| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Corbyn: I am spoilt for choice. I give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Preston.
Audrey Wise: Does my hon. Friend recall that for many years it was Labour party policy to supply arms to the African National Congress? Help was not confined to silent consent, but extended to aid in the armed struggle.
Mr. Corbyn: I recall the resolution to set up the southern Africa solidarity fund being passed at a party conference in the early 1970s. It included no definition of where the money would go or how it was to be used. However, the clear implication was that it would be used to support the opposition in South Africa to the apartheid regime.
Mr. Hogg: I support the hon. Gentleman in this matter. He has described solidarity groups, whose function is to raise money. Clause 14 makes it plain that a person invited to give money is committing an offence. It is no good saying that such people would be prosecuted only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The very fact that there is a possibility that an offence might be committed will deter people from inviting money or contributing money. To that extent, the Bill diminishes civil rights regardless of whether there is a prosecution.
Mr. Corbyn: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct: that is what clause 14 will do. Indeed, I observed
the effects of the 1974 Act on the Irish community where I live. It diminished political debate because people were afraid of being picked up and held under the PTA provisions.
I was a union official at that time, looking after a substantial number of Irish members. Many of them were detained--erroneously, as it turned out--under the PTA. Their experience was so frightening that many have not recovered. That is why I maintain that we must think very carefully before passing measures such as those proposed in the Bill.
Mr. McNamara:
Does not my hon. Friend recall that many thousands of people held at ports and airports under the PTA were never charged? The Bill will allow that practice to continue.
Mr. Corbyn:
That is true but, as they were not charged, it is unclear where those many thousands of people appear in the statistics pertaining to the PTA. Constituents of mine who have been held for periods of between half an hour and two hours have been told that they are answering questions. The words "prevention of terrorism Act" have been uttered, but, as no formal process has ever been established, there is no certainty that they ever appear in any statistics.
Article 11 of the European convention provides that people have a right of peaceful assembly and association throughout Europe. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that he had received no legal opinion to the effect that the Bill would be outwith the convention's scope, or that any of its provisions could be declared illegal under the convention.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not legally qualified, but I beg to differ. Many sections of European human rights law give rights of assembly and of political debate and organisation that are far greater than those specifically proscribed in the Bill. My right hon. Friend defended the Bill by saying that there remains an avenue for judicial review, but that is simply not good enough.
Although I am not a lawyer, I know that a judicial review is a review of a decision to determine whether it was made correctly in law. It is not a review of the decision, but of the quality of the decision and the way in which it was made. Therefore, it is not a defence for the Home Secretary to say that there is access to judicial review. There is access to judicial review for almost anything, if it can be brought to court. That is not the same as a right of appeal against a decision. The emergency powers on arrest--particularly in clauses 34 and 35 and schedule 7--would appear to be contrary to the international obligations to which this country has signed up willingly.
I am concerned also about the access to legal representation. I opened my remarks by talking about what happened when the PTA was passed, and the way in which people could be held for a considerable time without charge, trial or access to lawyers. We are going beyond that in denying people access to legal representation for 48 hours. Under existing legislation, it can be for only 36 hours under exceptional circumstances. We should be extremely careful about that.
Once the authorities start arresting people and denying them access to legal representation, all sorts ofother things can happen--including the most appalling
transgressions, which can become the most appalling miscarriages of justice. Some of the victims of those miscarriages of justice in this country were victors, in the sense that they were freed, such as Judith Ward, the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and a number of others. The Criminal Cases Review Commission was set up to deal with the question of the right of access to law. No such thing appears to apply in the Bill.
I am concerned about the international implications of clauses 57, 58 and 59. I have a list of organisations that are proscribed by the US State Department. It includes a vast number of organisations with weird and wonderful titles, some of which I have never heard of, and a number of which I know for certain no longer exist. Interestingly enough--given that the list comes from the United States--not one Irish organisation is listed. The Kosovo Liberation Army was removed from the list, as it was transformed from a terrorist organisation into a liberation force in record time. Many other organisations have taken many years to achieve that change in status.
We must be clear on what could happen. This country prides itself on its tradition of granting rights of political asylum for people to pursue a political agenda for their own country in Britain. The borough that I have the honour to represent is full of such people. Today, I had a long chat with some Italians about Garibaldi, who lived in Islington for a while--as did many others. They all pass through; some of us stay.
Mr. McNamara:
Some become Prime Minister.
Mr. Corbyn:
Some stay on the Back Benches, and are happy with that. Biscuits were named after Garibaldi.
Under the Bill, Garibaldi would be locked up as quick as anything, as he was calling for armed insurrection and the overthrow of the Government in Italy. He was successful, and went back and achieved that. Sun Yat Sen, who campaigned against the Chinese Emperor, would have been culpable under the Bill.
The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey referred to Sri Lanka. I have been to many meetings concerned with the efforts to bring peace to Sri Lanka. If we are to get a peace process in Sri Lanka, we have to reckon with the Tamil Tigers--it cannot be achieved without negotiations with them. Under the Bill, such groups could become illegal and proscribed organisations in Britain, so that peace discussions would be impossible here--and, very rapidly, elsewhere.
My constituency includes many Kurdish and Turkish people. The PKK is a significant force. It has declared a cease fire in Turkey, but it could be argued that it is a terrorist organisation. Certainly the Turkish Government would argue that. They would argue that there is evidence that the PKK has plotted armed insurrection in Turkey and, therefore, it could be declared illegal here. What are we to do then? Are we to ban, deport or imprison these people? What would that do to bring about a resolution of the dreadful conflict in Turkey?
There must be political solutions, as has been recognised in Northern Ireland and South Africa. The right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) did not seem able to answer my question of whether, had the Bill been in force in the 1960s and 1970s, the ANC offices in
my borough at that time would have been closed down. Would the ANC have been deemed to be a terrorist organisation because of its obvious links with the struggle that Umkhonto we Sizwe was waging within South Africa? There are many other examples.
Ministers say that this is okay because they are going to proscribe only organisations which oppose democratic regimes. That is a difficult area to define. I am not in sympathy in any way with what Sendero Luminoso has done in Peru, or the way in which it has carried out its struggle. Sendero Luminoso, or its representatives here, would argue that the Peruvian Government are not a democratic organisation because they suspended the constitution and carried out their war against that organisation.
Sendero Luminoso would argue that it is democratic. We might argue that it is not. We could then end up banning that organisation from having any representatives in Britain because it is opposed to a democratic Government, when there is plenty of evidence that the Government are not that democratic in the first place. There are many other such examples to be found all over the world.
We should think more carefully and more seriously about this issue, because otherwise we will end up putting people on trial because their own Governments want us to do that. We will then get into the murky area of the commercial links that these regimes have with companies in this country, and the pressure on the British Government to achieve higher export earnings. I remember the campaign mounted in this House by Conservative Members against opposition elements from Saudi Arabia because they were more interested in defence contracts with that country than in human rights there. That could apply to many other countries around the world.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |