[R-G] Anti-Terror Bill Passes In Britain

[Anthony Fenton]

Anti-Terror Bill Passes In Britain
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103360.html
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 12, 2008; Page A17

LONDON, June 11 -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown won passage of a key  
piece of anti-terrorism legislation in Parliament on Wednesday, but  
analysts said the victory was too narrow to revive Brown's sagging  
public approval figures.

Brown's controversial proposal to allow police to hold terrorism  
suspects for up to 42 days without charge, up from the current 28-day  
limit, was approved by the House of Commons on a vote of 315 to 306.

Passage of the bill, one of Brown's most important challenges since he  
took office just under a year ago, was imperiled by 36 members of his  
ruling Labor Party who sided against him. It scraped by only on the  
strength of nine votes from the Democratic Unionist Party, a Northern  
Ireland party that is rarely a decisive factor in the halls of  
Westminster, home of Britain's Parliament.

To take effect, the measure must also be approved by the House of  
Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament. But analysts and legislators  
said the Lords will almost certainly reject it and send it back to the  
Commons -- dooming Brown to more months of political wrangling.

"If this was meant to be a relaunch, he's still sitting on the  
trampoline," said John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde  
University in Glasgow. In his view, the slim victory was unlikely to  
change Brown's approval ratings of 25 or 26 percent in recent polls.
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Though surveys have also shown that a majority of the public favors  
the 42-day limit, Britons are unhappy with Brown over a broad  
collection of other issues, including a sagging economy and  
perceptions of a leadership vacuum.

"Recent years have shown how forgetting Britain's moral compass has  
left our country less safe; so, on to the House of Lords -- once more  
the guardian of fundamental rights," said Shami Chakrabarti, director  
of the civil liberties group Liberty.

Brown has staked much political capital on the anti-terrorism measure.  
He has campaigned for it publicly and passionately, describing it as a  
critical tool for law enforcement in an era of increasingly complex  
terrorism cases. "Our first duty is the protection of national  
security. We fail in our duty if we do not take preventative  
measures," he told legislators Wednesday at the start of a debate in  
the House of Commons.

David Cameron, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, called the  
bill unnecessary and noted that Ken Macdonald, Britain's top  
prosecutor, has said current law is sufficient to handle even major  
cases.

Cameron also suggested that Brown was sacrificing British traditions  
in a push aimed more at improving his political standing than  
protecting national security. "Isn't it clear that terrorists want to  
destroy our freedom, and when we trash our liberties, we do their work  
for them?" Cameron said. "This is not about the future of our prime  
minister. This is about our liberties."

But Tony Lloyd, a leading Labor member of Parliament, told reporters  
the vote "leaves the Labor government very much in tune with what the  
British public wants and what the needs of this nation are."