20.02.2014
Asbo mania threat
The case of radical Islamic convert, Jordan Horner, may seem insignificant, writes Micky Coulter, but is part of a long-term trend of state attacks on basic freedoms
Jordan Horner, a London convert to Islam, has become one of the first people to come under the restrictions applied by an ‘anti-extremism’ anti-social behaviour order (Asbo), awarded by the Old Bailey earlier this month.
This has been widely recognised by mainstream press commentary as a ground-breaking event in the use of Asbos, though anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to the endless rounds of increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic legislation created and enforced by successive governments since at least the late 1960s - reaching new depths with the ‘anti-terror’ legislation of the last Labour government - will not be surprised. So, this is only the latest manifestation of a decades-long process of political retrenchment by the bourgeoisie.
The latest victim is hardly a progressive, but this does not prevent us from noting the obvious lessons. Horner was a part of a sharia law vigilante group in and around Waltham Forest in London. He and his fellow radicals would set about intimidating locals who they deemed were behaving in an unIslamic fashion, or living unIslamic lifestyles. They regularly targeted female drinkers. Surely Horner and company were bound to attract the attention of the law at some point? But neither he nor his associates have been prosecuted in a criminal case for intimidation, threats of or actual violence and so on. Instead Horner has been nailed with an Asbo specifically for his ideological ‘extremism’. No criminal prosecution, no jury trial, nothing.
It would seem that reaching for an Asbo is a simpler and easier way for the state to deal with what it regards as someone being a nuisance - even when in the case of unsavoury characters like Horner they have much worse things going for them than their dishing out of leaflets advocating a sharia state, or using a loudhailer to the same effect in public. He is now prohibited for five years from doing both, as well as from publicly associating with four named men except for “peaceful worship”.
That he has fallen victim to an ‘Asbo of an new type’ is a product of the aftermath of the public killing of British soldier Lee Rigby in May 2013. Following the attack, prime minister David Cameron and his home secretary, Theresa May, created the Tackling Extremism in the UK ‘strategy group’, whose report in December 2013 advocated, amongst other measures, the use of Asbos to tackle “extremism”. Horner is the first, but will not be the last, to receive an ‘anti-extremism’ Asbo and, as with all repressive legislation created by the British state, their use will far exceed their ostensible purpose.
What serves to enable this more expansive application is the definition of ‘extremism’ employed. In this case the report from the Tackling Extremism group uses the same one as that found in the glossary of the 2011 ‘Prevent’ document - a broad ‘counter-radicalisation intervention’ strategy produced by the government for nipping potential extremists in the bud in various institutions (universities, student bodies, trade unions, etc) and on the internet, with a focus on Islamic extremism and countering ‘radicalising’ ideology and its mouthpieces. To get a sense of just how awesomely vague the government’s working definition of ‘extremism’ is, it is worth reproducing in full:
Extremism is vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of our armed forces, whether in this country or overseas.1
Well, that’s us done for then! Unless communism and advocacy of working class rule is to be judged as another great British value to sit alongside the rule of law and other, undefined ‘British values’. More concretely, the idea that the people of territories invaded by imperialist states have a right to defend themselves could certainly be construed as advocacy, of a kind, of the killing of UK troops. The scope for the potential application of the anti-extremism Asbo is almost limitless, and could be used particularly against all those adhering to anti-imperialist politics, who could then be painted as a poisonous, anti-patriotic minority who deserve everything they get - leftwing equivalents of religious reactionaries like Horner.
Abuse is the use
This latest attempt to silence ideological ‘nuisance’ elements is nothing new, as far as the law in general is concerned. So it would be naive to suppose that, as in the case of previous legislation, cases like this are simply an unintended side effect of otherwise basically sound lawmaking. Far from this being an abuse of the law, it is an expression of its real purpose. It is very much the law of a class state enjoying a period of unprecedented political, economic and ideological supremacy over the working class.
A whole series of anti-democratic acts were passed by the last Labour government, inaugurating a new period of repressive legislation with the so-called ‘war on terror’ and the provisions it called forth. For example, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 drew protests from journalist and photographers - section 76 was worded so broadly as to effectively legitimise the confiscation of any film or photographic recording of police officers or of government buildings: any such material that can be construed as even inadvertently “useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”2 could potentially be subject to the act.
Or what about the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005? It is widely remembered for its restricting of protests in and around parliament, as a result of the long-standing anti-war camp set up by eccentric protestor Brian Haw. Any such protest is subject to the approval of the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and there must be at least six days’ prior notification. The first person prosecuted under this act was Maya Evans - for reading out the names of dead British soldiers at the Cenotaph. Clearly this had nothing whatsoever to do with preventing ‘serious crime’ and everything to do with implementing measures of control over any and all political groups and individuals.
Going back to the year 2000, before the ‘war on terror’, the Labour government pushed through the Terrorism Act 2000. Most notoriously it was applied within the Labour Party itself against Walter Wolfgang who had dared to heckle Jack Straw. It was section 44 of this act which provided for unlimited ‘stop and search’ powers for the police. Ostensibly to help them apprehend terrorists, stop and search was (and is) used primarily against people from ethnic minorities and the politically active. Section 44 continued to be used until 2010, when the European Court of Human Rights judged that it was illegal under article 8 of the European Convention. Out of approximately 100,000 stop and searches conducted under section 44 no terrorists were found, and only around 500 of those cases resulted in arrests for other offences.
Most recently the provisions of this act relating to the seizure of information, documentary or electronic, which may assist the carrying out of a terrorist act was used against David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glen Greenwald, who was largely responsible for publicising the extent of US National Security Agency snooping via documents produced by Edward Snowden. So offensive was this abuse of the law that even the odious Blairite former lord chancellor, Charles Falconer, piped up in a column for The Guardian to condemn the excessive use of the legislation by the state and security services, albeit continuing to defend the act’s substance.3
Here was the British state, in pursuit of its own interests and those of its United States ally, imposing social control through the use of legislation which is ostensibly not intended for that purpose. But one can hardly draft legislation on the basis that it is to be used for harassing protestors, detaining journalists, kettling students or suppressing ‘extreme’ politics. There has to remain the appearance of socially neutral, technocratic lawmaking that is for the benefit of all, so as to maintain ‘rule by consent’. The subjective views of the politicians broadly responsible do not even matter - that they may think their laws are being ‘abused’ is neither here not there; what matters is how the state uses the laws in practice.
One could go further back in terms of repressive legislation to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which has been used to stop ‘ordinary members of the public’ from being harassed by people pushing political agendas - not ‘extreme’ political agendas: just politics of any kind! Or the Public Order Act 1986, whose purposes can probably be more easily deduced, given the much higher level of class struggle at the time which it was designed in large part to combat.
From trade union struggle then to anti-war and anti-corruption struggle now, it is clear that the purpose of the law is to enforce the will of the state, and to prevent ‘extremists’ such as ourselves from upsetting this balance. Everything outside the control of the state, even after decades of defeat for our movement, remains viewed as a potential threat. That the working class movement and radical politics more generally has hardly been less threatening than it is now has not stemmed the tide of repressive legislation designed to ensure tight control.
This is why it is the duty of all communists to expose the class nature of the state and of the law, even in cases where it is used against reactionaries like James Horner, because the real target is the working class movement and its political activists.
Notes
1. See glossary at www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/97976/prevent-strategy-review.pdf.
2. See www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2008/ukpga_20080028_en_9#pt7-pb3-l1g76.
3. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/terrorism-act-david-miranda-detention.