Insecurity over Queen's speech

Letter to Editor, Guardian, 17th November 2006

The need to combat the terrorist threat was again the centrepiece of the Queen's speech with new legislation headlined that is likely to further curtail citizen's rights at the behest of the need for security. In the lead-up to the speech, politicians and security chiefs made a series of choreographed contributions.

First, there was the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, warning of at least 30 terror plots. Then the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Ian Blair, called for extended detention for terror suspects. Finally, chancellor Gordon Brown declared how he would make the fight against terror his main priority.

But is terrorism really such a threat? Drug abuse and road-traffic accidents claim more lives each year but attract relatively little attention. Is the present threat greater than that posed by the IRA over 30 years of conflict in the north of Ireland and beyond?

Many remember the carnage caused by bombs in Bishopsgate and Canary Wharf in London, and those in Brighton, Manchester and Birmingham. At times in the early 1990s the whole public transport system appeared thrown into chaos by bombs and hoaxes. Irish republican terrorists even managed to detonate bombs within the Palace of Westminster. Yet it was never thought necessary to construct the jumble of concrete blocks guarded by armed police that we now have.

The recent pronouncements confirm the findings of a recent Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report suggesting that politicians are "exploiting the politics of fear" to control people. There are greater threats to our way of life, but they don't have the same appeal to those seeking to control us all.

Paul Donovan
London