Anger Over "Terror Arrests" at Nottingham University

Firstly I'd like to question this article. I live in halls on campus and I am yet to discover the 'climate of fear' that this article talks about. Where did this idea of a 'climate of fear' come from? Nobody I've spoken to feels at all at risk, and noone is fearful. We are all somewhat concerned about the arrests and the use of the terror laws but fear is not on our agenda.

Also, I don't think its that strange that this sort of thing wouldn't have happened if the student had been white (assuming of course that the comment put down was in fact said). Obviously if there was a white terrorist then they should be handled in exactly the same way as any other terrorist, regardless of race. However, since at the moment most terrorist acts are being carried out by 'Islamic terrorists' who have all (to my knowledge) been non-whites, it'd make no sense arresting people not of that description. Now some people may cry 'racism' or 'racial profiling' but thats stupid. If you are looking for a non-white suspect in a case, there isn't a lot of point arresting any white people, or in fact anyone who don't fit the description of the suspect. The same works in reverse: if you're looking for a white suspect, there is no point arresting someone who's not white.

It is of course somewhat disconcerting to see the terrorism powers being used. Its a very dangerous thing to give police the power to arrest and hold suspects for up to 28 days without charge, because as this article points out this can (and sooner or later) will be abused. Anyone seen as an annoyance to the police will just be detained by 'anti-terror' law as a way to get around the fact that no crime has been committed. The article is also correct in concluding that there is likely to be a larger police presence at peaceful demonstrations. Thats just something the protesters will have to deal with. I don't see it as a problem. The peaceful protests will carry on as usual and since they are carrying out legal and peaceful protests then no one is at risk of being arrested or in any way hassled by the police. Well, so long as you are in fact carrying out legal protests and not aggravating the police. As soon as you give the police ANY reason to detain you, they might just do that. Don't be stupid, keep the protests legal, peaceful and don't start arguing with police, it won't get you anywhere other than a cell.

that the gov and the police have been 'moving the goalsposts' of what is legal through anti-terror legislation. Essentially you are suggesting people bend over for the state, where it should be the other way round. "Possession of radical material" is vague and non descriptive, and was not illegal five years ago.

Secondly, it is actually a minority of terrorists worldwide that are non-white muslims. The most succesfull 'suicide terrorist' group in the world has been the Tamil Tigers, predominantly hindu, though secular in its aims. The IRA were far more successfull at launching attacks in this country than any muslim group has been (and thats not because 'were stopping them'). However, if what you say is true then we have to view why, after many years of living with muslim communities, we are suddenly under attack from them. The only answer I can see is that the government has persistently abused muslim communities abroad and here, which allows religious extremists to make their case all the more easily.

Finally, you can speak for yourself but many of my (non-activist) friends in halls have felt both intimidated and scared by both the news reports and the police presence.

I think it’s fair to say that there is fear that has been created by this whole event, and at the very least, a significant amount of anxiety. Perhaps not for everyone, but definitely for a significant number of both staff and students. It’s great that you’re questioning Peter, this is really the first thing we must all do, all the time, for everything; especially ourselves. To better understand this article, and the reasons for concern, you would benefit from having a read of this previous discussion:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/05/398954.html

In this instance the Police and University have blurred the boundaries between legitimate political activity and terrorism. This is a very worrying precedent. You might not be all too bothered right now, but as soon as you start caring about something enough to want to act upon it, you will no doubt find these concerns becoming increasingly pertinent to your own situation. People aren’t born as activists; people become activists out of a desire to tackle injustice and suffering, and to better the world around them; and we should all have the right to do that without fear of intimidation, arbitrary arrest and stigmatisation.

You correctly note that “Anyone seen as an annoyance to the police will just be detained by 'anti-terror' law as a way to get around the fact that no crime has been committed.” If that does not worry you, I’m not sure what will. Unfortunately, Police are often aggravated by perfectly legal activity and protest; it represents a threat to their authority. There is a very clear difference between doing something that ‘challenges or may be seen as a threat by authority’ (the police, of the Uni), and doing something ‘illegal’- these are distinctly different things; but in this case both the University and Police have treated these two things as one, muddied the arguments and tried to get away with punishing innocent members of our University community; either arbitrarily, or as many now suspect, exactly because they were challenging, questioning social norms and exploring controversial information and ideas. This is totally unacceptable behaviour on the part of the University and Police. We will not, and must not stand for it!

A comment on one of the other articles on this has said that the students should respond strongly to this, which I very much agree with as this is a direct attack on the political freedom of University of Nottingham students. However, I think this issue is much too important to treat just as an issue for students. This is the clearest attack on political expression in the city as a whole that I have been aware of in my time here and it just so happens that it occurred at the university. With the huge positive input that students from the University have had to political activism in Nottingham I think they deserve the support of whoever can spare the time to help out in putting together whatever response is deemed appropriate.

