The Spectator’s Notes | 5 February 2005

The main reason that Charles Clarke has now decided to impose powers of house arrest upon the British people is ‘human rights’. Even this authoritarian government would not have gone so far without the decision of the Law Lords before Christmas in the matter of the 11 foreign suspected terrorists held, without normal trial, at Belmarsh prison. Led by Lord Bingham, the judges decided by eight to one (the unsung, dissenting hero being Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe) that this imprisonment breached the Human Rights Act because it was ‘discriminatory’. Never mind that the men stay in Belmarsh only because they refuse, for fear of persecution, to return to their own countries, a situation quite different from that of any British citizen. It was still an act of discrimination, said Lord Bingham, to lock them up, while not locking up the indigenous population on similar suspicions. In saying this, one guesses, Lord Bingham was not expecting the government to follow the full, mad logic of his judgment, but now it has.