Give us back our freedom!
IMAGINE a country where ordinary citizens could be be detained for as long as the authorities fancied without the right to a trial or even to hear the evidence against them.

Imagine a country where people were forced to buy an ID card containing personal information on everything from their mortgage to their medical records, just to allow them to live their own lives in their own home town.

Imagine a world which was being physically destroyed by the greed of a small ruling clique of very rich people, whose stranglehold on the reins of power and the media was so tight that they felt free to carry on regardless.

Yes, that’s right. It’s this country, this world. And while we’ve been trying to draw attention to all this non-stop for the last seven and a half years, things are now getting seriously scary. The new 'control orders' brought in by New Labour are so extreme that even Prince of Darkness Michael Howard and his Tory party felt obliged to oppose them, along with all sort of establishment figures whom the likes of us don’t usually count as allies (Independent, March 2).

Former High Court judge Lord Thomas said: "Security is no justification for the breach of the fundamental principles which underpin our democratic system. No deprivation of liberty by ministerial say so, no midnight secret knock on the door, no gulags whether in Siberia or in Guantanamo."

Former Tory attorney general Lord Mayhew warned: "Provisions that commit such wide incursions into liberty as these do need to be examined by other minds as well [as the police and security services]." And Labour peer Baroness Kennedy condemned the way the government spin doctors dressed up the full horror of the proposals with talk of "concessions", helpfully played up by Her Majesty’s Press. She said: "The Home Office practice now is to bring forward new legislation which is absolutely abhorrent and totally disgraceful in its abuse of civil liberties and then, when there is uproar, replace it with something only slightly less abhorrent and tell us a major concession has been made."

Meanwhile, as all the propaganda in the media focused on spurious claims of hundreds of Al Qa’ida operatives roaming the streets of Britain, a hint of the true target of these police state laws came out. The Scotsman reported on March 5 that when Tony Blair was asked whether the Government would use the new house arrest powers against G8 protesters in Scotland in July, Mr Blair said: "I couldn’t rule it out."

With ID cards also being imposed on us and the government proposing yet more "anti-terrorist" laws after the general election, the idea of traditional English freedom is looking pretty extinct. But the good news is that in spite of all this there are still people out there, even here in Worthing, who are prepared to stick their heads above the parapet and stand up against the tycoons and the tyrants. Here’s some stuff we know about, that’s coming up:


* Saturday April 30. "Critical Mass" cycle ride against Climate Change and the G8. Meet Steyne Gardens, Worthing, at 2pm.

* Tuesday May 3. "Standing Up for Liberty". Special meeting on the assault on civil liberties and what we can do to fight back. Including contribution from new Worthing branch of NO2ID, the anti-ID card campaign. 7.45pm, upstairs at The Downview, Tarring Road, Worthing (opposite West Worthing station).

* Thursday May 5. "Don’t Vote - Remember What Happened Last Time!" Campaign to boycott the elections in protest at the way democracy has become a farce and politicians do what they like once in power, regardless of public opinion. Contact via www.worthinganarchists.cjb.net

* July 6-8. G8 meeting in Scotland. War criminal George W Bush, his obedient poodle Tony Blair and the leaders of the other richest countries in the world in the G8 are meeting behind massively high security at Gleneagles, Scotland, and thousands of angry people are going to be gathering outside to let them know what they think of them... Contact Worthing’s Shut The G8 via www.freewebs.com/shuttheg8.