The Times and the Sun both join the sense of outrage over Damian
Green's arrest!
The Mail was outspoken (reported yesterday) .
But
there's little sign that the left-wing MPs or journals care tuppence!
The Guardian limply suggests that "The government is unlikely to have
been involved in police folly over Damian Green" !!! [Oh? How
so ? ] Two prominent Labour poiticians have spoken.
I reported yesterday Tony Benn's outrage and today David Blunkett,
the former home secretary, yesterday led [ 'led' ? The Guardian's
description!!! -cs] a cross-party attack on the police for what he
described as "overkill" in arresting the shadow home office minister,
Damian Green.
The Express has hidden the news story out of sight while also closing
its "Have your say" feature on the topic. The Mirror doesn;t appear
to have the story at all.
The Independent gives a longish factual news story and a leading
article (below) which is extremely robust!
A prominent blog, however, always keen to see an EU angle ('the
elephant in the room') belittles the whole issue largely on the
spurious grounds that so m uch has been surrendered already that what
does a bit more matter. Shame!
It DOES matter and most people think so.
xxxxxxxx cs
=========================
THE TIMES 29.11.08
An outrage that brings shame on Britain
Whether it was strong policing or politics behind the raid on Damian
Green's offices, it should never have happened here
Matthew Parris
On the whole, and in the main, and everything considered, you do not
in a democracy go around arresting the Opposition. For some time now,
web humorists have been spelling new Labour "Nu-Labour". As reports
of Damian Green's arrest swirled yesterday, the prefix ZA attached
itself to the bloggers' joke: ZANU-Labour. If by lunch I had heard
the comparison with Zimbabwe once, I had heard it a dozen times.
Nine - nine - counter-terrorism officers? Raids (for that is what we
would call them in Russia) on the home and offices of a senior member
of the Opposition? What a blunder. What an outrage. What a stupid,
stupid, thing to do. The best argument for doubting that ministers
had anything to do with the arrest of a mild-mannered and distinctly
herbivorous Shadow Immigration Minister is that this is a gift to the
Tories, and incredibly damaging to a governing party whose Prime
Minister enjoys a reputation for bullying.
Maybe ministers really were kept in total ignorance, but few ordinary
voters are going to believe it. A Prime Minister otherwise known as
the Big, Clunking Fist will struggle to dissociate himself in the
public mind from an astonishingly heavy-handed police operation
against a critic.
For me, Thomas à Becket and Canterbury Cathedral spring to mind. I
picture an infuriated Prime Minister bellowing at a flat-screen
television: "Will nobody rid me of these troublesome leaks?" Who the
four knights were who took it upon themselves to act upon the
presumed wishes of a maddened monarch, we may never know, but when Mr
Brown insists that he didn't actually know, it is possible to believe
him.
He certainly should have known. So should the Commons Speaker. If
Michael Martin did have advance knowledge of a raid on a Privy
Councillor's offices within the Palace of Westminster by anti-
terrorist officers investigating activity that most MPs would regard
as part of their job, and did know there was not the remotest
suggestion that national security or any serious crime of any sort
was involved, and the supposed offence amounted to nothing more than
embarrassing ministers with information they had been trying to hide,
then there arise some serious questions about his position. Mr Martin
is an MP. He, above all others in our unwritten constitution, is
there to protect the status and interests of Parliament.
This is not a small matter. It goes to the heart of parliamentary
privilege. It is surely common sense that MPs' Commons offices are
not to be raided by the State except for the gravest of reasons; that
Mr Speaker should be urgently consulted (not "told") in advance. Can
it really be that Mr Martin simply nodded this through? Did he not
ask his clerks? If he did, what was their advice? Did he not speak to
the Home Secretary? She claims nobody did.
It would be comforting to think that there will be widespread
disquiet on Labour's backbenches as well as among the Opposition. I
hope so. Some of Mr Brown's colleagues will remember (Westminster
lobby correspondents certainly do) that he made his career as Shadow
Chancellor by publishing leaked documents from the Treasury.
In this long series of misjudgments, the first and biggest has been
that of the outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.
If he thought - as some voices have suggested - to take a parting
shot at a Conservative Party that, through Boris Johnson, has
effectively removed him, then the tactic backfired. It is Labour
ministers who have been embarrassed.
