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'We will be in serious trouble' if our response is remotely perceived as anti-democratic, says Home Office Minister, as Liberty Chair warns of permanent opt-out from democratic values.
Democracies will fail to tackle terrorism effectively if anti-terror strategies are perceived as anti-democratic, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty told the Fabian 'Change the World' conference.
Saturday, 19th January
'Verse one chapter one of any rulebook dealing with this must be to remember the politics. The one profound lesson from this threat is that we tackle it from our rules which we have defined over centuries,' he said, speaking in a session on democratic counter-terrorism.
'Our response cannot be even remotely perceived as anti-democratic, or else we will be in serious trouble,' he said.
But Shami Chakrabarti, chair of Liberty, argued that this was precisely the perception which government risked fuelling through its proposal to extend powers of detention before charge to 42 days. This risked creating a permanent state of 'democratic exceptionalism' and was counter-productive because it undermined the claim to be upholding and protecting democratic values:
'We have as democrats to be very clear and crisp about the idea of exceptionalism. We cannot follow Mr Bush and Mr Rumsfeld in recent years and make exceptionalism the norm,' she argued.
But in a sharp exchange with Chakrabarti, Ed Husain challenged 'liberal do gooders' to be more realistic about the nature of the current terrorist threat. The author of The Islamist said that democrats needed to do more to develop a clearer definition of extremism and a deeper understanding of the extremist ideology underpinning it:
'There is a lack of calling a spade a spade on this issue. We need to define extremism, unless we define the beast we will not be able to uproot it,' said Husain.
'It will be a long time before I start taking lessons in democracy from someone whose acquaintance with it is so recent,' said Chakrabarti.
Former intelligence chief Sir David Omand said that 'we face a serious and persistent threat' but that although 'The threat we face as individuals is almost zero… the threat we face as a society is considerable.'
Both Omand and Sadiq Khan MP stressed the importance of taking seriously the 'narrative' of extremist Islamism - and challenging this by actions as well as words.
McNulty acknowledged that grievances at western governments and policies were used to foster extremism, but argued that the ideological challenge went deeper:
'This is both a prevalent ideology but is also grounded in events and grievances. If the grievances go away, I fear the ideology will still exist,' he said.
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