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Fear speeches are utterly self-defeating

Why has General Pervez Musharraf not telephoned British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to express his “deep concern” over Tuesday’s Queen’s speech?

Or Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad?

Here is a government unpopular and in trouble over terrorism. Its civil rights lawyers are up in arms. Its leader postpones a general election and summarily arrests anyone he sees as a danger to his state. He butters up the military by promising them more nuclear weapons. He announces changes to the constitution without consultation, imposes central rule over dissident local districts and extends imprisonment without trial.

To soften up the public, he even gets his head of security to make a blood-curdling speech depicting every child as a potential suicide bomber.

The one thing Mr. Brown is spared is calls from foreign governments protesting about his policies. The reason is that making such calls is what British and U.S. leaders do to those they regard as political primitives more or less once a month somewhere in the world; they would not like it if the compliment were returned.

Back in Mr. Brown’s office in Downing Street, Monday’s pre-legislation speech by the head of MI5 (British security service), Jonathan Evans, was pure General Musharraf. It was a classic “frightener.” “As I speak,” intoned Mr. Evans with full dramatic effect, “terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country, radicalising, indoctrinating, and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism.” Mr. Evans boasted of the efficiency of British counter-terrorism yet admitted that the number of suspects had not diminished but risen.

“The number involved in terrorist-related activity in the UK has increased to at least 2,000,” he said.

Mr. Evans warned the public to be careful with words, as “we are tackling a threat which finds its roots in ideology, so words really matter.” He spoke of looking “with gritted teeth at some of the more colourful headlines” by which terrorism is depicted.

He might have included the tabloid outcome of his own speech. He was playing Halloween and crying, “Pay up, or you are all going to die!” It is public sector trick or treat.

I strongly suspect Britain’s secret service is doing a good job and has more than enough money already. There have been only two bombing incidents, in London and Glasgow, since 9/11. But, while being freed of bombs, we have not been freed of fear. Scaremongering by Ministers, the police, and security officials has bordered on the hysterical.

The essence of a secret service used to be secrecy, including of its methods and achievements. Otherwise it is just a branch of the police. In the early days of “avowal” in the 1980s, the heads of MI5 and MI6 (British Intelligence) would invite journalists to tell them how to go about handling publicity. One, Stella Rimington, was obsessed with how she might do on BBC Radio’s Any Questions panel? Others fancied themselves as James Bond’s M look-alikes. The only advice that made them miserable was that they should stay secret. “How,” one retorted, “are we ever to lobby for our budgets when the cold war is over?” The answer of both MI5’s Mr. Evans and MI6’s John Scarlett is to join the fear factory.

In 2002-03, before the Iraq war, the British security service supplied the British Cabinet Office with a weekly catalogue of “terror fears” — anthrax, smallpox, sarin, dirty nuclear devices, and a Christmas bombing campaign — to soften public opinion for the war. It was MI5’s answer to MI6’s “weapons of mass destruction,” and was the same drivel.

There can be only two results from this abuse of publicity. One is that the public demotes such scares to wolf-crying and treats them as background noise. The other is that, as all scare stories stereotype communities, the host nation distances itself from whatever group allegedly harbours the threat. The latter in turn retreats and denies the police the intelligence required for public safety. In other words, speeches such as those from the head of MI5 are wholly self-defeating.

Stupefying sums of money are being devoted to warding off a threat to life and limb which, I suspect, is far less than was posed by the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s. The IRA succeeded in evading the police, killing large numbers of people and destroying property with grim regularity. It did so with the intention of changing policy and securing the release of murderers and criminals. What it did not do was curb British liberties.

Al-Qaeda has killed fewer Britons but induced politicians to curb more liberties. It remains so murky that the security services grab at the epithet “an Al-Qaeda-linked organisation” to imply they are up against some vast global mafia, to excuse any intelligence failure and justify any increased budget.

Scaring the public as an act of policy may win a few headlines but it is stupid. It worked short term in 2003 and may prop up yet another terrorism law in Tuesday’s Queen’s speech, a law presumably requested by MI5. But it can only damage British liberty in the long term.

The Blair Government ruined Britain’s reputation for fair treatment among the moderate Muslims on whom stopping a tiny number of fanatics now depends. Abroad it declared wars, bombed Muslim capitals, killed civilians, and initiated a crusade for “western values” among people sceptical of their virtues. At home it extended terrorism laws to make every dark-skinned Briton feel that he or she is being made a scapegoat. While Britain remains adequately safe from attack, it has been at a wretched cost.

One question remains. No sensible person has a problem with rounding up suspects for questioning for a limited period. But if Mr. Evans and his like claim to “know” 2,000 Britons who are “actively engaged in terrorist-related activities” and pose a “direct threat to national security and public safety,” why are these 2,000 still at large? It cannot be for lack of powers, after half a dozen laws enacted to this specific end.

Could it be that headlines about 2,000 terrorists “on the loose as we speak” are more helpful to the government and its agencies than if they were under lock and key in the top security Belmarsh jail in south London?

We should regret the day the secret service stopped being secret and became just another government front organisation. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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