Charles Clarke's Spooks' Charter

Charles Clarke’s announcement that he plans to introduce a global database of ‘extremists’ is worrying and the implications of such a proposal, potentially dangerous.

Clarke told the Commons today that he has asked the Home Office, Foreign Office and the intelligence agencies to "establish a full database of individuals around the world who have demonstrated relevant behaviours".

These relevant behaviours are yet to be defined. We are told that these measures are principally aimed to exclude those from the UK whose presence is deemed “not conducive to the public interest.” Targets for surveillance and listing include radical preachers, websites and articles intended to foment terrorism.

The Government also intends to introduce an offence of “indirect incitement to terrorism.” The UK already has an offence of direct incitement. The new measures would target those who, “while not directly inciting, glorify and condone terrorist acts knowing full well that the effect on their listeners will be to encourage them to turn to terrorism".

On the surface these proposals may seem reasonable. No one can or should support the targeting of innocent civilians and the ideas of the Islamist extremists this measure presumably targets – organisations such as former Al Muhajiroun and its cognates – must be countered, especially by the left.

It is likely that during the coming weeks, we will hear reassurances from the Government that the measures are not designed to stifle legitimate debate, or for that matter to bring all radicals – religious or secular – under a regime of surveillance and monitoring. The aim of these measures, we will be told, is to provide instruments which are wide enough in scope to enable the police and security forces to ‘do their job’ and protect society. Safeguards will be built into the system.

The track record of the security forces in these matters is not a good one. During the Cold War, MI5 and other security organisations dedicated considerable effort to infiltrating socialist organisations and unions. Margaret Thatcher made similar use of the security forces to further her domestic agenda, most notably crushing the National Union of Mineworkers. What hope, therefore, than a new set of powers will be used in a restrained and discriminating fashion? None at all.

Yet the problem with this whole approach goes wider. Indeed, reflecting the imperialist project of which it forms a part, the mechanisms of surveillance and the denial of legitimacy that form the essence of the Clarke proposals are part of a logic that seeks to cement the interests of the US and British (and by implication, Israeli) states as the only legitimate deployers of violence.

Marxists have historically opposed individual terrorism and condemn attacks on innocent civilians. We are not, however, pacifists. The left has a tradition of supporting liberation movements around the world and defending workers’ organisations right to resist oppressive regimes. In the Spanish Civil War and other conflicts, socialists have participates in conflicts, even when those conflicts are in foreign countries.

More recently, the left has supported the struggles of the Nicaraguan and El Salvadorean peoples against US-backed insurgencies and in struggles with US-backed dictatorships. Would the FMLN be proscribed under Charles Clarke's proposals?

Similarly, many young Muslims may be opposed to violence against civilians yet support military actions against those they see as their oppressors, whether that may be in Chechnya, Kashmir or Palestine.

The problem is one of drawing the line. For George Bush, forces that are opposed to US foreign interventions can be written off as terrorists or illegal combatants. Is the British government going to define those it disagrees with as beyond the pale? Must all resistance be passive? If it takes a hard line on such matters there will be many, and not just Islamists, who will come within the scope of the mechanisms of surveillance and find themselves on watch lists.

Now let’s not be naïve. Such organisations will already be under some form of surveillance.

However, the term ‘indirect incitement’ is very broad and would, I fear, in the hands of a zealous spook, encompass many of the radical weblogs now on the Web.

And one must also ask: will such measures actually work? Applied in too heavy handed a manner, constraining debate and vigorous opposition to government policies, it could even enhance the cachet of the lunatic fringe. The solution to beating the extremists is not to be found in overly sweeping measures such as these, it is in the provision of alternative avenues for protest and involvement, and in the removal the grievances that create wave upon wave of potential recruits. Unfortunately, the government has proved time and time again that it lacks the imagination and will to pursue such avenues.