The decision by the head of the Home Office, Sir David Normington, to
call in the police to help him plug a persistent leak from his
department, is defensible - though he should have reflected that the
police cannot be turned on and off like a tap and used as a kind of
private detective agency. Instant dismissal is a sufficient sanction
against civil servants who leak, and mandarins with long memories
will recall that what looked like the Tories' vengeful pursuit of
Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting through the courts did nobody any
good. If, after the arrest of Mr Green's alleged source, senior civil
servants realised where the police inquiry was headed next, it is not
yet clear. If they did, it is hard to see why ministers were not
informed.
I cannot avoid the suspicion that decisions were taken in Whitehall
against the background of an enraged Prime Minister storming around
and demanding the heads of leakers on plates. Commentators seeking
method in this madness suggest that there was a stratagem: to put the
frighteners on other moles, especially the sources of deeply
sensitive Treasury leaks. Again, if so, the strategy has backfired.
Any deterrent effect on Whitehall moles has been vastly outweighed by
the political cost.
Two defences to the thinking that led to this mess need to be
answered. The first is that those who offer, and those who receive,
information that ministers are trying to hide may indeed be breaking
the law. That is true. But the argument is too strong.
The common law offence of "aiding and abetting, counselling or
procuring misconduct in a public office" sets such a ridiculously low
hurdle that thousands of my colleagues in the newspaper industry,
many MPs, most Opposition spokesmen, and innumerable helpfully
indiscreet police officers would be behind bars if every offence was
investigated and prosecuted. Much journalism would become impossible,
legitimate questioning and debate by MPs would be ruled out, and
activity in the public interest would be outlawed. So (as the
dismissal of the case against Sally Murrer, [* see footnote] reported
in The Times today, shows) this law needs to be handled with extreme
discretion. In Mr Green's case it has not been.
The second defence is that ministers are damned if they do and damned
if they don't interfere. What if the Home Secretary had been warned
by Mr Speaker about the raids, and pressured the Met behind the
scenes to call the whole thing off? In the recent loans-for-honours
affair, attempts by ministers to discourage police inquiries would
have been regarded by the media and the Opposition as disgraceful.
This argument has force, but should be answered by the observation
that there are ways and ways of letting chief constables know
ministers' minds; that it's not always wrong to do so; but that
particular care needs to be taken where the suspicion might arise
that ministers are protecting their own political interests. That was
not the case here, and I doubt many people would have thought the
Home Secretary wrong to let Sir Ian know that, though she had no
power to stop him, she was alarmed at his officers' plans.
Who now knows where this will end? Insomniacs may have heard it first
on the World Service of the BBC, and could have been forgiven for
assuming the story came from some benighted Central Asian republic.
That it is about our own country is shaming. This will end up
damaging almost everyone it touches - except the bewildered immediate
victim of the fiasco: Damian Green.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
* Footnote (all taken from Googling 'Sally Murrer' on page 1)
In case readers do not know Sally Murrer is a - - -Local newspaper
journalist Sally Murrer pleaded not guilty today to obtaining police
information illegally. - - - Bugged by police, locked in a cell for
hours, strip searched, and told she faced life in prison --- Thames
Valley police leak case against Sally Murrer thrown out ...
28 Nov 2008 ... A journalist who was accused of obtaining police
information illegally has walked free from court after a judge ruled
that evidence against ... - - - Johnston Press indicated today
that is standing by its reporter Sally Murrer - who was charged
yesterday with aiding and abetting misconduct in a public - - - 29
Nov 2008 ... The £1 million prosecution of a local newspaper
journalist and the police source who "leaked" stories to her
collapsed yesterday"
Now realise that the Counter-terrorism Act has let loose a thoroughly
nasty new breed opf policeman. Be aware - and protest.
============================
THE SUN SAYS -----
Raid scandal
THE arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green is a terrible
blow to our democracy.
Mr Green was pounced on in raids involving 20 anti-terrorist cops.
His homes and offices were searched and his private files and
computers seized.
His Commons room was turned over apparently with the consent of
Labour Speaker Michael Martin.
Why was MP Mr Green treated like an al-Qaeda bomber? Shouldn't our
anti-terror cops be concentrating on events in India?
Mr Green has embarrassed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith over immigration
scandals, allegedly based on leaked documents.
Police held him after a complaint from the Home Office.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, Speaker Martin and David Cameron were
warned about the arrest.
Yet Ms Smith and Gordon Brown insist they knew nothing.
Is it likely a Shadow Minister would be seized without the Home
Secretary or PM knowing?
MPs from Mr Brown downwards have used leaked documents to grab
headlines. It's part of politics.
Mr Green's arrest stinks.
