In the 1930s E.M. Forster wrote: “We are menaced by something much more insidious [than Fascism or Communism] – by what I might call ‘Fabio-Fascism’, by the dictator-spirit working quietly away behind the facade of constitutional forms….Fabio-Fascism is what I am afraid of, for it is the traditional method by which liberty has been attacked in England”. While the Blair brigade is bossy but probably basically benign, the same may not be true of its successor governments in twenty, or even ten, years’ time. As Forster said, “As soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays.”
It's that last line with its twist on Lord Acton's dictum ["All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"]that is truly worrying.
It's worth reading also John Pilger's New Statesman article on the topic. If you have the stomach for it; I'm feeling slightly queasy about it all.
Like the constitution-hijacking bill now reaching its final stages, and the criminalising of peaceful protest, ID cards are designed to control the lives of ordinary citizens (as well as enrich the new Labour-favoured companies that will build the computer systems). A small, determined and profoundly undemocratic group is killing freedom in Britain, just as it has killed literally in Iraq. That is the news. "The kaleidoscope has been shaken," said Blair at the 2001 Labour party conference. "The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us."
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Blair's inner circle and its ferocious grab for power
Filed in: UK, government, reform, liberties
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