CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1250 - i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

TERRORISM AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS

 

 

Tuesday 9 November 2004

MR BEN WARD, MR LES LEVIDOW, MR GERRY GABLE and MR PAUL DONOVAN

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 99

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

 

1. This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2. The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. It will be printed in due course.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 9 November 2004

Members present

Rt Hon John Denham, in the Chair

Janet Anderson

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Claire Curtis-Thomas

Mrs Janet Dean

Bob Russell

Mr Marsha Singh

Mr John Taylor

David Winnick

________________

Memoranda submitted by Human Rights Watch,

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities and Mr Paul Donovan

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Ben Ward, Counsel, Human Rights Watch, Mr Les Levidow, Campaign against Criminalising Communities, Mr Gerry Gable, Publisher, Searchlight, and Mr Paul Donovan, journalist, examined.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for our invitation to give evidence. Just by way of background, this is the first evidence session of the inquiry by the Committee into the impact of terrorism on community relations in this country. We did take evidence on a one-off session in the summer on police use of stop and search powers under the terrorism legislation. We will obviously draw on some of that session for the forthcoming hearings, but we are very grateful to each of you. It would be helpful for the committee and for the record if I go to each of you in turn and you briefly introduce yourselves for the record.

Mr Ward: My name is Benjamin Ward. I am counsel in the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, and I am based here in London.

Mr Gable: I am Gerry Gable, a publisher of Searchlight magazine. I am also a Vice-Chair of the Independent Advisory Group to the Metropolitan Police Service, and I have been doing this for 40-odd years.

Mr Donovan: I am Paul Donovan, a freelance journalist. I have done work on terrorism coverage in the media.

Mr Levidow: I am Les Levidow. I represent the Campaign against Criminalising Communities.

Q2 Chairman: Could you say a little more about what that campaign is?

Mr Levidow: Yes. Our campaign was founded in response to the Terrorism Act 2000. It brings together a range of human rights activists, lawyers, other NGOs and people from the various migrant communities which are being targeted and affected by the so-called anti‑terror laws.

Q3 Chairman: Could I set this in context, and I ask all the witnesses to be quite brief. It would be helpful background to today's session if each of you in turn could give a very brief assessment of what you feel the terrorist threat is at the moment in this country. I know none of you are expert witnesses on terrorism per se but it would be useful to know what your own assessment is and that of your organisation of the extent of the terrorist threat.

Mr Levidow: It is extremely difficult to give an answer to this question. It is much easier to challenge all the claims that have been made about types of terrorist threats, and I will speak to this later.

Mr Donovan: It is a difficult question to answer because all we really have to go on is what has happened in foreign countries: 9/11 in 2001, obviously Bali, the Saudi Arabian attacks and Madrid more recently. That is the threat we are seeing outside. Nothing has actually happened here, so it is difficult to tell what the threat is. That is part of our problem in trying to evaluate what the threat is and whether the measures being taken are adequate and that is why nothing has happened here or whether they are over the top. It is difficult to equate. There is definitely a threat, but it is very difficult to equate what that is.

Mr Gable: I would take it in a slightly broader way. It is about how one defines terrorism. I think everybody thinks of terrorism today on the basis of 9/11. I would want to include in that the David Copeland incident, which in itself was a terrorist act.

Q4 Chairman: He was the nail bomber?

Mr Gable: Yes. I would hope you would look at that as well as the question of extremist people of various faiths. I would add that whilst my colleague here says there is nothing happening here, maybe there has been a certain level of prevention but there were British nationals involved in at least one of the bombings overseas, and I think we have to take cognisance of that.

Mr Ward: Firstly, obviously, I must note that my organisation does not have access to any of the information upon which the Government's decisions are based. Clearly, when the Special Immigrations Appeals Commission looked at the evidence in closed session, it was satisfied that there was a threat. However, I would endorse very strongly the view of the Joint Human Rights Committee that the Government should consider ways to increase scrutiny of that evidence so that those of us who have not had access to classified material can better evaluate the nature of the threat and therefore better evaluate what the appropriate response to it should be.

Q5 David Winnick: The Campaign against Criminalising Communities, Mr Levidow, seems to question whether there is in fact any terrorist threat at all. Can I just get quite clear in my own mind: was 9/11 terrorism?

Mr Levidow: The claims being made of threats of large-scale political attacks ---

Q6 David Winnick: Could you answer my question, with respect. Was 9/11 terrorism or not?

Mr Levidow: Of course it was. We are not talking about other countries now. We are questioning the claims being made, especially in the mass media but also from representatives of the police, about terrorist threats in this country, by which I assume they mean threats of systematic violence against the public. That is what we question.

Q7 David Winnick: Mr Levidow, if I can, with respect, because obviously whatever goes on abroad in our view, the view of the House of Commons collectively, whatever other views we take on the subject, has some impact or possible impact on the United Kingdom. Was 9/11 an act of terrorism?

Mr Levidow: Of course.

Q8 David Winnick: You agree it was?

Mr Levidow: Of course.

Q9 David Winnick: Was what happened in Istanbul an act of terrorism?

Mr Levidow: Of course.

Q10 David Winnick: In Madrid?

Mr Levidow: Of course, we do not dispute that. We dispute the claims being made about the threat.

Q11 David Winnick: Do you dispute the remarks yesterday by the Head of MI5 who said that we should not take in any way lightly the threat of a terrorist attack on this country, remarks which have been made persistently by Ministers and other senior officials, police chiefs, since 9/11? Do you believe there is a terrorist threat to the United Kingdom?

Mr Levidow: It is impossible to know but it is possible also to challenge, as we have done, the various claims being made. Can I speak in some detail on this now? I did prepare a statement in reply to the questions that were helpfully provided to us. The letter announcing this whole inquiry asks the question whether terrorist threats harm community relations. Our view is that the main harm to community relations comes from the so-called anti-terror laws and their use. The problem starts from the exaggeration and fabrication of terrorist threats, including the mass media. I suggest you read the statement by Martin Bright of the Observer, which we included in the submission that we gave to the Privy Council a year ago.[1] From first-hand experience, he reveals the Government's mass media strategy, which was one of your other questions to us. Namely, MI5 circulates disinformation about threats or even specific accusations against individuals who are being arrested by labelling them as an Al-Qaeda cell. Then the journalists publish the information because they do not know what else to do with it, but implying that they had investigated the matter and had found out this information. Newspapers have not been charged with contempt of court for this character assassination as they normally would be in other types of cases. Then the Government cites the mass media reports as evidence of a terrorist threat and as evidence of public concern, which the Government itself has encouraged. I will just give you a couple of examples. I am coming on to the question of evidence. Here are just two of many examples. "Terror gas attack foiled. Deadly chemicals were targeted at the tube in Gatwick". That was from the Evening Standard (6 April 2004). In the Daily Mail (24 January 2004): "London time bomb plant, five held. Al-Qaeda suspects had enough explosives to kill hundreds". There are numerous mass media reports like this about specific individuals who are arrested, but then what happens? Often the charges are withdrawn, and that is not reported, and there is an enormous gap between these reports and prosecutions.

Chairman: Mr Levidow, I need to chair the meeting and give other witnesses a chance to continue. You have made your point, I think. I will let Mr Winnick come back on this.

Q12 David Winnick: I have one last question, Mr Levidow, in this section. Do you accept in any way that those who are responsible for 9/11, for what happened in Bali, Madrid and Istanbul, if they could, in your view, would commit the same terrorist atrocities in the United Kingdom?

Mr Levidow: Of course that is possible but let me emphasise that there is an enormous gap between all these claims and prosecution evidence in court.[2]

David Winnick: We will take that as a yes.

Q13 Chairman: As a committee, I hope we will have a great deal of opportunity to look at some of those more specific points. I would like to pursue some of the issues that come out of that exchange with other witnesses. To each of the other witnesses, could I ask you this question: do you think that there has been a deleterious effect on social cohesion since 9/11, Bali, Madrid and the sense of a heightened international terrorist threat? Do you think community cohesion has got worse?