"The peaceful protests will carry on as usual and since they are carrying out legal and peaceful protests then no one is at risk of being arrested or in any way hassled by the police. Well, so long as you are in fact carrying out legal protests and not aggravating the police. As soon as you give the police ANY reason to detain you, they might just do that. Don't be stupid, keep the protests legal, peaceful and don't start arguing with police, it won't get you anywhere other than a cell."

You only have to have been to a couple of protests to realise this is not true. Police are happy to arrest people under some false pretexts. So you are saying we let them limit our rights to protest while we sit back and let the bastards walk all over us...

Mr Garratt puts forward an unrealistically optimistic view of the police presence at peaceful demonstrations and of racism from within the police force.

You do not have to DO anything to be arrested by the police if you are an activist/Muslim/black/any other group vilified by the boys in blue.

The police serve a dual role in society. On the one hand they are supposed to "protect" us or deal with "crime" etc.

On the other hand they are AGENTS OF STATE CONTROL. Therefore, their presence on demonstrations is POLITICAL. It is a way of INTIMIDATING people into silence. It is therefore a form of political repression.

Similarly, the abuse and harassment that innocent black and Asian people suffer at the hands of the police is a way of further alienating and marginalisng sections of society that are already oppressed at the hands of institutional racism. (Remember the innocent Muslim who was SHOT IN THE CHEST in Forest Gate East London?  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5077198.stm )

If Mr Garratt was an activist he would know that the police DO NOT NEED A REASON TO ARRESST YOU. If Mr Garratt was non-white, he would also be aware of the fact that the police can, and do, regularly, harass, arrest, beat up, and occasionally shoot and kill innocent foreign and non-white people. (Remember the fatal shooting of Menenzes?  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4288682.stm)

I wonder of Mr Garratt knows how many people are murdered in police custody.

 http://www.irr.org.uk/2002/november/ak000006.html

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Deaths_in_UK_Police_Custody

Notts IMC - can you put up the press release put out by concerned staff and students? It lists the specific points of concern with the whole investigation and will be very useful to anyone who wants to know details. Thanks

If you have the press release *you* can put in on Indymedia. The point here is your supposed to do it not ask others if it would be possible. Look for the big PUBLISH button (top right).

here's betting that he is white .

Hiya,

The press release was already published on the newswire (right column on the startpage) and we have added it with the other 'Newswire' links in this feature (see above).

Peter Garratt - without intending to patronise, your sentence construction and prose marks you out as a smart cookie. You should therefore be aware that the media focus on Islamic terrorism - for the various reasons the focus is there - serves UK foreign policy interests extremely well indeed. The pro-capital bias our "free" media delivers to us is generally accepted by the masses and allowed to propagate by the state. The focus on ethnic groups stokes nationalism and racism, which turns the working/middle classes against each other, rather than recognising our various common enemies: imperialism, greed, wage slavery, and the inequitable distribution of capital (and so forth).

You probably don't feel the "climate of fear" because you're not a protester, and so - luckily for you - have little to worry about. But those of us who can't stand idly by whilst we allow corporations to plunder Iraq and acquiesce in the face of the destruction of Palestine (etc) do have something to worry about - the harrassment and intimidation by agents of the state (sadly, working class ones, who have yet to discover who the bad guys really are).

It is easy to prefer the official story - that Islamic terrorists are madly blowing things up for no reason, and that the climate of police repression is justified - which is precisely why having an independent media is so important. You might like to write to the editor of your favourite newspaper, for example (though arguably it's a bit late now) to ask him/her why the largest find of explosive components ever found at a UK house did not make the "news agenda" in a big way:

 http://nujnewmedia.blogspot.com/2006/10/world-awaits-mondays-bnp-terror.html

Would it be because, ahem, "they" were white? Surely not!

...This is quite good. It's from the Times Higher Education

 http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402125&c=2

Peter,

peaceful protest has become criminalised, and peaceful protesters are regularly subject to arbitrary arrest and intimidation from the police, I respect yopu coming on here and airing your thoughts, and would like to ask you to watch a film called On The Verge which I belive will be an eye opener to you, the police have unsuccessfuly tried to ban this film.

torrent available here:

 http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/3270/On-The-Verge--SCHMOVIES-2008-

"A spokesman for Nottingham confirmed that the police had been called after material was found on the computer used by a junior clerical member of staff. “There was no reasonable rationale for this person to have that information,” he said."

I think doing a PHD on the subject is rationale enough, boy have nottingham uni and the police fucked up this time.

