|
The "sieg heil" hand salute is purely
coincidental but it marries the context.
The yellow lightening strike on a red background would
not look out of place
in 1930's Germany, but this was Blackpool in 2006
The arrest of Tory MP, Damian Green, is making the
headlines. None of us knows the full story yet and whether
his alleged crime is indeed leaking 'secrets' - in this
case, ones slightly embarrassing to the government,
who must have been too ashamed to release the information
themselves - or something very serious that justified
the need for seven officers to arrest him and others
to search his homes and offices.
Was it necessary for Mr Green to be held for nine
hours as well as being fingerprinted and requiring to
surrender a DNA sample before being released on bail,
or is there something much more sinister going on as
most commentators suggest. What did the Government know
beforehand that they are keeping quiet about? If the
police acted alone, how have they got the authority
to behave in such a jackbooted way towards an elected
Member of Parliament?
Craig Murray, Britain's former Ambassador to Uzbekistan,
is no stranger to what the Government machinery is capable
of. He helped expose vicious human rights abuses by
the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov and was relieved
of his duties for doing so. Mustn't jeopardise the geopolitical
game of chess, old boy. Now be a good pawn and keep
your mouth shut.
Fortunately, he didn't
The rest of this article is The Jackboots Are On
The Move by Mr Murray. I would only argue with him
about amnesty for illegal immigrants.
by Craig
Murray
November 28, 2008
The Conservative immigration spokesman, Damian Green,
is not a figure ordinarily likely to elicit much sympathy
from me - although Boris Johnson's call for an amnesty
for illegal immigrants was the most sensible suggestion
on immigration for many years. But the arrest of Damian
Green MP is a constitutional outrage that may finally
motivate our supine parliament to stand up to this domineering
executive.
When Tony Blair halted the process of law in the BAE
corruption case over arms exports to Saudi Arabia, I
commented that we had abandoned the principle that no
man, however high, is above the law - a principle which
we had chopped off Charles I's head to entrench.
Charles I famously failed to arrest opposition MPs
when he arrived at the House of Commons with his soldiers
to be defied by the Speaker and find that, as he observed,
"The birds have flown". That attempt was critical in
precipitating the country into civil war.
The good citizenry of London and Cambridge will not
be grabbing their pikes and muskets today; but they
should. The arrest of Damian Green for doing his job
of opposing the executive is a step too far in rolling
back centuries of democratic achievement. The pretext
is the excessive desire of this government to keep all
public information secret, and prevent the taxpayer
from finding out what has been done in their name and
at their expense. This is the most secretive, as well
as the most authoritarian, government of the modern
era.
I can comment with more authority than most in saying
that civil servants now have a duty to leak: the official
narrative is now so often far from the truth across
the whole field of government, that if civil servants
do not leak there can be no informed democratic debate.
To arrest an opposition MP for finding out what is really
happening is a grim, grim move.
Comments can be left on my
blog.
|