Mr Donovan: I think particularly the Muslim community feels that it has been targeted by some of the tactics that have been used since 9/11 to prevent terrorism.

Q14 Chairman: Can I ask you what the evidence is for that?

Mr Donovan: The stop and search figures are one example.

Q15 Chairman: We will obviously be taking evidence in due course from Muslim organisations. You have said that the Muslim community feels certain things. I just ask what the evidence is for those feelings.

Mr Donovan: That has just come from my speaking to people in the East London area in particular.

Q16 Chairman: Mr Gable, do you think it has got worse?

Mr Gable: I think a number of things come together here. Yes, social cohesion has been seriously damaged, but again, going back on to my hobbyhorse, if you look at what has happened in this country in the last four years, you have had serious racial disturbances in the north-west and other parts of the country. Evidence in the trials of BNP and Combat 18 supporters after Oldham and Burnley was absolutely conclusive, and the evidence is not hearsay, this is in a court of law, that they had instigated those riots, tearing up the social fabric of those cities and towns by using Muslims as a scapegoat in almost every situation you come across. I have seen in local council elections BNP leaflets with pictures of a mosque on them saying, "This is the terrorist centre in your community. Why do they have CCTV cameras? It is because they are looking at you because you are their next targets" and no action has been taken on some of this material. Having said that, and I have had an interest in stop and search for well over 20 years, there are a number of things. There is the way, overall, you look at stop and search. Is it a good tool for the police or is it not a good tool for the police? My belief is that, properly used with intelligence and intelligence-led policing and the officers going out to do that job in the streets, it can be of value. The other point is that all Asian communities have been suffering from stop and search since 9/11 and the anti-terrorist laws because often policemen cannot tell one Asian person from another, whether they be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. The final point is that I would say the police should be using that power in this situation ---

Q17 Chairman: I am trying to avoid us getting too far on to that but we get the general point you make. Mr Ward, what is your view about whether there has been deterioration and why?

Mr Ward: Plainly there has. In terms of pointing specifically to evidence of it, in the briefing paper that I submitted to the committee on behalf of Human Rights Watch, there are references to statements by the Muslim Council for Great Britain, the Commission for Racial Equality, Islamic Human Rights Commission, and indeed the Newton Committee, all indicating disquiet in the Muslim community as a consequence of counter-terrorism and in particular as a consequence of the indefinite detention of foreign terrorism suspects.

Q18 Chairman: Can I ask each of you to respond to this last question from me very briefly. Listening to the four of you together, there is a range of views but everybody is agreed there is some deterioration in community cohesion. There is a range of views about the extent to which that stems primarily or entirely from what the Government and the police have done to Mr Gable's view that we have to take into account other people in the community who may be exploiting the situation. Can I ask each of you where you would put the balance of responsibility and to what extent you regard it as entirely the responsibility of Government and the police and to what extent we should be focused on the role of other agencies, the media as Mr Levidow referred to it, and so on? Mr Ward, I will start with you.

Mr Ward: As an international human rights organisation, we are necessarily concerned with the compliance with governments and with their obligations under human rights law, so that is our focus. We simply have not looked at the views of communities and what they may be. It may well be that they are equally problematic. However, our view is that when we look at the issue of counter-terrorism measures on behalf of the Government, they plainly have contributed negatively to community relations.

Q19 Chairman: Mr Gable, is there anything you would like to add to what you have said before?

Mr Gable: I think Government, and much more so the media, has a very bad role in all of this. There has been some media reaction on legislation and the consequences in terms of social cohesion that have often not been thought through. There is also a huge amount of speculation and hearsay around in Muslim communities. I see this through my work with the Independent Advisory Group. People come to us with stories about attacks on Muslims. Obviously, we take them seriously. A reasonable amount of the time, those stories turn out to be rumour and not true at all. I have given the committee some background stuff we have published about attacks that we do know have happened, and they are very serious attacks.

Mr Donovan: I think the Government and the policing authorities have played a big role in this. I also think the media have played quite an irresponsible role in many cases in fanning the whole thing along. One thing I would like to say is that I think we really need to recognise what we have in this country, which is very precious, and that is racial harmony. It is really something to hang on to and we should be very careful before we damage it.

Chairman: Mr Levidow, you had a fair crack. I am going to move on to the next questions. I am sure you will have plenty of opportunity to come in.

Q20 Mrs Dean: I will turn to Mr Levidow first, if I may. Could I ask this? Islamic extremist groups have been condemned by responsible Muslims but should not groups in the UK that condone international terrorism and Al-Qaeda be policed vigorously in your opinion?

Mr Levidow: What do you mean by "policed vigorously"? Do you mean watched?

Q21 Mrs Dean: There should be investigations into their activities if they are actually condoning international terrorism and Al-Qaeda?

Mr Levidow: Here a distinction needs to be drawn between verbal statements and involvement in preparing acts of violence. In the view of many people in this country, the Government, this Government, not only condones international terrorism but also helps carry out such activities, which can be seen to fit the UK's own definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000.

Q22 Mrs Dean: Could you give examples?

Mr Levidow: The attacks on Afghanistan, on Iraq and so on.[3]

Q23 Mrs Dean: That is your view.

Mr Levidow: And the view of many people in this country, as you will see today in the response to the attacks on Fallujah. But in that overall context, if some people here verbally condone acts of violence elsewhere, then that is not in itself a proper matter for the law. It may be a matter for surveillance but it is not a proper matter for the criminal law.

Q24 Mrs Dean: What you are saying is that there should be no action taken against people who, for instance, support what happened on September 11th?

Mr Levidow: It is not a proper matter for the criminal law. It may be a proper matter for surveillance to find out whether any such people are actually involved in violent activities. But, from what I can see of the report of prosecutions of people under anti-terrorist laws, as I tried to explain before, there is virtually no evidence - and this is now three years since the ATCSA in 2001 and four years after the Terrorism Act 2000 - presented in court of anyone planning violent activities, except perhaps loyalists in Northern Ireland.

Q25 Mrs Dean: With respect, that was not the question I asked. I asked you whether it was right that those who condoned what happened on September 11th and the other atrocities around the world should not be looked at carefully by the police. Did they put forward the opinion that those atrocities are not wrong?

Mr Levidow: Police surveillance is one matter; the criminal law and prosecutions is another matter. Police surveillance of course is needed on people who might be planning violent activities.

Q26 Mrs Dean: My question was: should they be policed vigorously? We may need to move on.

Mr Levidow: I am drawing a distinction here between surveillance and use of the criminal law to prosecute people.

Q27 Chairman: Criminal law can be used to prosecute people, so you accept that if people have broken the law they should be prosecuted. You also accept, if I understand rightly, that if people are advocating support for the type of terrorism we saw in 9/11, it is quite reasonable for the police to pay them particular attention, more so than other members of the public who do not advocate support for terrorist activities?

Mr Levidow: The police do not need any special laws to do that. You can be sure they do surveillance on all sorts of people, including all sorts of NGOs and political activists. The police do not need special powers to do that.

Q28 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Levidow, did I hear you correctly: did you accuse the British Government of being terrorists?

Mr Levidow: This is a widespread view in this country.

Q29 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: It is your view, is it?

Mr Levidow: Yes, well, particularly of the attacks on Iraq.

Q30 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: What do you think ought to be done to the UK Government in relation to these notional terrorist attacks, as you say?

Mr Levidow: The Department of Public Prosecutions does not share this view, so probably nothing will be done.

Q31 Chairman: What proportion of the British public do you think holds the view that the British Government is a terrorist government?

Mr Levidow: In particular cases, in the attack on Iraq.

Q32 Chairman: What proportion of the British population do you think holds this view? We should not spend too long on this.

Mr Levidow: Something like one-third to one-half of the people opposed the attack. I am not sure what proportion of them ---

Chairman: I am going to move this on. Given that I resigned from the Government over the war but I do not actually regard the British Government as a terrorist government, I would not like to be lumped in to those who regard this as a terrorist government.