You say "it is of course somewhat disconcerting to see the terror laws being used". They are being used against people with extremely reasonable alibis to possess the offending material, and who don't meet any of the criteria to be Islamic terrorists, apart from their race. So I conclude from this that you either don't like the content of the anti-terror legislation itself, or you disagree that researching a PHD isn't a good enough reason to have some outlawed material, and be promptly left well alone by the pigs.

I find it extremely depressing to witness your apathy and lack of anger, to fail to condemn the police for being agents of a repressive state on the one hand, or to speak out in favour of academic freedom in this country.

"Climate of fear" is just a Daily Mail-type phrase unconsciously borrowed by people like Stop the War and Indymedia. There's never a universal climate of fear in totalitarian societies; but when people can be made to experience fear by the cops when they step out of line, despite having done nothing that shouldn't be acceptable in a democratic society, the only people who would fail to fear both fear and anger have no idea what democracy is. The only reason you are not afraid is because you are in fact totally apathetic.

Lots of interesting points made above. I find the heavy police presences VERY intimidating, particularly all the photographs they take of peaceful, innocent people. Anyway, the point I wish to make is that successive "terror" bills of Mr Blair and Mr Brown have made the material in question illegal. The clauses are so badly drawn that Spyblog refers to the "phone book clause", since a phone book satisfies the "material likely to be of use to a terrorist" clause. So in fact we are lucky these two were released, since they have broken the NuLabour law.

can the details of the demo be attached to this article by the indymedia powers that be?

I believe it is taking place next wednesday at 2 outside the Hallward library and will involve a public reading of the banned research material but it would be great to have the link above.

Thanks

Yes, the current "terrorism" laws are so broad that nearly anything could be criminalised as "useful to terrorists", but probably why this was not used is that judges have recently in effect rewritten the legislation by insisting on proof of terrorist intent.
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/feb/13/uksecurity

The big threat now is that they're trying to deport the second arrested person despite knowing he's innocent. In other words, they're saying that there's not an actual "crime" but that the non-crime is still reason enough to deport someone. This is conclusive evidence that this was NOT some fact finding investigation as the university now maintains, but an attempt to persecute people by whatever means were available.

Demonstration wednesday. For more info and downloadable flyers/ poster see:  http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/05/399479.html

Does anyone know why these two people were released? How can they release them - under the anti-terror legislation 'possession of material likely to be useful to terrorists' is illegal. I thought the police had a duty to pass the facts to the CPS and impartial This is apropos a comment above concerning the goalpost shifting.

When that new law came in (2004?) I made sure destroyed a vast pile of data that I had been collecting on terrorism, including the I destroyed all the old explosives manuals and other related military stuff that I still had from a misspent youth in the fascist boots brigades. I was scared of ending up in a cell or deported to the US.

Why is it that some people can own this material while others cannot. It is useful to people engaged in terrorism and is therefore illegal, but it seems that you only get persecuted if you are from the muslim community (cf, the lyrical terrorist).

Does anyone who is reading this know how the law works on this. It seems weird and very unconstitutional to be using the law to persecute some and not others 'equal under the law' was my understanding. Are the police and govt trying to muddy the waters over what is or what is not legal in order to start wider repression and arbitrary fascist 'do as you are told' doctrines?

Is this the same one?!

List Price: $14.95
Only 3 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Thanks for all for your replies; they were both informative and constructive.

I haven't got time to go through and address everyones comments/questions but I've picked a few thing to clear up

"In this instance the Police and University have blurred the boundaries between legitimate political activity and terrorism. This is a very worrying precedent. You might not be all too bothered right now, but as soon as you start caring about something enough to want to act upon it, you will no doubt find these concerns becoming increasingly pertinent to your own situation" -- I would like to say that I do find this very worrying.

"You only have to have been to a couple of protests to realise this is not true. Police are happy to arrest people under some false pretexts" -- Yes, I am aware that the police do this and as I said in my original comment, its worrying that they are using the Anti Terror laws a yet another pretext. The police will use anything they can to arrest you. What I was trying to say in my comment is that protesters with a legitimate, meaningful cause that should be taken note of and acted on need to be extremely careful when protesting. Although police can always think of some pretext (the classic 'breach of the peace' is a fav) to arrest you under, the less protesters give them to work with the harder it is on them to arrest you. For example, shooting your mouth off and swearing at police will get you arrested, whereas sitting quietly, being polite to police (that included biting your tongue sometimes) and carrying out a protest is going to make it much harder for them to arrest you.

"You do not have to DO anything to be arrested by the police if you are an activist/Muslim/black/any other group vilified by the boys in blue." -- Yes, again the false pretext comes in handy when the police want to arrest you.

