On the Tuesday after winning the 1979 election, Margaret Thatcher gathered her new cabinet for an informal meeting. She records that they ‘began the painful but necessary process of shrinking down the public sector’. They also decided, in defiance of the Treasury, to implement in full the Edmund-Davies commission recommendations on police pay. Amid public sector pay freezes and cuts, most coppers saw an immediate 45 per cent increase in their pay. It told the public that Thatcher valued the police, and it reminded the police whose side she was on. When the inner cities burned in 1981, and the coalfields erupted in 1984, it was a message they didn’t forget.
Until the mid-1990s, the Tories owned law and order. Labour had an analysis of crime which involved waiting for the socialist Nirvana before mugging and burglary would cease. The 1983 suicide note included pledges to ‘protect the rights of individual suspects’, a new police complaints procedure, community police councils, strict limits on stop-and-search, and disbanding the special patrol group. The message to the police was that Labour didn’t trust them; to the public the message was that Labour lived on a different planet.
By contrast, the Tories’ manifesto could state: ‘Any concession to the thief, the thug or the terrorist undermines that principle which is the foundation of all our liberties. That is why we have remained firm in the face of the threats of hijackers and hunger strikers alike.’
As shadow home secretary, Tony Blair took the Tories apart after 1992 on the spiralling crime rate, breakdown of social order, and a prison system which was out of control. In government, Labour could never be accused of being overly liberal on crime or antisocial behaviour. It was based on an innate understanding that the British public want fast justice, hard punishment for criminals, and support for victims. When Gordon Brown dropped the ‘respect agenda’ in 2007 to distance himself from New Labour, he ditched one of the few policy initiatives which was understood and valued by the public, especially those plagued by gangs, vandalism and noisy neighbours.
Now, though, the Tories, in their bid to detoxify, have ended up where Labour was in the 1980s: soft on crime. Justice secretary Ken Clarke makes Roy Jenkins look like Judge Jeffreys. Up to 12,000 convicted criminals, who would have been banged up under Labour, will be on the streets by the next election. Then there are the real liberals within government, pressing for an end to ‘control orders’. These were introduced by Labour because the criminal justice system failed to deal with aspects of terrorism. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, argued recently that ‘terrorist threats can still exist which the criminal justice system cannot reach.’ The Liberal Democrats argue that control orders are illiberal. They’re right. They restrict the liberty of individuals who want to plant bombs outside nightclubs or on the London Underground. Liberal Democrat ministers want them dropped, against the advice of the Home Office and the security services. David Cameron is reported to have said ‘we are heading for a fucking car crash.’
As Tory and Liberal ministers increasingly sound like polytechnic sociology lecturers, Labour has only one sensible response: to camp firmly on the territory of ‘tough on crime’. Labour’s policy on crime and disorder should be aligned with the instincts of the people we need to vote for us: the decent
hard-working majority who want to see criminals convicted, not cosseted. One of the key promises on the 1997 pledge card was fast-track sentencing for young offenders. We need a set of policies which strike the same chord. New powers for communities to stand up to street gangs and neighbours-from-hell. More uniformed cops on the estates and streets. No quarter for terrorists, their fellow-travellers, or those preaching hate. More focus on the rights of victims, not prisoners. Criminals in prison, not on cushy community punishments. Prison a place of retribution, as well as rehabilitation.
Ed Miliband started his leadership by saying we need to learn from the mistakes of New Labour. A no-nonsense approach to crime and antisocial behaviour was not one of them. If Labour wants to reconnect with the C2 voters who deserted us in such record numbers, a tough approach on crime should be at the heart of our campaigning. For Ed Miliband, shadow home secretary Ed Balls and Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, it might mean moving away from the liberal positions they’ve hitherto adopted.More Mirror and less Guardian is what we need from now on.
To publish an article like this on the morning after the British police have beaten thousands of peaceful demonstrators leaving over a hundred in hospital is just surreal. And offensive to the Labour movement. And the deep irony is that you quote Thatcher without understanding what she meant. “Any concession to the thief, the thug or the terrorist undermines that principle which is the foundation of all our liberties.” Sacrificing our freedoms with the creation of control orders *was* a concession to terrorists. Giving the police every tool they asked for is where we got it dreadfully wrong, and we are now suffering the consequences both electorally and on the streets.
Duncan the police beat 100 protestors, there was snooker bal thrown at polciincluding knocking one off her horse, the horse so scared it ran along dragging her, 4 police have had arms andlegs borken, We may have lost the student vote, but the last labour govenrments policy on law wasn’t a vote loser, we still did better than 1983 ,DO you reall ythink we gave the polce what they wanted, we borke arbitration a trade union law and didn’t give them the pay rise they were entitled too, did the polce really want the HRA,freedoom of info act,to deal with fox hunters fuel protesters, have stop and account fomrs introduced ,where the police had to give thepublic a pieceo fpaper with their me on it when they were talked to voluntary
The problem when it comes to most of the restrictions on civil liberties is one of jurisdiction. I entirely understand why MI5 or SIS may need the power to act quicker than the court system allows. However I see no reason why an eighteen year old copper should be able to invoke the terrorism act on old ladies standing outside an American airbase. Pretending the police can do no wrong does not help them or the public. It creates suspicion and division, therefore making the job of the police themselves harder. Perhaps if they were on the beat, a genuine part of the communities they serve, they wouldn’t need stop and search laws or a restriction on the right to silence.