Q33 Mrs Dean: May I turn to Mr Donovan? In the absence of a breakdown of police statistics by region, is it likely that, for example Hindus as well as Muslims are being stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act, a subject referred to earlier? Do you have any evidence of alienation of his and other minority communities?

Mr Donovan: I do not really have evidence of different communities other than the Muslim ones that I have met in East London, but I have no doubt that there are other communities that do feel alienated in that way because there is a lack of breakdown. I would suggest the stop and search figures ought to be broken down into more definite race categories and region probably as well, and then we would have more basis to argue on.

Q34 Mrs Dean: Mr Gable, I think you raised the issue earlier: do you have any evidence?

Mr Gable: I just feel that when it comes to stop and search and stopping people, what do you do in this situation where there is a terrorist threat? Anybody in their right mind will see there is a perceivable terrorist threat all over the world at this stage. I just draw your attention to police practice during the height of the various provisional IRA bombing campaigns on the mainland. I used to commute into Liverpool Street Station at the height of that and you would see Special Branch officers in plain clothes and uniformed officers and railway police stopping about one person in 30 or 50 in the rush hour, whether they were wearing jeans or a bowler hat or were young or old. That had a deterrent effect. You can say this is a fishing expedition. Maybe if there was a bit more knowledge and more sound intelligence, there might be more people who are really dangerous behind bars at the moment.

Q35 Mrs Dean: Do you have anything to add, Mr Ward?

Mr Ward: On the issue of stop and search, I would like to draw the attention of the committee to the work of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has expressed concern generally about the disproportionately high number of stops involving ethnic and racial minorities, and its recommendation that the UK record all such stops and give a copy of the record to the person who is stopped. Human Rights Watch would take the view that that is a sensible recommendation. Very briefly, I would also like to comment about your earlier point in relation to effective counter-terrorism measures and effective policing. It was certainly our conclusion from examining this in our briefing paper - and I know that it is also the conclusion of the Newton Committee and others - that one of the consequences of alienating Muslims is that that actually undermines the willingness of that community to co-operate with the police and the security services, and then actually has a negative impact on the ability to police the sorts of groups that you were describing in your question.

Q36 Chairman: To pursue it slightly further, if we can, it seems reasonable to suggest, as one of you did earlier, that a number of minority ethnic groups were being disproportionately stopped alongside Muslims, particularly Hindus and perhaps some Sikhs, those not wearing turbans perhaps, who would not easily be distinguished by some police officers from one community or another, yet the resentment, as you described it earlier, appears to be held specifically within the Muslim community. Can you identify for us more precisely why it is that the sense that you describe to us of alienation or resentment is concentrated in the Muslim community even though they are very unlikely to be the only Asian population that is being stopped and searched more than the white population?

Mr Ward: I would suggest that it arises primarily from the policy of indefinite detention of foreign terrorism suspects. Although my organisation has not examined in detail the use of other conventional counter-terrorism measures in the Terrorism Act 2000, we have looked in detail at the use of indefinite detention and plainly that is regarded as a great injustice. This is very much an anecdotal point but I participated in a Radio 5 call-in programme and I was very struck by a number of callers who identified themselves as being British Muslims who felt that the use of indefinite detention was a great injustice. All they were asking for was for those people who are guilty of offences to be prosecuted, to be put on trial and punished or otherwise released, so clearly there is a link.

Q37 Mrs Dean: Mr Gable, could I ask you: if the rise in community tensions can be put down to the threat of terrorism, why has there been a rise in anti-Semitic attacks?

Mr Gable: I find this very interesting. If you look at the immediate period after 9/11, certainly in the Metropolitan Police area, there were far fewer incidents involving the Muslim community than any of us expected, but there was a rise in attacks on the Jewish community. I think we have a problem here. It is something I would like to talk about this afternoon. We have a situation where the Muslim community, and I do not think it is entirely laid at the door of Government but much more so at the media, are targeted and targeted. If you pick up even up-market papers, you get this anti-Muslim hysteria. If I was a Muslim, I would feel it in my heart and my head. All right, this is a bad situation and many young Muslims are looking for leadership in coming to terms with this. This is something I have put in my notes for today: maybe people like Richard Desmond should be here answering a few questions about the behaviour of their papers because it is intolerable. Some of the headlines are as bad as some things you would read in the BNP paper. Having said that, why is it that even the most respectable of the Muslim community organisations in this country fail to one hundred per cent to condemn terrorist bombing and suicide bombing? What happens is that a bomb goes off somewhere and everybody pays lip service across all the communities, across all the faiths, saying, "This is a terrible thing; this has got to stop". The Muslim community leadership of the most responsible and respectable people says, "Yes, we go along with that, but...", and it is that "but" that is the signal to young Asian kids and young Asian students at universities to go and have a go at the Jews. It is not a question of Palestine/Israel. This is a question of cohesion between the Muslim community and the Jewish community and all of us in this country. I think some serious talking needs to take place. The Jewish community has a very good history in this country of reaching out to other faiths. It still continues today, I am glad to say; it has not fallen away but it is hampered by these irresponsible remarks being made that might not affect Muslim adults but certainly has an impact on young Muslims who feel under threat and they are looking for somebody to hit back against.

Q38 Mrs Dean: May I follow up that with a question? Is that related to any particular groups that have an effect on young Muslims groups? You mentioned universities. Are there any particular groups?

Mr Gable: There is the group that has now wound itself up, but one goes and another one comes.

Q39 Chairman: That is Al-Muhajiroun?

Mr Gable: Yes. These groups have existed since the year dot. They existed before there have been these terrible conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis. If you go to the bookshops, you can buy the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you can buy all sorts of stuff that is really strong. Just to change tack slightly, I think the police since 9/11 have been running to catch up for two reasons in relation to the Muslim community. One has been social cohesion and concerns that the rest of us have. The other thing is intelligence failings. There was no real intelligence about what was going on in some of these communities. You could say the police moves are cynical. I do not think they are entirely cynical. I think it might be 60% wanting fresh intelligence and 40% actually being very concerned about social cohesion. If you look at the Met and other services up and down the country, there is a whole range now of inter-faith groups working with the police, and I think some good should come out of that.

Q40 David Winnick: Could I pick you up on that, Mr Gable? You said something like "tut-tut" or a similar expression was the response of the Muslim community when a terrorist outrage occurred. If I correctly interpret your remarks, it does not really amount to much. Is it not a fact that the Muslim Council of Great Britain sent a letter to mosques saying that anyone who has any knowledge of terrorism should notify the authorities? Is that not an indication - and you smile - that they take terrorism very seriously indeed?

Mr Gable: I think you have to look beyond that letter. The letter is good and fine. Then leaders of that organisation turn up on Newsnight or on Radio 4 and for the first three minutes of the interview they say, "We have sent a letter. Of course we condemn this. This is terrible" and then you get the "but" -"but you can understand the feelings of people who are driven to doing this". You cannot take both positions. You either say that terrorism is wrong per se or it is not. You have to be honest.

Q41 David Winnick: As someone who is totally opposed to suicide bombings, however much I am opposed to the Israeli Government and its policies which in my view are totally unacceptable, indeed more than that. I raise that because is there not the possibility that Muslims are, in my view wrongly, trying to explain away suicide attacks in Israel but do not say the same about 9/11, Madrid, Istanbul and other places where such terrorist atrocities are taking place?

Mr Gable: How can you actually separate British nationals, Muslims going into a café full of young people in Israel and blowing themselves and the café to pieces? From Bali to Madrid the mindset is the same.

Q42 David Winnick: But it does have this difference, Mr Gable, and you and I have the same views, as indeed virtually everyone, and I hope Muslims as well, against suicide bombings wherever they occur, and that includes Israel. Since the threat to this country is on the same basis as in other countries, apart from Israel, leaving Israel aside, would it not be a fact that Muslims accept, and indeed when we have had witnesses here from the Muslim organisations they have said this, that when 9/11 occurred, when Istanbul occurred, when Madrid occurred - obviously, Istanbul being in a Muslim country - Muslims were murdered as well. They recognise that if there is a terrorist attack on our country, Muslims are likely to be included, in the same way as when the IRA launched their terrorist attacks, the IRA did not seem to worry one way or the other if Catholics were murdered. Why should they, because they were carrying out a campaign of mass murder? Do you accept that?

Mr Gable: I think all that stares me in the face are the statistics of the rising amount of attacks on the Jewish community. I am not calling for breaking the law here. I would far rather see the young Asian Muslim kids in Burnley, Bradford and Oldham venting their anger against the BNP than going along and beating up congregants coming out of the synagogue on Friday night or Saturday morning. There is a clear distinction here. Over the years, Nazis in the Sixties burnt 34 buildings in London, including synagogues. They went to prison and there were quite severe sentences. You get Nazis involved in cemetery and synagogue desecrations, but we have never seen figures at this level of young Asian kids attacking people going to and from worship. I do not think there is like with like because Jews are not doing this. Jews may be vocal against Muslims but there is no sign of anything organised or propaganda going on within the Jewish community that is urging young Jews to go and beat up people outside mosques.

Q43 David Winnick: Let it be said, Mr Gable, when it comes to fighting racism, over half a century or more, no-one has a better record than yourself. Do you consider that racial violence has increased on a large scale since 9/11? I am talking about in Britain of course?

Mr Gable: Absolutely, and it has given a whole range of very nasty people the opportunity and adding to that the conflict between Israel and Palestine. If you go and look at demonstrations now, you will see all sorts of people turning up and you think it is a demonstration against the war in Iraq - and I would be sympathetic to those demonstrators. Then you suddenly see there are people there from fascist organisations. It is the same right across Europe. There is evidence to show that. There is photographic and video evidence to show that the people who are the old original Nazi anti-Semites are using that as a cover to work alongside other people. That is of great concern, but the whole use by the BNP and other fascist groups of 9/11 and other terrorist acts has given them an opportunity they have never had before.

Q44 David Winnick: Would you take the view that those fascist gangs - BNP or any other of these Hitler lovers - certainly have no more love for Jews than they have ever had? Would it be right to come to the conclusion that from their point of view, their poisonous view, there is not much mileage in attacking Jews these days, for all kinds of reasons, but there is much more mileage in attacking and targeting in every conceivable way Muslims, so therefore Muslims have become the scapegoats instead of Jews. Would that be a fair way of putting it?

Mr Gable: Let us say that there is a very cynical approach on the part of the leadership of the British National Party. At the end of the Eighties, Nick Griffin, their Chairman today, was in Tripoli with the begging bowl out to Colonel Gadaffi for financial support. A copy of National Front News when his political soldiers controlled it said, "The new alliance", the new allies, with a photograph of Louis Farrakhan, Khomeini and Gadaffi and the symbol of the political soldiers. So at that time it was the only importer in this country to bring the book from Libya. He was the only importer of Louis Farrakhan's newspaper The Final Call. At the time when WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered outside the Libyan People's Bureau, his officers were inside negotiating deals with the Libyans. These are facts. Today they see the opportunity, after 9/11, to go all out to attack the Muslim community because they think there is a resonance for that certainly in areas like Burnley, Oldham and Bradford. It is cynical.

Q45 David Winnick: Mr Ward, do you share that view just expressed by Mr Gable about the way fascist gangs target Muslims now instead of Jews?

Mr Ward: Plainly, my organisation is extremely concerned at the rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe generally. We have attended OSCE conferences recently on the subject and we have long been concerned about racist violence in the United Kingdom. I regret to say, though, that it is not a subject that we have examined in any detail, and so I am unable to shed any light on the causal links or connections that may exist.

Q46 David Winnick: I am asking if you believe the fascist gangs are now targeting Muslims in the main for reasons which Mr Gable has just been telling us, that Muslims are in the firing line from these gangs like the BNP?

Mr Ward: Again, we simply have not examined the question, I am afraid.

Q47 Mr Clappison: I think we have covered some of the ground already, Chairman. Could I ask Mr Gable in particular to enlarge a bit more on his very interesting comments on what is a very difficult and uncomfortable subject of the tensions between minority communities, if I can put it that way. You have made some very interesting comments about the extent that this has been a problem, particularly since 9/11. Do you think the problem is getting worse today?

Mr Gable: Yes, I think it is, despite good efforts of people in the Jewish and Muslim communities. There is bitterness over the world situation that is coming home very hard to young Muslims. I think one of the problems is that when the Home Office and often when Parliament wants to talk to representatives of the Jewish community or the Muslim community, although neither of those faiths are homogenous, the Jewish community has a well-established structure, and you can go and talk to people and get a broad band of opinions from being supportive of the current Israeli Government to critics of the Israeli Government, but there is some cohesion there. The tendency is always to want to invite the great and the good, and that is why I do not figure myself among them and why I am happy to be here today. I think we should tell it as it is and not as some group of people living in an ivory tower somewhere that just happens to be Muslim and telling the Home Office or telling the police. You have to be out there in the communities where young Asians are growing up and are coming under certain influences. That is where the work has really got to be done to pull cohesion back because it is not just a matter of what is happening between the Jewish community and the Muslim community. The hostility that is building between many communities - Hindus and Sikhs - against Muslims is very worrying indeed. Nobody has mentioned anything about the non-visible Muslims. It is one of the fastest growing faiths in Europe. I have worked with people who are white Muslims. We discuss this constantly. There has got to be a way of getting to the grass roots in these communities.

Q48 Mr Clappison: Very briefly, Mr Ward mentioned the situation in Europe and that he has attended the OSCE conferences on this. Do you have a view on Europe? There are reports of worrying problems of perhaps an even worse scale than you describe in this country in other European countries such as France and Holland?

Mr Gable: France may be the exception to the rule. The Jewish communities is a very important community there and the Muslim community is very important. There is hostility that still remains from France's colonial past, particularly Algeria. It makes it the exception maybe against the rest of Europe, but certainly the way the neo-Nazi movements have moved in on the peace movement in Germany, and sometimes in Scandinavia, is very worrying.

Q49 Mr Clappison: Could I just throw one final question on this section to any of you who cares to answer it from the panel. We have been talking about the problems in the Muslim community. I feel sometimes the danger that we spend a lot of time lecturing the Muslim community, saying "Don't do this, don't do that", and so forth. What are the ways in which we can build bridges with that community?

Mr Ward: As I was preparing for this session, I was thinking about the proper way to evaluate whether or not counter-terrorism measures are being properly constructed. It struck me that the principle of non-discrimination is an absolutely fundamental core of any assessment of the impact of evaluation of counter-terrorism measures and that that may be a way of beginning to look at the problem, the notion that measures taken in the fight against terrorism do not discriminate on the basis of race or religion or ethnic origin. If we can construct counter‑terrorist measures that satisfy the requirement of non-discrimination, then it seems to me that as a society we will be in a much stronger position to reach out a hand of friendship to all of the communities who live in this country, and indeed for those communities to feel that they are not being singled out, that those measures represent their interests and not simply the interests of the majority.

Mr Levidow: There are many ways to build bridges with migrant communities in general and Muslim communities in particular, but all of these are being undermined by the systematically racist use of the anti-terror laws. I am turning the question somewhat upside down. The way to build bridges is, firstly, to criticise strongly this systematically racist use of the law, which is done in collusion between the police, the intelligence services on the one hand and the mass media on the other. Migrant communities are being treated as suspected terrorists in systematic ways, and Muslims in particular, for example through their charities, through the intimidation of people who run these charities.[4]

Q50 Chairman: By "migrant communities", you are talking primarily about a settled British community. The Islamic community in this country is not really a migrant community these days except for small minorities. I want to be clear that you are talking not just about a recent migrant community but that which is now an established British community?

Mr Levidow: Yes.[5]

Chairman: I would remind the committee that, at the risk of falling foul of Mr Gable, we will be having the great and the good from most of the major faith communities in future sessions. We also have an evidence session coming from young people and some engaged with the local communities. I hope that over the round of the inquiry we will have a different range of views, including some of the issues that people may wish to respond to. There will be opportunities in those further evidence sessions to do that. Can we move on now to look at the issue of media coverage of these issues?

