So in the Libyan fable, it is told,
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
“With our own feathers, not by others’ hands,
Are we now smitten.”
Sometimes it’s quite breathtaking to see just how far to the right British political opinion has been led. We really are just inches away from becoming a totalitarian fascist state – a situation that millions of our parents and grandparents fought and died trying to prevent in World War Two. And here we are, on the brink of sleepwalking into it.
A recent report revealed that senior figures in both the police and army are pressing to have internment camps built in Britain where thousands of people could be locked-up indefinitely without charge or trial. In addition to losing their freedom indefinitely, inmates “would be made to go through a deradicalisation programme”.
We already have the most draconian secrecy, censorship and libel laws in Europe, where so-called “D notices” can prevent the media reporting anything the state wants to keep secret. We already have secret courts, where people can be tried behind closed doors, and where they and their lawyers can be refused access to information about the alleged crimes they allegedly committed. Even Winston Churchill, who no one could rightfully accuse of harbouring left-wing sympathies, wrote that:
The power of the executive to cast a man into prison, without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly…