Wasn’t 1984 twenty-four years ago?
The so-called ‘anti-terror’ bill, permitting the government to extend the period in which a suspect can be held without charge for 42 days, has been passed this afternoon.
Gordon Brown described the legislation in terms of ‘principles’. He has obviously not learned that if you have a principle, then you stick to it, even if circumstances change. The kind of disposable morality exemplified by this legislation is typical of the way this government has been operating over the last thirteen years.
I started working for the Labour party when I was a boy, stuffing leaflets into envelopes. At the time, Clement Attlee was the Prime Minister. I was a Labour councillor for 12 years until I retired last year.
When I recall the work I did for the Labour party I feel nothing now but a sense of shame. They are pulling us into a world in which I, certainly, don’t belong. A world in which individual liberty counts as nothing beside the authoritarian posturing of a government of which all the great Labour legislators of the past would feel thoroughly ashamed.
Thank you, Diane Abbott, for a great speech. Had there been more than a handful of MPs in the chamber, your eloquence might have opened a few eyes. Let us now hope that the Lords will send this misbegotten bit of legislation back to the Commons.