It is a Christmas tradition in the UK for the soaps to outdo each other with stories of despair, desperation, disaster and sorrow (ran out of a fourth “d”). We are used to it over here and I get round it by the simple expedient of not watching. Easily done. However, today I was caught off guard by reading the letters page in the Guardian newspaper.

In the letters page of today’s paper (and online by the magic of the internet), Tony McNulty (the minster of state for security, counterterrorism, crime and policing) goes out of his way to remind everyone why we should be so scared we continue to pay him. Ladies and Gentlefolk of Britain, be scared. In a letter about why we need control orders, Mr McNulty writes:

The UK faces an unprecedented threat from terrorism and the government’s top priority is to protect the public.

Oh my! Toutatis Save Us! Having grown up through three decades of IRA “Christmas Campaigns” I really do not believe this. I have clear memories of shopping in Manchester and London as the shops empty of customers following a “bomb threat.” I remember watching on the news when the IRA bombed the Brighton hotel Margaret Thatcher was in. I remember watching the news when 10 Downing Street was mortar’d by the IRA. I remember car bombs, shootings, and I remember why we don’t have bins in train stations.

What has changed? What is so “unprecedented” about the threat from Islamic terrorism? The only thing I can think of is this time the terrorist doesn’t make escape plans – so at least you don’t get experienced bombers…

There are certain individuals who we have strong suspicion are involved in terrorist activity but who we cannot prosecute or, if they are foreign nationals, deport.

Wow, this is scary. Very scary. Basically put, if the government thinks you are guilty of a crime, but doesn’t have enough evidence for it to survive a trial, they will place you under a control order. Reading this, it seems the Minister is almost wishful for a state where the government could prosecute / deport people it thought were guilty.

Now, at first pass, this seems reasonable. On a daily basis the media show us news items of evil guilty people who have escaped justice by the crafty expedient of being found innocent (or worse, there not being any evidence of their guilt). This has, to an extent, inoculated us against the sheer outrage we should feel over this.  It seems to me that the relationship between the people and the government who are supposed to work on their behalf has changed for the much worse. Now, we the people, need to live in fear of the government who seek to be able to take executive action against free citizens without being encumbered by the rule of law.  Yeah, it frightens me. Well done Guardian.

None of this is meant to pour scorn on the work and effort of the security forces who toil ceaselessly to protect the people. I can only imagine the frustration and resentment they suffer as various trials where they know the person is guilty but for whatever reason they are released. However, the “government” is not supposed to feel this resentment. We, as a society, are supposed to manage and tolerate the frustrations of our public servants.

Harsh though it may seem, police (and security) officers are human and make mistakes. They suffer from poor judgement, irrational ideas and get things wrong just like the rest of us. Allowing a person’s freedom to be removed without sufficient evidence to convince a court simply means we are pandering to the feelings of these public servants – no longer are they serving the public interest, but we are serving their needs. This is wrong. If a police officer feels person x is “guilty” then they need to get enough evidence to prove it. If they are unable to get the evidence, then they have to assume that they were mistaken and the person was innocent after all.

What other way can there be?