John le Carré: Britons Have Been ‘Stripped’ of Civil Liberties
October 2nd, 2008He notes the lack of public outrage. For me, and I suspect for many of you, that’s the most disturbing aspect of the present descent into fascism. They Thought They Were Free. And here we are again.
Via: Telegraph:
Britons have been “stripped” of their civil liberties amid an “atmosphere of panic” over the threat from terrorism, according to the novelist John le Carré.
In a rare public intervention, the spy author criticised ministers for voting to extend the time limit that terror suspects can be held without charge to 42 days.
His comments come only weeks ahead of a key vote in the House of Lords that could see peers throw out the Government’s controversial 42-day proposals.
The writer, who admitted he has a reputation as “an angry old man”, said he was furious that the Government had been allowed to get away with a sustained attack on civil liberties.
“Partly, I’m angry that there is so little anger around me at what is being done to our society, supposedly in order to protect it,” said the 76-year-old in an interview in Waterstone’s magazine.
“We have been taken to war under false pretences, and stripped of our civil rights in an atmosphere of panic. Our lawyers don’t take to the streets as they have done in Pakistan.
“Our MPs allow themselves to be deluded by their own spin doctors, and end up believing their own propaganda.”
He added: “We haul our Foreign Secretary back from a mission to the Middle East so he can vote for 42 days’ detention.
“People call me an angry old man. Screw them. You don’t have to be old to be angry about that. We’ve sacrificed our sovereignty to a so-called ‘special relationship’ which has nothing special about it except to ourselves.”
The writer has been an outspoken critic of Labour’s erosion of civil liberties.
As Philip Slater wrote in his nonfiction _The Pursuit of Loneliness_,
“There is no such thing as a situation so intolerable that human beings must necessarily rise up against it. People can bear anything, and the longer it exists the more placidly they will bear it.”
As long as the TV still works and there’s some Cheetos left in the bag, well, what’s the problem, dude?