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Police To Use Terror Laws On Heathrow Climate Protesters
Government has encouraged use of stop and search and detention without charge
Armed police will use anti-terrorism powers to "deal robustly" with climate change protesters at Heathrow next week, as confrontations threaten to bring major delays to the already overstretched airport.
Up to 1,800 extra officers will be drafted in to prevent an estimated 1,500 people disrupting the airport over the period of the camp for climate change, which is due to begin on Tuesday. The police have been told to use stop and search powers against the protesters, who have pledged to take direct action on August 18 and 19 but not to endanger life.
The Metropolitan police chief, Sir Ian Blair, has said he fears a minority of protesters intent on breaking the law could cause massive disruption as Heathrow prepares for its busiest week of the year. Yesterday Met commander Jo Kaye, in charge of the specialist firearms unit, said some people would "want to get their message across using criminal means".
Scotland Yard's plans for handling the protests are revealed in a document seen by the Guardian, which was produced by Met commander Peter Broadhurst during a legal hearing at the high court which imposed restrictions on a number of named campaigners.
"Should individuals or small groups seek to take action outside of lawful protest they will be dealt with robustly using terrorism powers. This is because the presence of large numbers of protesters at or near the airport will reduce our ability to proactively counter the terrorist act [threat]," the document says.
The police report makes it clear that the government has encouraged police forces to make greater use of terrorism powers "especially the use of stop and search powers under s44 Terrorism Act 2000".
The law gives police powers to:
· Stop and search people and vehicles for anything that could be used in connection with terrorism
· Search people even if they do not have evidence to suspect them
· Hold people for up to a month without charge
· Search homes and remove protesters' outer clothes, such as hats, shoes and coats.
Last night the protesters said they would not be intimidated. "We are trying to prevent climate change by stopping the expansion of the airport. There is no intention to endanger life. Our quarrel is not with passengers but with BAA and the government," said a spokesman.
The civil rights group Liberty said it was alarmed at the police use of the anti-terrorism powers to deter peaceful protest. "Stop and search powers created to address the threat of terrorism should not be used routinely against peaceful demonstrators," said James Welch, Liberty's legal director.
The police tactics have echoes of the 2003 anti-war demo at RAF Fairford where law lords eventually ruled police had acted unlawfully in detaining two coachloads of protesters, who were stopped and searched and then turned back even though they were on their way to an authorised demonstration. Police used section 44 of the act 995 times at the Fairford peace camp, even though there was no suggestion of terrorist overtones.
The Guardian has established that at least two climate change campaigners have been arrested recently at Heathrow by officers using terrorism powers. Cristina Fraser, a student, was stopped when cycling near the airport with a friend and then charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act. This makes it an offence to make a record of something that could be used in an act of terrorism.
"I was arrested and held in a police cell for 30 hours. I was terrified. No one knew where I was. They knew I was not a terrorist," she said.
Ms Fraser, a first-year London university anthropology student, has been on aviation demonstrations with the Plane Stupid campaign group, but claims she was carrying nothing at all. The police later recharged her with conspiring to cause a public nuisance.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
24 Comments so far
Show Alli'm shocked - SHOCKED - that any government that was granted special powers to fight terrorism would then use those powers against political dissenters. SHOCKED!
Good thing this would never happen here in the USA.
Good thing this would never happen here in the USA.
Thats just what I was going to say, it's coming to the U.S.A.!
Why are people shocked? The use of terrorism to fight "terrorism" is and has been a tactic for hundreds of years. They are using fear by the threat of violence and detention to dissuade people from acting on their principles. Why is this a surprise to anyone? Nothing new here!
Sorry if anyone missed my intended irony. That's the trouble with trying to be ironic. i'm not shocked at all.
'... because the presence of large numbers of passengers at or near the airport will reduce our ability to proactively counter the terrorist act ...'
.
So that's why Blair uses automatic weapons and premeditated lies on innocent civilians - because he can!
I'll skip things British for a while...
No surprise really. The labour party under the poodle has found that power through fear is the power to hold on to. Years ago at my first protest against the nuke subs in Holy Loch (1956ish?) the police were pretty polite, did not have guns and were respectful of our rights. Now they have guns are damned impolite and have found the power of fear.(kinda like the catholic church but that is a whole 'nuther story).
The government is driving protesters farther and farther into the arms of violence...and I would not blame the protesters one bit. It is time for a revolution and revolutions are neither peaceful or pretty but if we let the government rule with fear we will never have a democracy again. I say we have to make the government fear us and if that is with violence so be it.
Dear Webwalk;
Loved your laid-back humor.
