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Master spy writer John Le Carré condemns 42-day terror detention law as threat to our civil liberties



Master spy writer John Le Carré says 'panic' over the threat of terrorism is eroding our essential freedoms. The spy novelist has accused the New Labour regime of 'stripping' away British civil liberties under the guise of the much mocked 'war on terror.

The 76-year-old author and former MI6 and MI5 officer, who very rarely speaks out in public, slammed brainless ministers for voting to extend the 42-day limit that terror suspects can be held without charge on mere suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

Le Carré, who admits he is an 'angry old man', said: "Partly I'm so angry that there is so little anger around me at what is being done to our society, supposedly to protect it. We have been taken to war under false pretences, and stripped of our civil liberties in an atmosphere of panic. Our lawyers don't take to the streets as they have in Pakistan. Our MPs allow themselves to be deluded by their own spin doctors, and end up believing their own propaganda."

And he added: "We haul our Foreign Secretary back from a mission to the Middle East so he can vote for 42 days' detention. People call me an angry old man. Screw them! You don't have to be old to be angry about that. We've sacrificed our sovereignty to a so-called "special relationship" which has nothing special about it except to ourselves."

He spoke out in an interview with Waterstone's magazine, just weeks ahead of a key vote in the House of Lords that could see peers throw out the controversial 42-day proposals to strengthen the powers of the Police State. The writer was one of several figures from the arts and academia world who wrote to Gordon Brown in March this year to protest at the 42-day detention limit.

Their open letter, signed by fellow author Iain Banks and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, warned that 'relations could suffer if the Muslim community appears to be targeted for prolonged pre-charge detention'. Campaigners and opposition MPs have suggested that the terror vote in the House of Lords on October 13 will be very tight.

Le Carré said his latest book, A Most Wanted Man, explores the struggle to find a balance between individual rights and state security. It tells the story of a half-Chechen, half-Russian Muslim refugee who is living in Hamburg and being tracked by a series of special agents, who suspect that he may be plotting a terrorist attack. It is an excellent work of fiction not unlike most of the dire 'threats' of terrorist attacks spun by Le Carré's former employers inside British 'Intelligence'.

The internationally renowed author - whose real name is David Cornwell - revealed recently he had been tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the Cold War because he was curious to know what it would be like working for the Russians.

But with the advent of Police State UK under the New Labour regime, he no longer has the need to defect to a Marxist Police State because he now lives in one....




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