Trends

The Anti-Terrorism legislation worries me. If we so easily throw away freedoms that took so long to gain where can we go in the future? How is it that our government can so easily abandon the promise not to harm another human?

The supporters of the legislation work on the theory that the legislation will be used by the "good" guys against the "bad"; and the definition of the two is taken to be self evident. The current government based it's success on dominating the middle ground in politics, the place where the electoral consensus was found. I fear that middle ground was taken only because we had a right wing government and a left wing opposition. Since coming to power the government and the opposition have move steadily to the right, so that we now have a right of centre government and a right wing opposition. My fear is that the electoral consensus has moved somewhere between the two. This movement opens the possibility of more extreme government taking hold, and they will no doubt want to use the anti-terrorism laws against their opponents.
I can never forget that democracy allowed the National Socialist party to take control in Germany in the 1930s. Before coming to power they had a developed an extremism that was popular throughout Europe, but after gaining power it got worse. Admittedly there were extreme conditions in Germany building up to the election victory, but we should never forget that an economic collapse is not easily foreseen. With oil prices going skywards (despite securing the Iraqi oil fields) and in the UK an inflated housing market, we cannot relax and assume that the "good" guys will remain in control.

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

Martin Niemoeller