Free On Liberty by Shami Chakrabarti Page B

Lords’ concerns about discrimination. Further, they used not formal institutional imprisonment but house arrest, in order to seem more moderate and proportionate than, for example, internment in the notorious Belmarsh. In practical terms, however, these ‘anti-terror ASBOs’ provided neither safety nor freedom. As with the more common measures on which they were modelled, they were often and easily breached by those prepared to take the simple step of cutting off a plastic ankle tag in order to abscond. Yet they were capable of blighting the lives of the genuinely law abiding and their families, including small children, who also suffered a whole range of Home Office rather than court-ordered indignities, intrusions and restrictions on secret and unproven suspicions alone – with no need for a criminal charge or trial. Indeed, Gareth Peirce once pointed out that for some of her single male clients, including one who was quite significantly disabled and wheelchair-bound, institutional imprisonment would at least have provided some company and association rather than the solitary confinement of being kept home alone.
    When the Prevention of Terrorism (Control Order) Bill was introduced in early 2005, it met with vocal opposition from both the left and right-of-centre of British politics and the press. The principal political opposition was led by the formidable Conservative team of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and Shadow Attorney General Dominic Grieve. The Liberal Democratic leadership under Charles Kennedy appeared more distracted and less sure-footed, but nonetheless their rank-and-file membership were united in their belief in the right to a fair trial as a core liberal value. Indeed, Lib Dem leaders sometimes overlook the fact that while Labour and Conservative activists and voters often coalesce around their view of tax and spend and split almost 50/50 along the liberal–authoritarian axis, both political principle and polling suggest that liberals of both the left and right of the economic centre are likely to unite around a shared view of rights and freedoms despite disparate opinions on almost every other issue.
    The most moving stand against control orders came from New Labour’s own ranks during the House of Commons' second reading of the draft legislation. This was the first opportunity for MPs to debate the main principles of the bill. In a speech that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, the now former MP for Stevenage, Barbara Follett, described the orders as having an ‘extraordinary resemblance’ to similar laws employed in apartheid South Africa and under which her first husband, Richard Turner, lived for five years for campaigning for the universal franchise in that country:
House arrest hampered but didn’t stop him … That is why, just before his five-year order was due to expire, he was shot dead in front of our two young daughters in their bedroom …
    In the days that followed I tried to comfort them by telling them we were going to Britain where people were not detained without trial or put under house arrest.
    After a series of bruising defeats and essentially cosmetic concessions including the now entirely predictable presentational trick of co-opting the judiciary into a one-sided secret process, an exasperated Prime Minister Blair appeared on national television to warn opponents that ‘enough was enough’ and threatened to call a general election on the issue of control orders alone. Unsurprisingly, after such anti-democratic brinkmanship, the legislation then passed both houses without much further difficulty, the government appearing to cede ground in what was essentially a time-worn ruse. Typically, the government turned up to Parliament armed with pre-planned fall-back positions to which it always expected to have to resort without actually giving way on any of the planned legislation’s fundamental points. Judicial bells, whistles and sugar-coating