Author:
Mackenzie Brian Topics: Economics / Politics
01.02.2004
My subject is — the destiny of democracy in the world and in particularly in Europe under the
new challenges and circumstances, and the terrorist threats, which we are
facing now. These challenges and threats have already split European socety
into two different camps.
I think that Britain represents the true face of democracy and has done so for
many years. Terrorism presents a special threat to any democracy, but in
particular, to a liberal democracy like the United Kingdom. It presented a
threat when we had the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but that threat was in a
sense an internal problem and it wasn
’t worldwide terrorism as we see it represented, at the present time. The
difficulty with the current, fundamentalist type of terrorism, where people are
quite prepared to kill themselves in the name of God (or whoever), is in how to
combat it without actually compromising or losing the freedoms that we cherish
and value. There has to be a balance struck between the freedom of people to
speak and to act in certain ways; and of course the State of Parliament; more
accurately, a balance between imposing restrictions on what people are or are
not allowed to do.
There is clearly a fundamental distinction between people who are UK citizens
and people who are 'aliens', who aren
’t UK citizens. And we’ve found ourselves at the present time in a dilemma, because we have a number of
people being held in custody, who we can
’t deport because they allege that they would be in mortal danger if we sent them
back to their country of origin. There are also people who are living in this
country illegally and are involved in illegal activities. We can
’t charge them, because we haven’t got sufficient evidence, but we certainly have sufficient intelligence to
warrant detaining them. And of course there
’s a big divide, a big debate at the present time between the Executive power – which is represented by the Home Secretary and the government, – and the Judiciary power, who are very critical of the Home Secretary’s fairly hard line, and the Civil Liberties Groups, who hold their beliefs so
powerfully that they seem to ignore the great danger of terrorist outrages
being inflicted on our population in a similar manner that occurred in places
like Madrid. And of course, like Madrid, we are an open society and a
democracy, and these issues have
clearly got to be dealt with. My experience of thirty-five-years of policing, is
that what one should not do, as a policeman
– and I think the same thing applies to a country, – is not give into threats and blackmail. If we had been minded to do that,
Winston Churchill would have probably thrown in the towel in when he was
standing alone in the West against Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. So I
think the British nature,
– the “bulldog” spirit – is not to give in. And I was saddened, certainly, when I saw what the Spanish
government did in the light of the bombings in Madrid. The sitting government
was overturned. In addition, it divided Europe; as we know its strength is in
unity. Churchill always argued that if the smaller European countries had
amalgamated and stuck together with Britain and France against the Germans,
then Germany might well have been deterred from attacking. But what Hitler did,
was pick off each country, one by one, until we were standing alone, I think
that
’s a good example for not being weak in the face of international terrorism.
Clearly, we need to consider giving up some of our freedoms and the big issue at
the moment that runs in the United Kingdom, is the question of whether to
accept identity cards.
Prior to the First World War we had a powerful navy, which prevented us being
invaded. By the Second World War, a navy wasn
’t sufficient because of aircrafts, so we needed, therefore, to build an air
force to protect ourselves.
We are now under a different type of threat – the threat of terrorism, including suicide bombers. Its no good trying to
detect it after the event, because the suicide bomber isn
’t there and the damage is already inflicted. What you have got to try and do is
use intelligence and detect it before it happens and actually deter people from
commiting the act.
We have to be absolutely sure that the authorities, who will be responsible for
dealing with the cards, will not be corrupted. Do we have in all the EU
countries enough protection against that threat?
In this country, I think the protection we have is the ancient freedom of an
independent Parliament, and I
’ve got sufficient confidence in our system of government, in the Executive power
being separate from the Parliament, a free Press, and an independent Police
service, not under the control of the government. I am confident that we have
that protection.
For newer, emerging democracies, I suspect the same rules won’t apply, because perhaps they haven’t got the safe guard built into the system yet. Hopefully that will evolve, but
when you think how long British democracy has been going, we hopefully have
safeguards; we also value the protection of the individual. Therefore, I
’m a firm believer in identity cards, because one of the problems in a liberal
democracy, where people can move freely
– and people are moving throughout the world more freely now – is identifying individuals and making sure that people are who they say they
are.
Of course I’m talking about the UK looking after its own interests. There may well be a
common system, and that will be invaluable, because presumably we will end up
with an European database eventually, which will identify people with previous
convictions, and any previous history of mixing with terrorists. 35% of all
terrorists arrested are found to be using false identities. You could argue
that that means that if 65% aren
’t, any good police agency or law enforcement body will use that valuable
information to trace the others involved in the conspiracy, if indeed that
’s what it is. With the new biometric systems it’s virtually impossible, as I understand it, to forge one’s identity, particularly if you use two or three different measurements, for
example identification by the iris. If we add to that finger prints and
possibly facial recognition, and have three combined on one document, on one
database, then it will make it very difficult for terrorists, master criminals,
organised criminals and the mafia. Quite often these things overlap, because
terrorists quite often get involved in fairly serious crimes
– drugs , etc., to fund their terrorism.
As a policeman, I’ve seen allegations made against the police in this country that the accused
wasn
’t at the scene of the crime, somebody must have planted the fingerprints there,
and of course that
’s a very easy thing to do. But you hope that we have such a system, that a fair
trial would get to the bottom of it, and if the suspect has a string of
previous convictions and a history of burglary and his fingerprints are found
at the scene of a burglary, I think it
’s a reasonable assumption that he’s the burglar. If it’s somebody that has never been involved before in any crime, then the court may
take the view that the evidence has been transplanted. That is a different
argument to the one that I
’m putting forward: the identification of individuals to prevent crime and
terrorism by using biometrics, which I understand is virtually fool-proof. And
one of the major problems at the present time is that terrorists, and criminals
are stealing other peoples identifies.