Q51 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Gable, just a quick question to you to begin with, as a result of what you said earlier: do you think the BNP are increasing the amount of severity of racist attacks following the media coverage of asylum issues?

Mr Gable: It goes back many, many years. When the Ugandan Asians came to this country, I remember seeing the headline on the Sun, which three days later turned up on a smashed-up Asian shop word for word painted across the front of the shop; this headline caused the offence. I think that they are fed up with this quite deliberate action. If I can tell you something very briefly, before the Oldham and Burnley riots, there was a national directorate meeting of the BNP which took place in Oldham. Their officers came from all over the country and were greeted by the local organiser, who said, "Welcome to Oldham, the front line in the coming race war". That was before was any fighting and burning The very next month, Identity, which is their monthly magazine, published a front cover that had flames on it and again, "Race war coming to Britain", and the flames were in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, which by then were burning, but for other places that were not burning the police caught on to this and took extra measures to secure these areas because there were attempts to start arson and riots in those areas as well. The greatest aide to the BNP is the constant headlines in the newspapers, ranging from the Mail to the Express group. You get this almost schizophrenic situation where in the 2003 elections and the 2004 elections my colleagues worked very closely with the national press. The headlines of the Sunday Express and the Daily Express, and the centre page spreads, were all brilliantly anti-Nazi, good stuff, and on the day of the June elections this year, there was a headline that would have done justice to the BNP. It is as though the owner cannot put the two things together. There have been protests by members of the National Union of Journalists working there about what they are being asked to put in that paper. I have always been a bit critical of the Lawrence Report but one thing that Sir William said in his recommendations I thought was really a lesson for everybody. He said, "We really need to have the situation where people in positions of power and responsibility, such as press barons and so on, will live up to that responsibility and stop fanning racial difference in this country". I think there has been a failure by the Press Complaints Commission and all these bodies to tackle this head-on. There was an instance in Kent about four years ago. The National Front demonstrated against the arrival of asylum seekers and the local paper week after week fanned the flames. There was arson and assaults. The police went to the editor and said to him, "If you do not stop this, somebody is going to seek action under the Race Relations Act". I certainly do not want to live in a country where the police go and tell the press what they should be printing, but we need some responsibility.

Chairman: Mr Gable, what you say is fascinating, Can I ask you to give slightly shorter replies otherwise we will run out of time.

Q52 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: I want to press you on this because apart from saying something about the Press Complaints Authority and something needs to be done there, do you have anything specifically in mind which you feel would be constructive but, at the same time, not inhibit the freedom of the press and the right to free speech? Are those two things compatible?

Mr Gable: People have the power of their money. If I owned a big company that advertised in the Express, I might think about stopping doing that.

Q53 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: That is the action of an individual rather than the action of the Government to try, in fact, to improve racial harmony.

Mr Gable: I think my suggestion was that I would rather have punitive laws against the media. Maybe Mr Desmond and some of his colleagues should come here and talk it cover with this Committee.

Q54 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: That might be a good start. Do you think, Mr Ward, that there should be an offence of incitement to religious hatred?

Mr Ward: That is not a subject that my organisation has looked at in detail. I would be hesitant to create a new offence where it had not been demonstrated that the existing laws protecting people against violence and incitement to violence were inadequate to respond to the concerns and I would also be very concerned about any impact that such an offence might have on freedom of expression. I think it is very important to keep in mind that the European Court of Human Rights has emphasised that freedom of expression is a right upon which many other human rights rest and unless it can be shown that free speech is directly inciting violence in a causal way then restrictions on that speech should not be undertaken.

Q55 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: Mr Donovan, I have read your submission to the Committee with great interest and it prompts two questions. You argue that police counter‑terrorist operations are deliberately timed to deflect attention from the Government's political difficulties. Why do you think the police would collude in this?

Mr Donovan: There was one specific quote from Amanda Platell, the Sunday Express editor, which coincided with political events. I think to try and make a link between the police colluding with the Government is maybe a step too far.

Q56 Chairman: What was Amanda Platell's other job, can you remind us?

Mr Donovan: Working for William Hague.

Q57 Chairman: She did work for the Leader of the Opposition, so I wonder if she is entirely objective. Do you have any other evidence other than that statement by a newspaper editor?

Mr Donovan: That was it really. It did seem strong evidence.

Q58 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So no objective evidence underpinning that other than the view of Amanda Platell?

Mr Donovan: And her statement stood up because those three things did happen at that time.

Q59 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: It was just based on these three events. There has been no evidence of police collusion or support of the Government's agenda here?

Mr Donovan: No.

Q60 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: You also suggest that the police have deliberately tipped off the media about impending arrests. You go on to talk about a specific event there. How serious do you think this problem is?

Mr Donovan: There was a period of a month when there were two sets of arrests, one in the north, one in the south and other related events. I think there were signs that somebody had tipped off the press because they did not all just turn up out of the blue, somebody must have tipped them off. Some of the information I got from the article in Press Gazette suggested that there were tip‑offs. Over that period there did seem to be an increase in the number of events, but it does seem to have died down since. The hiatus of that process was the Manchester arrests in April, where the people were arrested and tied in with the Manchester United football match because they had tickets. They were then released later. Based on the journalists I spoke to, there were also people on the policing side that probably thought that, with those arrests all coming together and the Manchester one in particular, that could be a scare too many and that if something serious did come along the journalists would not believe them the next time. There has been a definite improvement since that time.

Q61 Mrs Curtis-Thomas: So not a serious problem there?

Mr Donovan: Not now, no.

Q62 Mr Singh: Mr Levidow, I would like to test an idea with you. You made a statement saying that the anti-terror laws had been applied in such a way that they are racist in themselves. If there is a threat to this country from a major terrorist group which happened to be Sikh, Buddhist or Hindu, would you not expect there to be an over‑preponderance of people from that background who had been stopped and searched or surveyed to have had some action taken against them by the police? Would you not expect that as a natural consequence? If a Buddhist group carried out a terrorist outrage, what would the police be doing arresting Muslims?

Mr Levidow: The problem is the "if".

Q63 Mr Singh: The problem is that you made an assertion that the application of the terror laws is racist. I do not know if you hinted that they were racist intrinsically but their application certainly was so. What I am saying is that if there was a terror organisation threatening large scale error in this country from a Sikh group, would you not expect a greater degree of surveillance on that community, whether it is fair or not, rather than on Buddhists who had not made a threat?

Mr Levidow: Your question starts from an assumption that there is a terrorist threat from perhaps Muslim groups and this explains why the anti-terror laws would be directed especially at Muslims. I would turn the question upside down: after all this time where is the evidence in court of any plans for violent attacks on the public in this country? I have not seen any. The lawyers acting for the defendants have not seen any. Compare that to all the so‑called anti-terror measures which are directed not only against Muslims, they were directed against Kurds and the political persecution of Kurds, who have not carried out terrorist attacks in other parts of the world and, in particular, stop and search directed basically at all people with dark skins.

Q64 Mr Singh: I think the assumption is made quite reasonably by governments not just in this country but in the USA, the rest of Europe, Pakistan, India, wherever you go, Saudi Arabia, because of al‑Qaeda. Al‑Qaeda appears to be a major terrorist organisation with the ability to strike in major ways all over the globe. That is where that assumption comes from. What I am saying is that if that happened to a Buddhist group, would you not expect the police in this country at least to take intelligence gathering from that community more than another community?

Mr Levidow: The issue here is not intelligence. The special anti-terror laws that were enacted in 2000/2001 were not needed for intelligence gathering. Those laws have been used for general or racist harassment and for political persecution or for intimidating Kurds in particular to become police informers - that is to inform on political activities in opposition to the Government of Turkey and so on.[6] The question itself has the dubious assumption that the laws are directed against some real threat to the public here which thereby explains the use of the laws.