A nstion that re-elected Tony Blair in 2002 is certainly capable of condoning this.
"Good thing this would never happen here in the USA."
Actually there is nothing necessarily sarcastic about this remark. We can't get people out of their 12mpg SUV's, or stop a single new coal-burning power plant, so attacking airlines is definitely down the list on this side of the pond.
What if there was 100,000 instead of 1500 and they practiced non-violence resistance a la Gandhi?
Governments are more afraid of non-violent demonstrations.
India and Pakistan would still be ruled by Britain if they were not.
BTW - it has already happened in US. Remember FBI's COINTELPRO ops?
P.S. Legislation making acts such as COINTELPRO illegal have been superseded by the current admin
It only proves what the hardcore antiwar movement said from the start, that there is no such thing as a legitimate or "true" "war on terror" -- there is only a war on civil rights using terrorist acts as a pretext for accumulating power to intimidate, doiminate & imprison the citizenry.
Never saw this one coming. Of course, our Military Intel, FBI, CIA, DHS, TSA, and Dept. of God have monitored Quakers as a threat, arrested nuns, and they're all still worried about those damned militant librarians. Wonder if Halliburton's building detention centers for "special programs" in Great Britain, too!
curmudgeon99,
I agree. The terror the establishment cares about is the terror they feel when confronted with nonviolent refusal to cooperate in a corrupt system.
Meeting force with force is tempting but we cannot win that way---nobody ever has won that way.
It begins.
Seems Hitler was just ahead of his time...he could have saved his military and just waited 50 years for Britain and the US to turn THEMSELVES fascist.
Personally, I don't think people should be protesting about things when we are at war with Terror. People should knuckle down and pull together. And besides, scientists aren't unanimous about globalization. This makes the seditious mischief of anti-Climate youth all the more troubling.
Chief Justice Harlan Fisk Stone produced the following in the 40s regarding conscientious objection. As we are being conscripted, used as human shields, coerced and boondoggled in this terror stuff... I keep a copy of it to trot out on occassion -
"both morals and sound policy require that the state should not violate the conscience of the individual. All our history gives confirmation to the view that liberty of conscience has a moral and social value which makes it worthy of preservation at the hands of the state. So deep in its significance and vital, indeed, is it to the integrity of man's moral and spiritual nature that nothing short of the self-preservation of the state should warrant its violation; and it may well be questioned whether the state which preserves its life by a settled policy of violation of the conscience of the individual will not in fact ultimately lose it by the process." Stone, The Conscientious Objector, 21 Col. Univ. Q. 253, 269 (1919).
Of course we are all aware that the purpose of "the war on terror" is to give governments, who represent the "ruling elite", the power to scare the the masses into accepting such laws. The laws themselves are not designed to "fight terrorism" but to keep the masses in line.
I have to say I'm very sympathetic to the protesters' ends, but if it were MY flight and vacation they delayed, ANY measures the government took--including torture--would be justified in my estimation.
(A bit of hyperbole here, but I hope you take my point.)
So now it is starting in England...
9/11, the preemptive war in Iraq, the Afghanistan police action, all premeditated actions to create an endless war against terrorism. Only now common citizens can be characterized as a terrorists.
Those in power are going to do all they can to stay in power. They are anticipating a revolution. Their actions against the constitution and liberty are sowing the seeds of a revolt.
Never happen in the USA? Where have you been???? It has happened in the USA, the mother of all police states.
davepepper - the remark was sarcastic - in other words acknowledgeing your very coments.
Now let's all go to London for a tour of the new gulags.
On 12 Sept 2001 I warned anyone who would listen and their were very few listeners, that the global war on terror would be nothing but the best ever vehicle for governments around the world to subject their own citizens to tyranny.
Israel didn't wait until October to begin crakcing down on the Palestinians and seizing more and more of the illegally occupied territory. Wilkommen to the new world order.
I believe you are on to something there, wdmax3.
Why else would this country condone warrantless wiretaps? It totally makes sense.
Hey, if they can do it to the Iraqi's they can do it here. What is worse is that there are people all over the world who wouldn't lift a finger either. They would have absolutely NO sympathy.
"Terror laws" are Orwellian speak for rooting out dissidents, protestors and "troublemakers" like you and me. Every country with a "terror law" or "emergency law" uses it to crush dissent. It's happening RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW in the U.S.
The police state mentality is infecting the so-called "free world." This should be no surprise. They are trying to maintain fear. Enemies imagined. It's all in history, people. We are letting history repeat itself. First it was the red scare, and now it's "terrorism," whatever that means. So much for the "free world."