It’s very difficult to deal with terrorists within societies unless you can
identify them. If you can identify them and get good intelligence and use
modern technology to intercept e-mails, mobile telephone text messages and
calls
– technology can be used by governments to fight terrorism globally. At the same
time, however, these methods are an infringement on civil liberties established
in our society.
The difference from fifty years ago or a hundred years ago and now, is really
the scope of mobility nowadays; people are prepared to use terrorism,
particularly when its for fundamentalist religious purposes, where they do not
care about losing their own lives to destroy the whole Western way of life. We
have got to stand firm, we have got to be prepared to take a hit, and let
’s not have any doubt about that; it could happen in this country, the same as it
happened in Spain. But we
’ve got to steal our resolve, to resist it, use every piece of modern technology
that we can and use infiltration if possible.
Coming back now to the problem of European cooperation in countering terrorism,
I should state my philosophical view that I don
’t believe in a federal Europe. I think each Member State should retain its
independence, but I can see some sense in being united, having a European
constitution. Having a constitution doesn
’t necessarily mean it needs a separate, individual government. It can have rules
that everybody abides by, without loosing one
’s independence, that’s probably what will happen if this constitution is adopted. This country, or
the government now, in Great Britain, has agreed to hold a referendum. That
’s a very dangerous position for the Prime Minister to take, because he is at
risk of losing it. The general opinion is that he would lose face and would
probably have to resign. It is not impossible to have a positive result,
providing the arguments are put sensibly and people are quite clear about what
it is they
’re voting about. An independent body will approve the question in the
referendum; it won
’t be the government that’s asking the question. There has to be a lot of discussion now, a lot of
explaining, and a thorough debate about the whole question of what the new
European draft constitution is all about. If it
’s thrown out, and it might not be thrown out by the UK, it might be one of the
other countries that won
’t agree to it. If that happens, then I suppose we will go back to the drawing
board. But originally the EU was set up as an economic union, the EC.
As we all remember, the project of a united Europe started to emerge in the late
forties, after World War II. It was not only driven by economic reasons, but
also for the protection of democracy in the whole of Europe and assurances that
unification would protect European countries from the return of dictatorships.
The values of freedom and peace and individual security were the foundation
stones of the European Union, and the economy was a tool. The project has been
well designed.
There is a view trough, I’m not saying I share it, that when people in this country voted to go into
Europe, they thought they were simply joining a common market. With no barriers
in terms of trade and the movement of people. What they weren
’t agreeing to was to some kind of political union. In a sense politics was the
fundamental reason, and it worked, because we
’ve had a relatively peaceful Europe for all that time, apart from the Balkans.
The question is
– how much further can we unite? I would be surprised if the government agrees to
actually hand over fiscal controls to a European bank, or a European body. This
country would want to retain control over things like that, similarly with
defence. One can have a general defence policy, which is admirable, but I
think, at the end of the day, individual governments would need to control.
When they went to war and similar issues such as important fundamental issues
of State.
Let us come back to the criminal world. There is a legal world where people have
job, pay taxes, support the civil system and this is the world which has the
United Nations, the European Union and so on. But there exists an illegal
world. Before a few years ago, this world was more or less local, nationalised.
In Colombia there is a mafia, in Sicily there is a mafia and so on, and they
haven
’t been united. And the legal world has created integral systems, economic
systems, systems of communication, law systems and so on. In the current
situation we can discuss the terms of the legal and illegal worlds, because the
illegal world is also trying to unify itself now. Illegal migration and illegal
drugs are becoming more and more worldwide systems and the same thing is
happening with terrorism.
Nations, or groups of nations, Europe, need to cooperate and join together, just
as Churchill said, to combat this international threat. Every individual
country has its black economy, it has its illegal, criminal underbelly if you
like, which avoids paying taxes, which works from criminal enterprises
– that is another argument for having some kind of identification process; so
that people who are here illegally, and there are quite a few, possibly from
outside Europe, will not be able to abuse this system. Some of them are living
off the State, they are possibly using false papers, and they
’ll be using the National Health Service and have never ever contributed. If we
had some kind of identification system, which clearly illustrated that they
weren
’t who they say they are, then there would be tremendous savings for citizens.
At the same time it might be helpful, for example, to create a European Union
body, as an independent European Union court against terrorism, a specialised
court against terrorism. Like there was after the Second World War: the
Nuremberg tribunal.
We have already signed up to the international war-crimes court. But who wouldn’t sign up to that agreement? The Americans are setting a very bad example by not
signing up to the international war-crimes tribunal.
As for the economic foundations of terrorism, Bin Laden, to use him as an
example, is a very wealthy man. But terrorism needs funds and I think that
’s another area where governments are united. They should be given the power to
force banks to give information on individual bank accounts, and the movement
of money across boundaries. I think that is another tool that governments could
use. Does it mean, for example, that under that track, offshore banks, and
offshore systems will fail? If terrorists are seen to be using offshore banks
as a means of evading capture, then that
’s a liberty that we might have to limit. It may well be, once the threat has
gone we can restore it, but it needs to be discussed. Clearly it
’s an infringement of liberty, like identity cards. You’ve got to give up certain rights in order to safeguard the welfare of the vast
majority of people and we
’ve all got to be prepared to do that in certain circumstances.