Q65 Mr Singh: I am going to move on. Are the anti-terror laws in Israel racist because they are applied against Palestinians?

Mr Levidow: Again, if you look at how those laws are applied, for locking up a large proportion of the adult male population to justify the expropriation of Palestinian land and so on, then that cannot be explained by the need to protect people from physical violence unless you assume that basically the whole Palestinian population and their resistance to occupation is a terrorist threat, which is the assumption behind those laws.

Q66 Mr Singh: At least you are consistent! Apart from Mr Gable, I think you are all critical of the new stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act. What do you think would be a reasonable response if the Government genuinely felt that there was a terrorist threat? What would we expect it to do if it did not introduce powers like these?

Mr Levidow: I repeat what we said before. These laws introduce powers which are not necessary in order to detect and prevent organised violence, if that is what you mean by terrorism. Rather, they were introduced, firstly, with the Terrorism Act 2000, to expand the definition of terrorism to include a wide range of political activities and, secondly, to apply those definitions to organisations resisting oppression in other countries, and, thirdly, to criminalise any association by people in this country with people who are associated with those organisations abroad.[7] In other words, they had a political agenda in defence of alliances between the British government and oppressive regimes abroad.[8] This is why those laws were enacted. They were not needed to protect the public from violence in this country. The implementation of the laws shows a political agenda across all the powers that had been used.

Q67 Mr Singh: Mr Ward, do you share that view or do you think there are reasonable assumptions that the Government has had and the terror laws are justified?

Mr Ward: I do not doubt that the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act was introduced in good faith. The concern of my organisation is that the measures are impermissible on the grounds of international human rights law and that the measures actually undermine the effectiveness of Britain's overall counter‑terrorism policy, and I think the latter point is one that is made far more eloquently by the Newton Committee than I can make it, but that is clearly a concern. In relation to the issue of stop and search, I would commend to you the recent general recommendation of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which deals in fact with discrimination against non‑citizens but it has a specific recommendation in relation to the use of counter‑terrorism measures. What it says is, "... ensure any measures taken in the fight against terrorism do not discriminate in purpose or effect on the grounds of race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin and that non‑citizens are not subjected to racial or ethnic profiling or stereotyping". I think the point about racial and ethnic profiling and stereotyping is very important because it goes very much to the issue that you were just touching upon in relation to stop and search. Even if it were not problematic from the point of view of international human rights law and my submission is that the general recommendation shows that it is, we are still left with the point of what impact does it have to apply a policy that sends a message to a particular community that that entire community are regarded under suspicion by the state. Whatever benefit may accrue from stopping everyone who shares the characteristics of a certain community from whom the terrorist threat may emanate in some part has to be set against the consequences of the impact on that community and indeed on the willingness of that community to pick up the telephone and call the police if they are aware of something suspicious or in relation to a plot to carry out acts of terrorism.

Q68 Mr Singh: I think the Asian community is something like two million in the UK. Last year there were just below 3,000 stop and searches of the Asian community. Are you saying that that small percentage has spread a lot of disquiet amongst the Asian community?

Mr Ward: It seems to me, Mr Singh, that the question is on what basis are those decisions being made. If the decisions are being made on the basis of a particular piece of evidence about the appearance or other characteristic of an individual who is wanted for questioning for a specific incident on the basis of intelligence received and if that can be shown to be the case then it is not stop and search, it is actually detaining someone who is wanted for questioning or looking for someone who is wanted for questioning. What is troubling to me and was plainly troubling to the UN Commission for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has highlighted stop and search in the UK as something it specifically wants to hear from the UK Government about in its most recent report from December 2003, is that stop and search is being applied on the basis of a single characteristic, which is membership of a particular community and there I would suggest that the fact that we are talking about hundreds and not millions does not actually legate the negative consequences.

Q69 Mr Singh: What you are saying is not quite true. Stop and search is not being applied on the basis of one characteristic. The proportions might be questionable, but last year nearly 40,500 white people were stopped and searched and nearly 1,800 black people were stopped and searched. What you said, that the stop and search powers are being applied on one characteristic, is just not true.

Mr Ward: What the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination has said is that it is concerned about a disproportionately high number of stops. One also does not know the basis upon which the other stops were made. Presumably the committee was concerned that the stops in relation to ethnic and racial minorities were for particular sorts of offences that were problematic. If all or most of the stops targeted at ethnic minorities were for reasons of motoring offences or possession of controlled substances ---

Q70 Mr Singh: These are all within the stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act. Let us move on to Mr Donovan. What do you think about that? Do you think they are unreasonable where the assumption has been made by governments all over the world that there is a large‑scale terror threat by a large scale organisation out there which can do us terrible damage? Are these powers unreasonable?

Mr Donovan: I think the powers that were already here were sufficient because, do not forget, we did have a conflict with Republican terrorists in Ireland running over 30 years and we brought in the Prevention of Terrorism Act for that. There is an argument as to whether that did anything to prevent terrorism. Let us assume for this argument that that was there to counter terrorism, surely that was adequate and there were enough powers there. That was extended in 2000 before the number of atrocities you mentioned came into being, but I would have said there was enough power there already. I wonder about some of the thinking behind bringing in powers. Are they being brought in because they are effective in stopping terrorism or are they being brought in because Government has got to give the impression it is doing something because of that big threat?

Q71 Chairman: Section 44 of the Terrorism Act largely re-enacted the previous provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, did it not? Can you remind us what the change was, if any, between what was in the Prevention of Terrorism Act and section 44 of the 2000 Act?

Mr Donovan: The stop and search powers.

Q72 Chairman: The stop and search powers were largely in the Prevention of Terrorism Act already, were they not?

Mr Donovan: Yes.

Q73 Chairman: Was there actually any significant change between what was in section 44 of the Terrorism Act passed after 9/11 and what had previously existed?

Mr Donovan: I am not sure on the stop and search element.

Q74 Chairman: So it may be there was not any significant difference at all between the pre-existing legislation used for Republican terrorism other than an independent commissioner was brought in to oversee it, Lord Carlile.

Mr Donovan: Was the point not that we needed new powers?

Q75 Chairman: I just wanted to establish factually for the Committee whether there was a significant change on stop and search in the new Terrorism Act or not because this is quite important as to whether new powers are introduced in the area of stop and search or whether they existed beforehand. We can clarify that as a Committee.

Mr Levidow: As we pointed out in our cover letter, those powers were challenged through a test case. It happened to be the arms fair where protesters were subjected to stop and search and they challenged this on the basis that the police had no specific reason to stop specific individuals.[9] The police just announced, "We have powers to stop anyone we like in this area". This was challenged in court and the court decided that the police did not need any specific reason to stop and search any person. This interpretation of the law stands and that is extremely serious. It means the police can arbitrarily stop and search anyone they like for no specific reason and this cannot be challenged afterwards through any legal procedure.

Chairman: I was merely trying to elucidate whether this is something new that entered the system after 9/11 or was it there before.

Q76 Mr Singh: Mr Gable, you gave support to the stop and search powers in fighting terrorism. I still want to challenge this theory of racism that Mr Levidow spoke of but in the context that different police forces are using these powers in a different way. If it was completely a racial thing you would expect them all to be using them equally. For example, in west Yorkshire in 2002 two Asian people were stopped under this power, in Nottinghamshire nobody in was stopped in 2001 and 2002, in south Yorkshire nobody was stopped, and yet in Northumbria, where you probably would not expect many to be stopped and searched at all, there were 35 stopped. There is a huge difference between no stop and searches at all and you have got plenty of those, which suggests to me there is no state conspiracy here to stop and search people on racial lines, but why do you think there is this disparity?

Mr Gable: There is a huge amount of unhappiness amongst intelligent police management and leadership over the question of stop and search. You can see what has happened in the last few years. They look at the Lawrence Inquiry and they say we could have fulfilled that obligation and then they have thought it does not quite work, so the Home Secretary and successive Home Secretaries tweak it and it is still not resolved. Your colleague said something about recording on the basis of race and faith. The system that they have developed over the last couple of years does include ethnic backgrounds, but this form is getting longer and longer and longer. You have to imagine being a police officer on a rainy night stopping somebody who does not particularly want to be stopped and trying to fill in one of these forms. Somebody said something about people's entitlement to have a copy, but they have got that entitlement.

