"The powers available to the government and state agencies would be truly draconian. Cities could be sealed off, travel bans introduced, all phones cut off, and websites shut down. Demonstrations could be banned and the news media be made subject to censorship. New offences against the state could be "created" by government decree. At a stroke, democracy could be replaced by totalitarianism." - Tony Bunyan, Statewatch
Just when you thought Neo Labour would run out of new laws to keep us all in line, along comes the Mother of them all - The Civil Contingencies Bill.
This is, we are told, for our own safety, to help with those little emergencies in life such as terrorist attack, contamination of land with "harmful biological, chemical or radioactive matter or oil", and flooding and "disruption or destruction of plant life or animal life". In such an emergency, forget the Yellow Pages cos your phone would probably be cut off. Instead, everything would be done "to protect or restore the activities of Her Majesty’s government" and that means some rather uncivil powers could be invoked.
These include:
The banning of the movement of people and vehicles in an area,
Evacuation orders of an area,
The seizure, confiscation or destruction of property, with or without compensation,
Destruction of animal or plant life, with or without compensation,
Ban of "assemblies of specified kinds, at specified places or at specified times",
Shutting down phone lines and websites,
Arresting people who fail to co-operate with the emergency powers
And this is just a watered down version from a few months back! While Neo Labour and the media have promoted these powers to deal with floods and such like, SchNEWS reckons that these powers could be used against members of the public who complain far too much for their own good. Just look at the stalking laws which were originally touted to protect women from stalkers, but which were first used against animal rights activists (SchNEWS 126) and which Bayer are now using to silence critics of their genetically modified crops (SchNEWS 436). Or the Terrorism laws, supposedly introduced to protect us from being blown up, which are now being routinely used at demos to stop and search people who have been asking their government NOT to blow people up!
Behaviour Modification
Also in the queue of new bills and acts designed to make a more compliant public out of us is the new Anti-Social Behaviour Act, which just so happens to ignore the anti-social aspects of dropping bombs on civilians and letting corporations release genetically modified organisms into the countryside. Instead it concentrates on a hotch-potch of stuff from ‘anti-social’ tenants, noise, graffiti and litter to dealing with people who refuse to trim their disorderly hedges.
The new law also contains further serious attacks on people’s right to party and protest, tightening the screws of the Public Order Act 1986 and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 - an Act which sparked massive protests in the nineties and spawned SchNEWS itself, but whose amendments have passed into law largely un-noticed. The Anti-Social Behaviour Act introduces a new law which will allow a senior copper to disperse a group of two or more people if another member of the public has felt intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed by their behaviour. It also states that a Public Assembly is no longer 20 people, but can be comprised of just two people!! So if you happen to be on a small picket in front of some nasty business, if there are more than two of you, you are now liable to be dispersed on the grounds that you constitute an illegal Public Assembly. Or all three of you might just be forced to move on by a senior copper for the terrifying effect your banner has on the general public. Meanwhile, ‘Aggravated Trespass’, frequently used to nick hunt sabs and people trying to stop more road building, now applies inside buildings, with the amendments explicitly referring to how the charge can be used against activists who enter company buildings for office occupations or supermarket protests! And all of you ravers take care. Yet another change to the Criminal Justice Act contained inside the Anti Social Act states that the numbers required for yer party to be classed as an illegal rave have now dropped from 100 to a mere 20-which is hardly a rave, more an indication that you haven’t got many friends. And the classification of an illegal rave now extends inside buildings as well as outside. The Act also includes a new offence -going to a rave within 24 hours of being stopped from going to a previous one. Social butterflies beware!!
But while Neo Labour has been busy coming up with new ways to mould us into model citizens, ready to work, shop and die without any fuss, the largest, longest and most expensive study in the history of criminology has come up with the most bleedin’ obvious conclusion ever. The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighbourhoods has spent $51 million over the past 10 years to conclude that the most important influence on a neighbourhood’s crime rate is neighbours’ willingness to act for one another’s benefit. The study argues that most major crimes are linked to concentrated poverty and what it calls ‘collective efficacy.’ Which in plain English means that if your local park was full of rubbish and the local authority removed it all, the rubbish would probably return in a few weeks. But if the local community organised a meeting to clean up the park, with a chance for people to meet, solve problems and work together, the benefits would most likely be much longer lasting and the park would probably remain cleaner for longer.
The study has challenged the "broken windows theory" that if people are allowed to get away with little crimes like graffiti or dropping litter, bigger acts of disorderly conduct will follow. This theory has provided the intellectual justification for a crackdown on "quality of life" crimes in New York City and is also being used to justify part of Neo Labour’s new anti-social crusade. This crusade in New York has led to fines being handed out for everything from people falling asleep on the subway to sitting on a milk crate! But research in the Chicago Neighborhoods study shows that crime and ‘anti social behaviour’ is most effectively fought not with more laws and more jails, but by building strong communities where people take control of their own lives. But maybe that’s just the sort of nonsense which could only lead to less government, happier people, and pure anarchy!
END