Nick Pickles: Terror must not be allowed to destroy freedom

AS the world came to terms with the atrocities committed by Norwegian fanatic Anders Breivik, the country’s Prime Minister stood up in defiance of the terror Breivik had sought to bring to his nation.

His words did not seek vengeance, instil fear in the public or seek to push a political agenda. He simply said that “the Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation”.

Contrast that with Labour peer John Reid, who took to the airwaves before Drummer Rigby’s family had even been informed of his death. His response of more legislation, more surveillance of the population and more politics of fear was as callous as it was ill-informed.

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Our freedoms are not a finite detail unique to our times; they will outlast every one of us. A mark of our short time here is how we preserve the values and liberties that we have enjoyed so that those who come after us will also know what it means to be free.

So determined were they to wage war on terror that the Blair and Bush governments abandoned this principle of leadership. A succession of measures, from ID cards to 90-day detention without trial, were brought forward in the name of security while they stood idly by as a million people who had never been convicted of a crime were added to the DNA database.

Let us not go back to those dark days. We must not allow the voices of anger to drown out the voices of reason. The Prime Minister has rightly cautioned against knee-jerk responses, setting the tone for a more measured debate once the facts are known.

Around the world, millions of people do not know the same freedom as us. Journalists and political activists are murdered or kept under surveillance. Corruption is rife and elections, if they happen at all, are not free or fair.

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Citizens of such nations do not look to their own corrupt, brutal governments for hope. They look to countries like Britain, where a free press can hold our leaders to account and people are free to communicate in private, to meet who they chose and to live their lives without the fear of their most intimate details being pored over by a faceless bureaucrat or unaccountable police officer. They look to us to spread freedom, to defend democracy and to show that an open society is something to aspire to.

When faced with outrage, we can reach for more curtailment of liberty and surrender a little more freedom in the hope it will make us safer. Or we can stand up and defend the free and open society that those who seek to terrorise us detest. We do not defeat terrorism by abandoning our freedom, we defeat terrorism by spreading freedom, defending liberty and standing tall in the face of those who would seek to do us harm.

It is impossible to guarantee absolute security just as it is impossible to guard against a deranged individual with a kitchen knife, whatever laws are enacted.

Indeed, there is no shortage of existing powers to keep suspected terrorists under surveillance. Under the second part of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the security services and police already have the authority to find out who a suspected terrorist is talking to and what they are doing, including eavesdropping on phone calls. If there is one legal change that could be made tomorrow to assist the security services, it would be to lift the ban on such intercepts being used as evidence in court.

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The mindless menace of violence 
still blights our society, takes loved 
ones from our lives and fills our hearts with darkness as scenes at home and abroad tear at the fabric of our humanity. We live in a world, as it always has been, where evil feels too close to home.

To those who say that less freedom is the answer, to those who say more intrusive legislation is the answer, I say this: Lord Reid is wrong.

Our test as a nation in these times is to defy terror, to defend freedom and remind those who seek to attack our way of life that they will never win.

We do not defeat terror by terrorising our freedoms. We defeat terror by proudly defending the fact that we are, and will remain, a free country.

Not only that, but to those around the world who one day hope to enjoy what we take for granted, we offer hope that they too will one day be able to enjoy these same freedoms.