How Soon We Forget Benjamin Franklin

Barely days have passed since Martin Broughton dared to suggest the unthinkable, that the security theatre we undergo when travelling by air might not be sensible, than we get a foiled bomb plot and hot on its heels the apologists for the totalitarian state seeking to justify the excesses of the erosion of our liberties. Oh, sure, doubtless the conspiracy theorists will decide that it’s all a little too convenient, the one following the other so closely, but I am inclined towards the cock-up theory myself and that coincidences do, indeed, happen.

However, there are those who should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. And Anthony Glees arguing for greater security in the Tellytubbygiraffe is one.

One explanation for the weekend’s mystifying lack of urgency is that there was no specific intelligence in the UK that indicated a plot might be unfolding. The key intelligence came from the Saudis who had passed it to the Americans, not us. But there is another: it is that the Government and our opinion- formers, for obvious political reasons, have moved far too quickly to dismantle past security measures. The Coalition’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, for example, boasts that it will “review our most sensitive and controversial counter-terrorism and security powers to provide a correction in favour of liberty”.

They were right to do so. Remember Ben Franklin? What he said all that time ago, remains true today. There is only so much balancing that can be done before liberty is sacrificed on the alter of absolute safety – and we can never have absolute safety. If we sacrifice liberty, life becomes unbearable. We, the citizens, will be forever justifying ourselves to the state, we will be required to prove who we are, we will be confined within the safety of our gilded cage. We will live, but we won’t live.

I have just flown back to the UK and the French have not succumbed to the paranoia, fortunately. Well, no more than was already the case and they are rather more relaxed than the UK. Lord only knows what it’s like State-side.

But, once there is a plot – and do remember that this one was foiled, so is a success, not a failure of intelligence gathering – we get the demands for absolute safety.

But strong, lawful security policies don’t undermine our liberty, they defend it.

Well, that all depends, doesn’t it? What the last government did was lawful, because they made the laws. That’s how it works. Want to erode habeas corpus? Pass a law enabling detention without charge. Simples. That the erosion of habeas corpus is an erosion of our basic liberties, that underpins our society, the freedoms that we are supposed to be defending doesn’t seem to enter the thinking of Glees here. Life, lived within the confines of a cage is a life in captivity, it is no life at all. So, yes, if living free means that sometimes a terrorist pulls it off, then that is one of the risks that comes with living in an enlightened and liberal society. That is what they want to destroy and that is what we should be fighting to preserve; not doing their job for them.

And, of course, our old friend; barely laid to rest, still warm in the grave is dug up and unceremoniously paraded for the righteous to see.

The new Government’s very first Bill abolished ID cards. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, explained: “They are wrong, they won’t work and there is a civil liberties argument against them.” She didn’t say, as she should have done: “We need to know who is here in the UK on national security grounds, but it costs too much.”

No one’s civil liberties are abused if we know who they really are. No one has “the civil liberty” to attack people here, or elsewhere in the West, who simply want to go about their lawful business. It is far more convenient to forget that we are under persistent attack; so we prefer to remain in denial about who is attacking us and how they come to do so.

Glees appears to have missed all those debunkings that took place over the past decade about how ID cards don’t actually do anything to stop terrorists and that all they do is inconvenience ordinary people going about their business. He also appears to have missed the fact that the coalition has not done away with ID cards for immigrants and that foreigners need to have passports and such and these are checked when people enter the country. The only people who don’t need ID are those born here – but, I suspect that this is the sub-text of his point. One failed bomb plot and the hard of thinking are trotting out utter garbage about “knowing who people are”. Yet, the intelligence services do apparently know who these people are, so we don’t need ID cards, do we? And, of course, none of this would have stopped someone in Yemen putting a bomb in a parcel, would it?

The fact is that radicalisation leads to terrorism. It threatens our security. Yet parts of Government and our academic and legal community seem intent on ignoring this inconvenient fact, believing that if they can convince us that there is no serious threat, then one won’t exist. They want business as usual; but the terrorists have other ideas.

I’m not sure who Glees is on about here as it is a generally recognised truism that radicalisation can lead to terrorism. No one appears to be denying it. But if the government want business as usual, then they are right and Glees is wrong. Business as usual is exactly what we should be doing. And while carrying on as normal, use intelligence intelligently to foil any plots made against us without sacrificing the liberty of the individual to go about his lawful business. Yes, the terrorist does have other ideas – and that is why we should remain steady in the face of the threat and not give in to those who would argue that liberty must be sacrificed on the alter of perceived security.

Oh, yes, that Franklin quote? Lest we forget as some appear to have:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.