy before anyone is murdered. As they round up suspects three innocent young men are included. They are relatives or friends of the plotters or maybe they are just around when the raids take place. Naturally, the police focus on gathering the evidence to charge the ringleaders. They hold the three on the basis of proximity and as they are not charged they can’t make a case for their lack of guilt.

A month goes by. Perhaps one of the three is unable to attend his exams and loses his place in his college. Finally they are released – resentful and fearful. They are exactly the sort of people who might have been persuaded to alert the security forces to future plots. Now they are unlikely ever to speak to the police again if they can help it. “Justice”, they will say to their friends, family and future children, “you won’t get it here! I was imprisoned for four weeks just because they didn’t like my face – I was completely innocent, I wasn’t charged, then they threw me out”.

Where does this take place? Is it in Egypt, with its notoriously casual use of jail; or Mexico where drugs are rife; or Bulgaria with its mafia fuelled economy? No it is in the UK, more specifically England. I am not saying that it could happen here. As we will see, it has happened here, and, therefore it does happen here.

I suggest it should be stopped.

– it undermines the fundamental principles of the rule of law;
– it weakens the historic basis of Britain’s rights-based democracy;
– it destroys the serious, measured consensus that is the best aid to containing terrorism;
– it strengthens rather than weakens those who seek to organise terrorist outrages by ensuring greater support for their views;
- it aids a climate of fear; and
– there are other ways of ensuring essential evidence is acquired.

Instead, Gordon Brown’s government is currently tweaking its proposal to permit it to lock up people for even longer than a month, without telling them why. Anti-terrorism powers have already been extended so that people can be held prisoner without charge, from 3 to 7 to 14 to the current 28 days. A further extension to 42 days is being laid before parliament, supposedly wrapped around with safeguards whose concession is likely to win over just enough MPs to ‘save’ the government. A vote is likely in the next week or so.

How should we respond to this, not just in Britain but abroad? The issue has international importance. The House of Commons is still seen as, if not the ‘mother of parliaments’ then at least a symbol of parliamentary democracy and a historic place where fascism was defied. Tyrants in their palaces across the Middle East and Africa will smile at the protestation of “safeguards”, and will note the permission now granted to them by the behaviour of the United Kingdom. Across Asia, from Burma to Beijing, where once Europeans saw “oriental despotism” rulers will enjoy the further demonstration of Albion’s perfidy and note the useful example they have been offered.

In such circumstances it is important to set out a full case, in terms of the principles of justice and democracy; in terms of the fight against terrorism; and in terms of the politics of Britain, for saying that there must be no extension of detention without charge from 28 days to 42 days.

To read the full article, click here.  A social entrepreneur of wide experience, Anthony helped launch Charter 88 in 1988 and was its first Director. Anthony is also a writer and journalist. He is the author of Iron Britannia; Soviet Freedom and This Time; and co-author and editor of among other books, Aftermath: the Struggle of Vietnam and Cambodia; Power and the Throne, Town and Country and a considerable range of articles and pamphlets covering politics and culture, such as (with Peter Carty), The Athenian Option – radical reform for the House of Lords (Demos, 1998) and the television film, England’s Henry Moore. He founded openDemocracy, and regularly contributes to many of its debates.