===========================
THE INDEPENDENT 29.11.08
Leading article: Our freedoms under threat
There is no law, no system, no set of regulations which can more
effectively hold governments to account than the conscience of man.
Opposition parties, the public and the press rely on individuals, not
systems, to tell us what those who rule over us would like us not to
know. We call them "whistleblowers" because, like referees, they seek
to keep the players in our political system in check.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown knows very well the importance of
whistleblowers - his preparations for the 1996 budget debate were
greatly assisted by Labour's obtaining of a copy of the document the
night before. It is hoped, therefore, that if the Metropolitan Police
have no case to make against shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green
beyond that he used a whistleblower to bring accurate and important
information into the public domain, Mr Brown will be among the first
to condemn the arrest of a parliamentary colleague by the anti-terror
squad.
Mr Green was interviewed for nine hours; his mobile phone and
computer were seized by police, and his house, Commons and
constituency offices were searched by nearly two dozen
counterterrorist police, though as far as is known, their operation
has nothing whatsoever to do with "terror" issues. Rather, the Met
investigation centres around a junior Home Office official accused of
regularly leaking memos to Mr Green, exposing serious errors by his
department which included the clearing of thousands of illegal
immigrants for work in sensitive Whitehall security jobs.
Crucial details about the case are still not yet known: the full
extent of Mr Green's relationship with the civil servant and the full
details of the information he obtained. But at first sight the Met
would seem to have badly miscalculated and badly mistreated Mr Green
in the process.
Following the 1996 budget debacle, leaks to Labour from 10 and 11
Downing Street became so bad than a full-scale internal investigation
was launched into the issue. At no point, however, were members of
the Opposition arrested by the terror squad. Had that happened,
Labour members would have screamed with justifiable outrage. Now a
government department eager to introduce ID cards and detention
without trial, Taser guns and citizen databases, is once again
exposed to the accusation that the powers and systems it has given,
and seeks to give, the police are observably undermining our freedom.
As for the Met, whose commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, stepped down
yesterday, they too must consider their reputation which has been
damaged by numerous botched operations in recent years, not least
regarding politicians and their party donors. The next commissioner
must work hard to restore our confidence in the force and avoid
political scandals: there were too many during Sir Ian Blair's days
in command - including, as it turns out, on the final one.
there's little sign that the left-wing MPs or journals care tuppence!
The Guardian limply suggests that "The government is unlikely to have
been involved in police folly over Damian Green" !!! [Oh? How
so ? ] Two prominent Labour poiticians have spoken.
I reported yesterday Tony Benn's outrage and today David Blunkett,
the former home secretary, yesterday led [ 'led' ? The Guardian's
description!!! -cs] a cross-party attack on the police for what he
described as "overkill" in arresting the shadow home office minister,
Damian Green.
The Express has hidden the news story out of sight while also closing
its "Have your say" feature on the topic. The Mirror doesn;t appear
to have the story at all.
The Independent gives a longish factual news story and a leading
article (below) which is extremely robust!
A prominent blog, however, always keen to see an EU angle ('the
elephant in the room') belittles the whole issue largely on the
spurious grounds that so m uch has been surrendered already that what
does a bit more matter. Shame!
It DOES matter and most people think so.
xxxxxxxx cs
=========================
THE TIMES 29.11.08
An outrage that brings shame on Britain
Whether it was strong policing or politics behind the raid on Damian
Green's offices, it should never have happened here
Matthew Parris
On the whole, and in the main, and everything considered, you do not
in a democracy go around arresting the Opposition. For some time now,
web humorists have been spelling new Labour "Nu-Labour". As reports
of Damian Green's arrest swirled yesterday, the prefix ZA attached
itself to the bloggers' joke: ZANU-Labour. If by lunch I had heard
the comparison with Zimbabwe once, I had heard it a dozen times.
Nine - nine - counter-terrorism officers? Raids (for that is what we
would call them in Russia) on the home and offices of a senior member
of the Opposition? What a blunder. What an outrage. What a stupid,
stupid, thing to do. The best argument for doubting that ministers
had anything to do with the arrest of a mild-mannered and distinctly
herbivorous Shadow Immigration Minister is that this is a gift to the
Tories, and incredibly damaging to a governing party whose Prime
Minister enjoys a reputation for bullying.
Maybe ministers really were kept in total ignorance, but few ordinary
voters are going to believe it. A Prime Minister otherwise known as
the Big, Clunking Fist will struggle to dissociate himself in the
public mind from an astonishingly heavy-handed police operation
against a critic.
