By Andy Ford, Warrington South Labour Party
The latest step the Tories have taken away from any attachment they might have had to democracy is the so-called ‘Covert Human Intelligence Source’ Bill, currently before the Commons, more properly called the ‘Spy-Cops’ Bill.
The Bill is only fourteen pages long but contains a fundamental attack on the democratic rights of workers in this country. What are euphemistically called ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources’ are simply spies, and this bill, if it goes through parliament, will potentially authorise them to commit ANY crime if they deem it necessary to their operation.
Police informants might also have immunity
No crimes are excluded in the Bill, not even murder, sexual assault or torture. As Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South, pointed out, even the FBI excludes the most serious crimes, such as murder, from immunity. Authorisation will only require the authorising officer to “believe” that the commission of the crime is necessary.
What is worse, is that the immunity for prosecution also applies to any “agents” and “informants” who might be workingfor the police or domestic security services like MI5, as well as the police and other authorities. That means any criminal who happens to be a contact of the police might be immune, if they are doing the police some favours. In the case of the killing of the Northern Ireland solicitor, Pat Finucane, mentioned by Zarah Sultana in her speech, it would have given his killers a free hand.
Many agencies freed to commit crimes
It won’t just be the police who can have authorised impunity. The bill also allows “criminal conduct authorisation” by any police force (this would include the British Transport police, the nuclear police, the House of Commons police; the intelligence services (undefined), the armed forces, HMRC, the Department of Health and Social Care (!), the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. For some unfathomable reason, the bill also includes The Competition and Markets Authority (?), the Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Food Standards Agency and, to top it all, the Gambling Commission. It would almost be easier to list the state agencies who cannot authorise crimes.
Crimes permitted to prevent non-crimes
The reasons to why criminal behaviour is to be allowed in the course of undercover operations are incredibly broad. They are listed as “in the interests of national security”, to “detect crime”, to “prevent disorder” or in the “interests of the economic well being of the UK”. So, on these grounds a serious crime might be authorised to prevent something happening that is not even a crime, like protesting at an arms trade fair or organising peaceful anti-racist activity. It could conceivably be used to undermine a legitimate trade union action that is deemed by the Tories as an “economic threat.”
Police already inciting crimes
It is a matter of public record that undercover police have been proven to have incited crimes by others, such as supplying wire-cutters to climate protesters trying to enter a power station, driving them there, and suggesting the action in the first place.
Activists of Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE) recalled that ‘their’ undercover cop was always suggesting attacking fascists or bricking their coaches, offers that they declined. And then there is the disgraceful conduct of undercover officers entering into long term relationships with women activists, and fathering children, all the while being married back on the day job.
The Bill is a disgrace, but even more so is the pathetic instruction by the labour leadership to the PLP to abstain on the Bill for fear of being labelled weak on crime. The opposition of Labour’s front bench was disgraceful, mostly confined to nit-picking. Even according to the Financial Times, “Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds called on the government to be ‘far more explicit’ about how human rights protections would be used.” What does that even mean? Labour should not play games with second or third readings and should completely oppose the bill, every step of the way.
Torture abroad also decriminalised
Only the 20 MPs of the Campaign Group, including Jeremy Corbyn, had the courage and principles to vote against. The government has already decriminalised torture committed abroad by British service personnel. It has planned to ship asylum seekers to the South Atlantic to a special prison on Ascension Island, 4000 miles away, and it has banned materials from schools which oppose capitalism. No government in modern times has moved more in the direction of explicit and sweeping anti-democratic powers and it is a disgrace that the Labour leadership doesn’t oppose these measures with the necessary vigour.
Corbyn and most of the Campaign Group, a total of around twenty Labour MPs were the only opposition to what is becoming a slide towards authoritarianism. One very bright spot in the parliamentary proceedings was the speech of Zarah Sultana, the young MP for Coventry South, expertly demolishing the Bill and the government’s claims for it. History will prove her right.
October 7, 2020
