Gilded Cage or Jungle?

Today, further to the recent revelations that the Cleggeron coagulation is to pick up where the last lot of charlatans left off, we hear more rhetoric from the politics of fear, justifying more armed police on our streets. And, such is the threat we don’t just need armed police, they need bigger guns, more training and from the SAS, no less. Such is this great threat we face. A threat like the one the Pope faced, perhaps.

So, nothing changes. A new group of politicians have grasped the levers of power and a new set of ears are presented for the poison peddled by the distinctly uncivil service.

Sure, we tend to think of Sir Humphery Appleby, that fictional character who epitomised the self-serving bureaucracy of the civil service, the faceless mandarins who do pull those levers. The people who train their ministers to do the right thing, for the benefit of the country of course. In this case, for national security. Also let us not forget that Appleby was a character created from life.

There is, doubtless, a threat. I’m not aware of anyone denying that. There always was and there always will be, such is the nature of living in a democracy. Others hate it and the liberties we (still) have. You only have to see those pictures of Islamic demonstrators waving placards proclaiming “down with freedom” and “freedom go to hell” all without the slightest hint of irony when they practice their freedom to do so on British streets. Not all of them are planning to bomb us into submission even if they do fantasise about it.

But, and this is the nub of it, I suspect very strongly that those civil servants and members of the security services whose very existence depends on just such a threat are exaggerating for their own purposes. The threats that lead to further clamp-downs on the liberty of ordinary people going about their business frequently prove to be no more than hyperbole.  Recall, for instance, that ricin plot a few years back. That’s right, the one where there was no ricin and no plot. And, the one mentioned above where a group of people were arrested for little more than workplace banter. Still, it makes the police and intelligence services look good(?) and it gives those civil servants another weapon in their arsenal to convince the politicians that, yes, we do need to lose a few liberties for yet more security.

When it comes to loss of liberty, it is always the ordinary citizen who suffers while patiently waiting in line for the next humiliation in the form of a search, body scanner screen, intrusive questioning or removing another item of clothing because someone, somewhere, tried to use it to commit a terrorist outrage. I have to say, I’m mildly surprised that we haven’t had demands to remove our underpants at airport queues this year. And, of course, the security is always reactive and retrospective, while those who really do mean us harm have moved onto something else, laughing hysterically at those patient citizens as they take off their shoes and belts in the airport queue, watch irritably while their laptops are checked for explosives or have their email eavesdropped – because only ordinary citizens will use un-encrypted email for talking to each other. Real terrorists will bypass that system entirely; if they are any good.

It doesn’t matter if a terrorist cell actually succeeds in its actions because the politicians and security services have made sure that they will win. Every crack-down on liberty is a victory for the terrorist and the people we look to to defeat them are their willing allies.

I am old enough to recall the Thatcher years. At the time, I didn’t much like her or her government. But, opponent though I was, I admired her stance following the attempt by the IRA to kill her. Her response in the wake of the Brighton bomb, iconic, proud and defiant was to refuse to bow to their demands, to refuse to change our ways in the face of violence. And that is how we should deal with terrorists who wish to use violence to bend us to their demands. To stand, unbeaten, unbowed and defiant with two Churchillian fingers held aloft and to say, firmly and resolutely “Fuck you!”

We should not do as the weak, lilly-livered Labour government did and the new equally cowardly coagulation is, give in. Handing yet more of our liberties over for the smokescreen of security is to do just that, to capitulate. We have a choice, to live in the gilded cage in the hope that the politicians can protect us from the naughty bogeymen – who may or may not actually exist, or to take our chances. To listen to their weasel words about the right not to be blown up while handing them more power over our lives. Or we can accept that in life, there is risk, that we all die and some sooner than later, and, yes, sometimes as a consequence of violent, criminal behaviour.

So which is it to be? Gilded cage or the jungle?