By all means be tough on crime, but also be knowledgeable about it before getting tough on it, to be knowledgeable means to be tough on the causes of crime. As a trade off and to sweeten this bitter pill of tough justice for Labour voters, perhaps a similar tough approach would need to be emulated in both the economic and financial spheres as well as the social ‘Joe Public’ sphere. I’m thinking bankers pay, financial services regulation, hedge fund transparency, short-selling – gambling in the markets – too big to fail banks etc. But, ironically, now we must have more criminal legislation for the little guy – who seems too small to save. So, to prison the Jo/e public must go! Besides, has there not been enough social regulation this last decade? I’m certain Mirror readers are crying out for more financial regulation than social regulation. In fact Labour if anything needs to win the battle of regulation and legislation as a concept in and of itself, as existing hearts and minds have wandered off – some might say on to the streets in search of peer leadership. Your title suggests any such new policy is for red top headlines rather than any long term benefit to society. Which might require a more grown up policy debate, a debate better suited outside of the pages of both the Mirror and indeed even the Guardian!
Oh dear. Let’s forget doing what is right and do what is politically expedient. This cynical piece has no place on a site with pretensions to being progressive.
Of course. Just what Labour need. To follow Thatcher’s lead. After all, its what they’ve been doing for 13 years – it can’t fail them now. Can it?
This is progressive? Labour were weak on real crime, they treated the entire population as criminals with the exception of those who actually committed crimes. We don’t need more CCTV, databases or any of Labours tools for the police state, we need a return to people taking responsibility for themselves and respect for others, that will of course take time.
Quite apart from the noxious overall tone of this piece, your analysis of control orders is patently incorrect. Those currently held under control orders have not been charged, much less convicted, of the alleged crimes for which they’re being detained: your description of them as terrorists, without any kind of qualification, mirrors the all-too-prevalent tendency of the tabloids to elide suspects with convicted criminals. If you wish to see such inept misunderstandings of the law gain *more* influence over public policy, then you are completely deluded. It may, of course, be the case that some of those held under control orders are involved in terrorist activity. Assuming that’s the case, you seem to be arguing that normal legal standards should not apply to them, given the crimes of which they are suspected. This is errant nonsense. If you remove equal treatment before the law for suspects towards whom you’ve taken a particular dislike, then you undermine it entirely. You are essentially claiming that, in order to appear tough on law & order, political parties must undermine a fundamental aspect of the former in deference to populist clamour for the latter. If you’ll excuse the double negative, this is not “no-nonsense”: it is incoherent, and ultimately self-defeating. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that control orders aren’t even halfway effective at keeping the public safe. While the restrictions placed on “controllees” are hideously draconian, their enforcement is lax and inconsistent, as evidenced by the fact that a substantial number of controllees have simply absconded, apparently without consequence. I actually had first-hand experience of this at a public conference in 2009, watching a panel discussion between Jack Straw, Nick Clegg and Dominic Grieve. When they reached the subject of control orders, a man stood up, declared himself to be subject to one himself, and began railing against his detention. I’m unsure whether the security services didn’t know, or simply didn’t care, that this man, alleged to be a deadly terrorist, was planning a trip into central London to sit amongst large numbers of the public and prominent politicians. Either way, it didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
So much for doing what you believe is right. So much for evidence based policy. Just abandon any consideration of principle and do what you think will make you most popular. Sickening. Labour values?: they’re whatever the latest focus groups says they are these days. If this is what you’ve come to there’s really no point in being a political party at all.
Steve cooke do you think Albours pro European views in the last 13 years have played popular with hte press or when they tried to get rid of section 28, or the Mcpherson report, or when labour criticised apratied during the late 80’s the tory tabloid press wwere always criticisng us,Similar the tories made out htey wer pro civil liberites when labour were taking tough choices that David Davis was getting us ciriticised in the press for like control orders, yet when the tories get in they not only do the same but worse,
THis is insane! I can’t tell if it is spoof or a rabid neo-con article. How on earth does any of this article equate to a progressive agenda? Being ‘tough on crime’ by giving the police more powers to supress the public is the tactics of any dictatorship – Argentine, Chile, Cuba, apartheid South Africa, Zimbabwe at the moment, the list goes on. THanks to Blair, Britons have become suspicious and obsessive. The move away from Labour in the last election was precisely linked to a sense that Labour had overreached its control of ordinary citizens. Dealing with crime in a progressive manner means dealing with the causes of crime, causes of fear and causes of community dissipation. The police have an important role to play in this, but as partners of communities, not as a paramilitary for the government. Labour needs a plan to win the next election, but with a progressive agenda not populist appeals and fearmongering. Fairer and more equal societies are the ones with less crime. Thats where the agenda must begin.
I sometimes wonder what part of leafy Surrey some of you inhabit that is so devoid of drug-dealers on the streets vieing with the grafittiists and vandals or the young drunks puking in their doorways (sometimes the same people)! Can anybody tell me where in the country CCTV was introduced against the will of the majority? I have known shopkeepers request that Council cameras be focussed on their shops! However, although people might feel a tad safer with CCTV we need to know how effective it has been.
“Prison a place of retribution, as well as rehabilitation” Is this quote for real? Why not bring back the death penalty too, while we are at it. Isn’t the doll-queue and the dead-end prospect of perpetual unemployment and social malais, retribution enough for those with the audacity to be poor and from broken communities?