The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust has published a report: The Rules of the Game: Terrorism, Community and Human Rights. It looks to be worth reading, and is already attracting attention from mainstream media and bloggers. Not Saussure quotes the following passage from the report:
Tony Blair talks of ‘rebalancing between the rights of the suspect and the rights of the law-abiding majority’. John Reid declared to the Labour party conference , ‘It cannot be right that the rights of an individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, the life and limb of the rest of the British people. It cannot be right – it is wrong, no ifs, no buts, it’s just plain wrong.’ But these are false dichotomies: ‘suspects’ are members of the ‘majority’. They are innocent until proved guilty, their rights and those of the majority hang together. (It is a miserable fact, however, that thanks to its constant use, the word ‘suspect’ is now charged with the presumption of guilt – so much that the Guardian recently wrote of ‘alleged terrorist suspects’.) (p 42)
I find it really worrying that British politicians are using rhetoric such as that quoted above. They seem to be intent on making things worse.
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