For me, Thomas à Becket and Canterbury Cathedral spring to mind. I
picture an infuriated Prime Minister bellowing at a flat-screen
television: "Will nobody rid me of these troublesome leaks?" Who the
four knights were who took it upon themselves to act upon the
presumed wishes of a maddened monarch, we may never know, but when Mr
Brown insists that he didn't actually know, it is possible to believe
him.
He certainly should have known. So should the Commons Speaker. If
Michael Martin did have advance knowledge of a raid on a Privy
Councillor's offices within the Palace of Westminster by anti-
terrorist officers investigating activity that most MPs would regard
as part of their job, and did know there was not the remotest
suggestion that national security or any serious crime of any sort
was involved, and the supposed offence amounted to nothing more than
embarrassing ministers with information they had been trying to hide,
then there arise some serious questions about his position. Mr Martin
is an MP. He, above all others in our unwritten constitution, is
there to protect the status and interests of Parliament.
This is not a small matter. It goes to the heart of parliamentary
privilege. It is surely common sense that MPs' Commons offices are
not to be raided by the State except for the gravest of reasons; that
Mr Speaker should be urgently consulted (not "told") in advance. Can
it really be that Mr Martin simply nodded this through? Did he not
ask his clerks? If he did, what was their advice? Did he not speak to
the Home Secretary? She claims nobody did.
It would be comforting to think that there will be widespread
disquiet on Labour's backbenches as well as among the Opposition. I
hope so. Some of Mr Brown's colleagues will remember (Westminster
lobby correspondents certainly do) that he made his career as Shadow
Chancellor by publishing leaked documents from the Treasury.
In this long series of misjudgments, the first and biggest has been
that of the outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.
If he thought - as some voices have suggested - to take a parting
shot at a Conservative Party that, through Boris Johnson, has
effectively removed him, then the tactic backfired. It is Labour
ministers who have been embarrassed.
The decision by the head of the Home Office, Sir David Normington, to
call in the police to help him plug a persistent leak from his
department, is defensible - though he should have reflected that the
police cannot be turned on and off like a tap and used as a kind of
private detective agency. Instant dismissal is a sufficient sanction
against civil servants who leak, and mandarins with long memories
will recall that what looked like the Tories' vengeful pursuit of
Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting through the courts did nobody any
good. If, after the arrest of Mr Green's alleged source, senior civil
servants realised where the police inquiry was headed next, it is not
yet clear. If they did, it is hard to see why ministers were not
informed.
I cannot avoid the suspicion that decisions were taken in Whitehall
against the background of an enraged Prime Minister storming around
and demanding the heads of leakers on plates. Commentators seeking
method in this madness suggest that there was a stratagem: to put the
frighteners on other moles, especially the sources of deeply
sensitive Treasury leaks. Again, if so, the strategy has backfired.
Any deterrent effect on Whitehall moles has been vastly outweighed by
the political cost.
Two defences to the thinking that led to this mess need to be
answered. The first is that those who offer, and those who receive,
information that ministers are trying to hide may indeed be breaking
the law. That is true. But the argument is too strong.
The common law offence of "aiding and abetting, counselling or
procuring misconduct in a public office" sets such a ridiculously low
hurdle that thousands of my colleagues in the newspaper industry,
many MPs, most Opposition spokesmen, and innumerable helpfully
indiscreet police officers would be behind bars if every offence was
investigated and prosecuted. Much journalism would become impossible,
legitimate questioning and debate by MPs would be ruled out, and
activity in the public interest would be outlawed. So (as the
dismissal of the case against Sally Murrer, [* see footnote] reported
in The Times today, shows) this law needs to be handled with extreme
discretion. In Mr Green's case it has not been.
The second defence is that ministers are damned if they do and damned
if they don't interfere. What if the Home Secretary had been warned
by Mr Speaker about the raids, and pressured the Met behind the
scenes to call the whole thing off? In the recent loans-for-honours
affair, attempts by ministers to discourage police inquiries would
have been regarded by the media and the Opposition as disgraceful.
This argument has force, but should be answered by the observation
that there are ways and ways of letting chief constables know
ministers' minds; that it's not always wrong to do so; but that
particular care needs to be taken where the suspicion might arise
that ministers are protecting their own political interests. That was
not the case here, and I doubt many people would have thought the
Home Secretary wrong to let Sir Ian know that, though she had no
power to stop him, she was alarmed at his officers' plans.