Q77 Mr Singh: I am sorry, it was north Yorkshire. Would you agree that although these laws could be applied with racial bias, they can also be applied without racial bias with intelligent policing?

Mr Gable: Yes. I think the whole thing comes down to this question of management. There was a pilot scheme in London about three or four years ago where they applied the same criteria to stops in seven boroughs in London. A friend of mine happened to be the sergeant dealing with that in one police borough. They got a result of 26 hits on the stops they did and the others were getting five and six, it was all over the place and it was also very racist as well, but because those people had been briefed properly he came back with a very high figure of 26 charges arising out of it. It really is intelligent management, trying to convey that to the foot soldiers, but it is open to abuse. A police commander said to me a few months ago, "It's the Monday morning law, isn't it? You get up on Monday morning, you put your uniform on, you kick the cat and you've had a row with your Mrs over breakfast, and you go out and you want to lash out. What can you do? You can stop and search somebody." It is human nature.

Q78 David Winnick: Mr Donovan, you said in reply to my colleague Mr Singh that the Government may wish to give the impression that they are acting on the terrorist threat. Can we get it quite clear as far as you are concerned and your evidence to us, do you accept there is a terrorist threat to the United Kingdom?

Mr Donovan: Yes.

Q79 David Winnick: Because of what you said arising from that question from Mr Singh, I must say - and you will forgive me for saying so - that in your evidence to us it does not seem to come out quite clearly that there is an acute terrorist threat to the people who live in Britain. Nevertheless, you accept that the Government is right to take whatever action it takes or does not take and to recognise there is a terrorist threat to Britain?

Mr Donovan: Yes.

Q80 Janet Anderson: We have spoken already about some of the problems with media coverage. The Government and the police would say they are making strong efforts to build contacts with minority communities. What is your assessment of how that is working? Is there more that could be done?

Mr Gable: I think there is always more that could be done to enhance community cohesion. I can only speak with first‑hand knowledge about the Metropolitan Police Service. Certainly since 9/11 there have been really strenuous efforts put in to bring Muslims into contact with the authorities and, as I said earlier, maybe 60 per cent of this is an intelligence gathering exercise because they were weak in these communities. Let us say that is the case and 40 per cent was really genuine goodwill, I think I could live with that. If you go to Scotland Yard you will see groups of Muslims coming in every couple of days for discussions about somebody who has been arrested in a London borough and they want to sit down and talk to the community there to explain why that person has been detained and they are monitoring the impact it has on that community. Mr Levidow says "if" all the time but thank God that "if" is in the way because we have had no major catastrophe.

Chairman: I want to keep to Mrs Anderson's question about community relations because we have had the debate about terrorism and that sort of thing.

Q81 Janet Anderson: You talked a bit about what the police are doing. Do you think the Government is doing enough? In relation to what you said earlier about Desmond and The Express and so on, do you think the Government needs a new media strategy?

Mr Gable: This Government has had enormous amounts of different media strategies and it would not be too much to think up another one which might do some good. Does it sell more papers to behave in this way? I am not sure if it does. Is this what Mr Desmond actually believes when he goes to bed of a night and gets up in the morning? A lot of talking needs to be done before anybody even dreams of any legislation, but I think the talking has to be done at the most senior levels in the land.

Q82 Janet Anderson: What about the others, do you think the Government and the police are doing enough?

Mr Donovan: In terms of a media strategy, they could focus a bit more on local media and ethnic media and put more effort into those areas to try and communicate. This is probably a dream, but it would be better if the media organisations themselves took on more people from the minorities to work on the newspapers, radio or television and actually let their culture affect those media organisations, so the media organisations would be developed according to the different minorities rather than what happens now, which is that minorities are brought in and they have to fit into a certain Anglo‑Saxon mould and that would define how high or otherwise they rise. That is probably too idealistic.

Q83 Janet Anderson: That is interesting because one of my local papers is the Lancashire Evening Telegraph and they do employ journalists from the ethnic minority community and I think it works well.

Mr Donovan: I think it is feeding through and that is a positive thing.

Q84 Janet Anderson: Has anybody else got anything to add?

Mr Levidow: We should be clear about the content of the current mass media strategy which is playing at least a double-game. One part of the game I described earlier from inside knowledge, thanks to Martin Bright at The Observer who described this self‑fulfilling prophecy and character assassination about 'al‑Qaeda cells' and so on in order to justify arrests and special powers. On the other side the Government is saying, "Despite all these threats, don't be alarmed, we have it under control thanks to the use of the anti-terror laws. By the way, why don't community groups support us in fighting terrorism?" One reason is that the mass media strategy is designed to create general public fear of migrant communities and of Muslims in particular.[10] There are many measures that could be taken to improve community relations, especially in local newspapers which I know a few of in London, but that is not the main agenda. The problem is how to stop this main agenda of creating public fears in order to justify the anti-terror laws whose main role is persecution.

Q85 Janet Anderson: Do you accept that there is a terrorist threat to this country?

Mr Levidow: I remain agnostic. I can only go on what I learn about prosecutions in court where the evidence can be tested by the defence. I still have not heard of any hard evidence in court after all these years. Either there is a lot of plotting of terrorist threats which have not happened yet and may happen in the future but the police are too incompetent to find it or it is a gross exaggeration.

Q86 Janet Anderson: So you are sitting on the fence in other words?

Mr Levidow: Either way, the mass media scares are not based on anything that has been documented in court.

Q87 Chairman: Would your view be that when one of the tabloid newspapers has a highly exaggerated story about somebody just about to set off a "dirty bomb" or something in central London the reaction of government ministers is that that is a real success in our media strategy, that it is going to scare people and that is what we want? Is that what you believe happens in government when stories like that are published?

Mr Levidow: I do not know.

Q88 Janet Anderson: The implication of what you say is that government media managers are delighted when they get a story of that sort in the press.

Mr Levidow: They may be ambivalent because it gives them an opportunity to say, "Don't worry, we have it under control". They are playing it both ways at the same time. It is an extremely dangerous game in terms of the effect on the feelings of the general public and giving police a licence to use these anti-terror laws in even more intimidating ways.

Q89 Janet Anderson: My constituency is next door to Burnley and I think I am right in saying that the Home Office has made funding available to local authorities like Burnley to try and improve community cohesion. Do you think local councils in these areas where there has been, and still is, tension are doing enough or do you think they could do more?

Mr Gable: I think councils of all hues have been absolutely falling down, incompetent and indifferent until their towns were burning. I have just gone through three by-elections in east London, in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham and that is one of the most impoverished boroughs in the whole country and money does go there, but what they do with it is beyond me because there is no social cohesion going on there. I live one borough over from that. It is no use throwing money at something once the place has burnt down. We need to be well ahead of the game.

Janet Anderson: Does anybody else have any views on what local councils are doing? No. Thank you.

Q90 Chairman: Mr Donovan, your particular contribution to this debate is the parallels between what is happening now in your view and what happened under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the fight against Irish Republican terrorism in particular in the past. What would the key lessons that we should learn be in your view of that 20 or 30 years of history?

Mr Donovan: Not to repeat the mistakes of the past. I think the Irish community felt alienated, particularly through the practice of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, with the stopping of people, the detaining of people sometimes and then releasing them without charge. About 86 per cent were detained and released. I think that alienated the Irish community. There are signs at the moment, it is not a perfect match by any means, of similar types of things happening now with the Muslim community. I think it is still going on with the Irish community. We heard recently that Christy Moore, the singer, was stopped under the Prevention of Terrorism Act coming into Holyhead two or three weeks ago and that has been covered in the Irish press here. Since that story was covered a number of other people who have suffered in a similar way have contacted the Irish Post and other Irish newspapers. I do not want to see that repeated myself with the Muslim community and other communities, the feeling of alienation, the feeling of separation, the feeling of going back in on itself which happened with the Irish community, it developed a separate identity. You have got evidence of that now with certain polls. When different ethnic groups are asked what they regard themselves as, Irish people in this country will never say British Irish, but black people will say black British and I think a lot of that goes back to that whole period of 25 or 30 years ago and the type of thing that went on then.