"On the other hand they are AGENTS OF STATE CONTROL. Therefore, their presence on demonstrations is POLITICAL. It is a way of INTIMIDATING people into silence. It is therefore a form of political repression." -- Yes, I agree. The way to deal with that is to not be intimidated. If you are protesting within your rights to protest, then you have no reason to be suppressed. So don't be. Carry on as if they weren't there. Don't be intimidated!

"here's betting that he is white ." -- Does that make any difference? What if I told you I was black? What if was a muslim? What if I was asian? I don't like the implications of this comment: because I am white I have a certain view because of my race. Now if that doesn't sound like discrimination on account of race I don't what it.

"You probably don't feel the "climate of fear" because you're not a protester, and so - luckily for you - have little to worry about." -- OK, you got me, I'm not a protester. Maybe if I was I would feel the climate of fear. Having read some of the comments on here that I would guess are from protesters, I would actually like to get involved in some protests and see what its like. Perhaps then my opinions would be different.


"You say "it is of course somewhat disconcerting to see the terror laws being used". They are being used against people with extremely reasonable alibis to possess the offending material, and who don't meet any of the criteria to be Islamic terrorists, apart from their race. So I conclude from this that you either don't like the content of the anti-terror legislation itself, or you disagree that researching a PHD isn't a good enough reason to have some outlawed material, and be promptly left well alone by the pigs." -- Doing a PHd is a good reason to have the material. I don't really know the ins and outs of the terrors legislation; my concerns are mainly from how it is being used as a pretext for the arrest and detention of people who haven't committed a crime. Oh and calling police pigs isn't really a good plan. Unless you want to give the police to arrest you.


As I said, time is short and there is so much more I want to say but haven't got time. Once again thanks for the informative and thought provoking comments.

Thanks for the reply, Peter.

> OK, you got me, I'm not a protester. Maybe if I was I would feel the climate of
> fear. Having read some of the comments on here that I would guess are from
> protesters, I would actually like to get involved in some protests and see what
> its like. Perhaps then my opinions would be different.

Most people here are certainly on the the protest end of politics, if not actual marchers and direct action activists. But many of the readers here are these things as well. Most of us have views that fly in the face of public apathy and the media big-business-as-usual agenda, driven by a shared view of universal human rights and a minimum standard of living for everyone.

This explains the pressure from the business/government amalgam to suppress criticism and stifle dissent, which is a common thread running through banned demonstrations in the UK, violence in Latin America, the illegality of unions in Iraq, the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs", the post 9/11 "fear-factor" and generally increased surveillance on societies from China to Great Britain.

I would thoroughly recommend getting involved and I'm really pleased that you are happy to adjust your views based on give-and-take discussion (hopefully it is true to say that other people here are as equally amiable in the exchange of viewpoints). I'd suggest that you should choose campaigns upon which you are passionate, or where you see the most glaring injustice. For me it's Palestine and Iraq, and the brazen commercialisation of these man-made disasters that - hidden in the deliberate complexity of the world's administrative structures - ordinary people find hard to understand. For other people it's the environment, anti-capitalism, G8/IMF/globalisation, animal rights, civil liberties, gentrification and public space etc - take your pick!

Just to give you a quick flavour of protest in the UK, by the way - I was at an anti-war demo in late 2007 to greet Gordon Brown, party to war criminal Blair's wanton complicity in the deliberate destruction of Iraq and its infrastructure. The government, not wanting any embarrassment prior to the new premier taking office, decided to do the unthinkable and actually refused permission for the march. This is actually quite unusual in the UK - at least for now - and it even caused a minor stink in the Guardian and the Indie (who are a mix of pro-war and slightly anti-war). The (male) police were aggressive and confrontational at the march - presumably having been led to believe the wide variety of protesters there were all anarchists wanting to tear the place up. First time protesters in our coach found it somewhat daunting - as did I - but they are now much more involved as a result of the (thankfully minor) aggression.

Some of the stories I heard that day, from "old boys" involved in the working class fight against the Poll Tax, and the miners' strikes - in relation to horrifying *British* police violence and state repression - would make your hair stand on end. But learning about these struggles, and then getting involved in the modern-day equivalent, is very worthwhile indeed. If you decide to take part, I wish you the very best of luck.

i think people should lay back about terrorism because it is getting out of hand i dont think they should target certian poeople

It makes me sad to see the open society that I grew up in during the sixties, when so many of the old orthodoxies and cruelties were challenged and defeated, be dismantled by the very people who reaped most benefit from the spirit of those days. In a free society there can be no justification for detaining someone without trial for 42 days. Is there no end to this madness? We will only be secure and free when we learn to stand by our values and defend them against the forces of intolerance and hate. When we ourselves become the persecutors, then we are lost. So Gordon, take the advice of an old hitchhiker. This time round 42 is not the answer.
Read more:
 http://leightoncookie.blogspot.com/2008/06/and-answer-isnot-42.html