Who now knows where this will end? Insomniacs may have heard it first
on the World Service of the BBC, and could have been forgiven for
assuming the story came from some benighted Central Asian republic.
That it is about our own country is shaming. This will end up
damaging almost everyone it touches - except the bewildered immediate
victim of the fiasco: Damian Green.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
* Footnote (all taken from Googling 'Sally Murrer' on page 1)
In case readers do not know Sally Murrer is a - - -Local newspaper
journalist Sally Murrer pleaded not guilty today to obtaining police
information illegally. - - - Bugged by police, locked in a cell for
hours, strip searched, and told she faced life in prison --- Thames
Valley police leak case against Sally Murrer thrown out ...
28 Nov 2008 ... A journalist who was accused of obtaining police
information illegally has walked free from court after a judge ruled
that evidence against ... - - - Johnston Press indicated today
that is standing by its reporter Sally Murrer - who was charged
yesterday with aiding and abetting misconduct in a public - - - 29
Nov 2008 ... The £1 million prosecution of a local newspaper
journalist and the police source who "leaked" stories to her
collapsed yesterday"
Now realise that the Counter-terrorism Act has let loose a thoroughly
nasty new breed opf policeman. Be aware - and protest.
============================
THE SUN SAYS -----
Raid scandal
THE arrest of Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green is a terrible
blow to our democracy.
Mr Green was pounced on in raids involving 20 anti-terrorist cops.
His homes and offices were searched and his private files and
computers seized.
His Commons room was turned over apparently with the consent of
Labour Speaker Michael Martin.
Why was MP Mr Green treated like an al-Qaeda bomber? Shouldn't our
anti-terror cops be concentrating on events in India?
Mr Green has embarrassed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith over immigration
scandals, allegedly based on leaked documents.
Police held him after a complaint from the Home Office.
London Mayor Boris Johnson, Speaker Martin and David Cameron were
warned about the arrest.
Yet Ms Smith and Gordon Brown insist they knew nothing.
Is it likely a Shadow Minister would be seized without the Home
Secretary or PM knowing?
MPs from Mr Brown downwards have used leaked documents to grab
headlines. It's part of politics.
Mr Green's arrest stinks.
===========================
THE INDEPENDENT 29.11.08
Leading article: Our freedoms under threat
There is no law, no system, no set of regulations which can more
effectively hold governments to account than the conscience of man.
Opposition parties, the public and the press rely on individuals, not
systems, to tell us what those who rule over us would like us not to
know. We call them "whistleblowers" because, like referees, they seek
to keep the players in our political system in check.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown knows very well the importance of
whistleblowers - his preparations for the 1996 budget debate were
greatly assisted by Labour's obtaining of a copy of the document the
night before. It is hoped, therefore, that if the Metropolitan Police
have no case to make against shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green
beyond that he used a whistleblower to bring accurate and important
information into the public domain, Mr Brown will be among the first
to condemn the arrest of a parliamentary colleague by the anti-terror
squad.
Mr Green was interviewed for nine hours; his mobile phone and
computer were seized by police, and his house, Commons and
constituency offices were searched by nearly two dozen
counterterrorist police, though as far as is known, their operation
has nothing whatsoever to do with "terror" issues. Rather, the Met
investigation centres around a junior Home Office official accused of
regularly leaking memos to Mr Green, exposing serious errors by his
department which included the clearing of thousands of illegal
immigrants for work in sensitive Whitehall security jobs.
Crucial details about the case are still not yet known: the full
extent of Mr Green's relationship with the civil servant and the full
details of the information he obtained. But at first sight the Met
would seem to have badly miscalculated and badly mistreated Mr Green
in the process.
Following the 1996 budget debacle, leaks to Labour from 10 and 11
Downing Street became so bad than a full-scale internal investigation
was launched into the issue. At no point, however, were members of
the Opposition arrested by the terror squad. Had that happened,
Labour members would have screamed with justifiable outrage. Now a
government department eager to introduce ID cards and detention
without trial, Taser guns and citizen databases, is once again
exposed to the accusation that the powers and systems it has given,
and seeks to give, the police are observably undermining our freedom.
As for the Met, whose commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, stepped down
yesterday, they too must consider their reputation which has been
damaged by numerous botched operations in recent years, not least
regarding politicians and their party donors. The next commissioner
must work hard to restore our confidence in the force and avoid
political scandals: there were too many during Sir Ian Blair's days
in command - including, as it turns out, on the final one.
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