Q91 Chairman: An alternative view of that history would be to say that that may all be true, but the use of those powers was one of the factors in sufficiently restraining Republican terrorism and ultimately forced people to start looking for political solutions to a continuing problem and that possibly, if that history is true, then similar measures now, in the light of what people perceive as Islamic terrorism may be necessary, however regrettable some of their effects might be. What would be your view of that and the role the GFA played in tackling that?

Mr Donovan: I do not think it is true. I would reject it.

Q92 Chairman: Give me a couple of reasons why you would reject that view.

Mr Donovan: There was obviously a political process going on that brought about the Good Friday Agreement. I can recall the early Nineties in this country when there were bombs going off in London, we had Bishopsgate, that type of thing and hoaxes and all the rest of it. At that time it did not seem like things were coming to an end due to measures that had been taken. There was obviously a political process which was brought on the scene in the mid‑Nineties which helped to resolve the conflict. I do not think the Prevention of Terrorism Act and those types of measures contributed to bringing the Irish situation to a peaceful conclusion, and it is not there yet.

Q93 Chairman: At all?

Mr Donovan: No.

Q94 Mr Clappison: Mr Levidow, have you got any examples for us of where you have seen police and community relations improving?

Mr Levidow: We generally hear more about problems than about solutions or improvements.

Q95 Mr Clappison: If we put the problems to one side and see if have seen some areas of good practice and ground for hope, are there any at all?

Mr Levidow: It is difficult to answer that question because we focus on the injustices. If those matters improve then we are less likely to learn about that.

Q96 Mr Clappison: You briefly touched on the Kurds in your evidence. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester has told us that relations with the local Kurdish community improved after the high profile arrests which took place and the subsequent release without charge of a number of Iraqi Kurds. Do you agree with that?

Mr Levidow: We are not in direct contact with people in Manchester but we are very much in contact with the Kurdish community in London. Their reaction to the whole episode was really one of bemusement as to why these people were being arrested and subsequent developments. I will explain why. The Kurdish community in London is mainly from Turkey, it is made up of large numbers of refugees. They have experience of systematic persecution by the British authorities, firstly, as refugees and then as a more settled community. This is a long sad story which I will be glad to elaborate on. It has a lot to do with the alliance between the Governments of Britain and Turkey, where the Kurdish community and especially Kurdish activists have been seen as a political threat to the interests of British investment, of NATO and, more recently, the developments around the Ilisu Damn which was stopped through a mass international campaign and the opposition to the US use of Turkey as a base to attack Iraq and so on. So there is a long‑standing political agenda to persecute Kurds here from Turkey as an extension of that political alliance. There is a lot more I would like to tell you about this but I will stop. They saw the events in Manchester with some bemusement because these were Iraqi Kurds from an ethnic group whose political organisations and parties over there in Iraq are in alliance with the US occupation, they are co‑operating with the occupation. The Manchester police had, stupidly, targeted the wrong type of Kurds. They were failing to follow the foreign policy agenda that underlies the anti-terror laws. That has a lot to do with understanding why the Kurds were released fairly quickly, why meetings were held at the Kurdish community centre in Manchester, why the police gave a formal apology and so on. I would expect that relations have improved there. You should compare that to London where the Kurds do not remember any apology for the numerous abuses that they have suffered at the hands of the immigration authorities and the police and so on in London.

Q97 Mr Clappison: I am putting to you what the Chief Constable of Manchester has told us in his evidence to us. You accept that, do you?

Mr Levidow: Yes, because it suits the foreign policy objectives of the anti-terror laws.

Q98 Chairman: You have given us evidence today and written evidence about the quality of intelligence surrounding the detainees at Belmarsh and your concerns there. There is another issue here about the quality of intelligence that came up in our hearings about Manchester where the Chief Constable told this Committee that although there had been no charges he was satisfied they were acting on sufficiently good intelligence to act. Have you or your organisation looked at the issue of the quality of intelligence that is available behind operational policing of that sort rather separate from the question of Belmarsh?

Mr Ward: The short answer is that we have not. We look upon the recent announcement by the Home Secretary that he is willing to look again at the issue of the ban on intercepting evidence in criminal prosecutions as a positive step. I would also say to the Committee that that is a view that is also shared by Liberty.

Q99 Chairman: Do you think that there should be any organisation, whether it is the ISC or this House or another group, that should scrutinise the quality of intelligence that lies behind policing operations like the Manchester one either on a regular or a sample basis?

Mr Ward: I think all I can really do is repeat the remarks that I made at the beginning of the session echoing the Joint Human Rights Committee's view that increased democratic scrutiny of the intelligence upon which counter‑terrorism measures and operations are undertaken would actually enhance confidence among all the community in Britain, but that those measures were being carried out in a democratic and just way.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. There have been many very interesting and controversial views expressed this afternoon, but this is the opening session of our inquiry and I am sure we will touch on many of these issues again. Thank you all for your attendance.

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[1] Note by witness: Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), 'Terrorising Minority Communities with "Anti-Terrorism" Powers: their Use and Abuse', Submission to the Privy Council Review of the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001, September 2003, Appendix V by Martin Bright, http://www.cacc.org.uk/ATCSA_consult-final.pdf

[2] Note by witness: See report by the Institute of Race Relations, 'New study highlights discrimination in use of anti-terror laws', http://www.irr.org.uk/2004/september/ak000004.html

[3] Note by witness: For many other examples of support for terrorism, see the book by Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, Vintage Books, 2003, especially Chapter 3. Curtis is currently director of the World Development Movement.

[4] Note by witness: More specifically, charity bank accounts have been frozen on mere suspicion that some funds may eventually assist 'terrorist' activity abroad. See the CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, section 5.

[5] Note by witness: However, the UK has many refugees from Muslim countries. They have been targeted by 'anti-terror' arrests and by internment in particular. Special Branch officers have warned relatives and friends of the internees: 'Have no contact with their families-or else you may be next' (see CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, section 4 on internment). Before today's hearing we were asked: are such threats systematic or isolated cases? According to lawyers for the internees, two people who were threatened were subsequently interned themselves. So such harassment of the Muslim community is not simply the initiative of individual Special Branch officers.

[6] Note by witness: In addition, activists campaigning for Kurdish language rights were prosecuted for supposedly supporting a banned organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000. This case illustrates the overtly political use of the legislation. See the CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, section 3 on 'Broadening the definition of terrorism', and Appendix III on 'UK persecution of Kurds'.

[7] Note by witness: The Terrorism Act 2000 fundamentally redefined terrorism to include simply 'the threat' of 'serious damage to property', in ways 'designed to influence the Government' for a 'political cause'. The 2000 and 2001 legislation authorises severe powers on mere suspicion that someone may be associated with such broadly defined 'terrorism'.

[8] Note by witness: For example, under the Terrorism Act 2000 the UK Government classified a Turkish-language magazine (legal in Turkey) as 'terrorist property' and attempted to prosecute the distributors, thus criminalising dissent. Special Branch officers visited numerous shopkeepers and asked them to testify against the defendants in court. See again the CAMPACC submission to the Privy Council review, Appendix IX on the 'Vatan trial'.

[9] Note by witness: This happened at the DSEI arms fair in the Docklands in September 2003. Likewise, in the run-up to the attack on Iraq in early 2003, a large area around Fairford Air Base was subjected to stop-and-search powers under 'anti-terror' legislation. Now such powers apply continuously to all of London.

[10] Note by witness: For the racist agenda and implications, see the booklet by Liz Fekete, Racism: the Hidden Cost of September 11, London: Institute of Race Relations, 2002, www.irr.org.uk.