The Hazel Blears the NuLabour former Home Office Minister who introduced so much counter productive bureaucratic red tape and form filling when she used to be in charge of Policing, Crime Reduction and Counter-terrorism, is at it again, now that she is inflicting a new Community Snooping policy onto Local Government.
She has just published a poisonous document entitled: Guidance for local authorities on community cohesion contingency planning and tension monitoring (.pdf)
This seems to envisage the gathering of political intelligence on local communities, and on "individual troublemakers", not just by the Local Authorities and the Police, but by a whole host of public sector employees turned into Government spies:
37. The most effective way to do this is through establishing a multi-agency tension monitoring group, led by an officer/s from the local authority and/or the local police force. This should include key partners from the statutory sector (e.g. housing, community safety, education, fire service, health, probation/youth offending team, community workers, neighbourhood wardens and police community support officers, National Asylum Support Service), and relevant representatives from the voluntary, community and faith sectors.
The sort of data which Hazel Blears wants to collect and share :
Relevant pieces of intelligence might include:
- quantitative data (e.g. police crime statistics and intelligence reports)
- qualitative community intelligence from neighbourhood wardens, community workers, casework by local councillors and feedback from local community meetings and organisations
- racially or religiously motivated offences or incidents
- details of new arrivals, refugees and asylum seekers, and Gypsy and Traveller communities in the local area
- gang and turf conflicts
- neighbour disputes
Why does a dispute between two neighbours suddenly constitute "community tension", requiring reporting back to a Central Government Department ?
- complaints of noise nuisance
What about the noise nuisance from Airport Expansion plans ?
- examples of poor community/local authority relations, poor community/police relations/low levels of trust in local politicians
How exactly are low levels of trust in the police and in local politicians, going to be improved by such spying and snooping on local communities by those very same politicians ?
- surveys of community views on reassurance, cohesion and safety matters
- state of local economic activity (decline or improvement)
- financial and social investment in the area
- demand for housing and condition of the local housing stock
- plans for renewal and the sustainability of planned or actual improvements
- political extremism
What is the definition of "political extremism" ?
Anybody who disagrees with the Labour government ?
It would be a disaster, of Northern Irish "Troubles" proportions, if the local police force were to be seen to be involved in party political or religious monitoring or discrimination, but that is exactly what they are being drawn into with this scheme.
- media reports.
So is every Local Authority now going to waste money setting up its own "media monitoring unit" ?
This whole scheme appears to give the impression that the Labour government only appear to be willing to listen, and then to apply propaganda resources and other "community" investment, once there have been demonstrations, protests and violent incidents - peaceful lobbying and dialogue is ignored.
If you look at the sample "Tension Monitoring Form" reproduced below, it is obvious that such forms, or the central database of such forms, will not have enough detailed information to give a full, true picture of each "incident", but there will be sufficient details to create "guilt by association" and to stereotype a particular area unfairly, and to blacklist any individuals who might be directly or indirectly identifiable.
Note that there is no mechanism for error correction or appeal, and no sanctions against abuse of power by officials, who will be trying to use the exemptions under the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act to keep this all secret from the public.
The Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act are only cited, so as to advise how the rights of citizens might be curtailed through the use of exemptions e.g.
59. There are a number of exemptions from disclosure under the FOIA which could be applicable if a local authority wished to consider refusing disclosure. You may wish to take into account the possible damage which disclosure would do by identifying areas at risk of disturbance. If the identity of an area became known sections of the media might publicise this. This could in turn create an expectation of disorder.
Despite claiming that "personal data" should, ideally, not be collected, they neglect to mention that "personal data" includes data about a person who can easily be identified via a cross-check on another database or system.
54. As far as possible, the data provided under tension monitoring arrangements should not be 'personal data' ie it does not identify individuals and could not be used to identify individuals in conjunction with other information.
How can this possibly work in practice ? If there are "reports" of say, "inflammatory preaching" , how difficult is it going to be to associate those reports with known priests or imams at local churches or mosques ?
The enemies appear to be, in part , "the media", and Hazel Blears and her minions are actually advising secrecy and coverups, and spin, rather than transparency and media and public friendly openness.
Apparently there is a secret (i.e. non-public) document
I&DeA Toolkit: Building a relationship with the mediawww.idea-knowledge.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=81965
(Please forward us a copy or a link to a public access version of this document)
The creepy words "horizon scanning" linked to Civil Contingencies Act 2004 Emergency Planning also sneak into this document - exactly the same language as is used by MI5 the Security Service and the Metropolitan Police Counter-terrorism Command, when they talk of data warehousing and the "Rich Picture" to identify "threats".
There is an example of the sort of data which the central government bureaucrats expect the local government ones to collect and to pass on to each other and to report back to the centre in Appendix A the example Tension Monitoring Form.
Sample Tension Monitoring FormPlease complete each column with as much detail as possible, including whether the situation/incident is 'experienced' (what communities are feeling); 'evidenced' (an event that has happened); or 'potential' (something which might happen).
Name of local authority area:
Name of person completing the report: Organisation:
Date:
The overall community tension risk in this area is assessed as___________ [insert high / medium / low / no tensions as appropriate] based on the information contained within this report.
| POLITICAL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident (ie where, when, who (age, gender, ethnicity, faith), and what (useful to specify whether 'experienced', 'evidenced' or 'potential'). | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| COMMUNITY | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM AND REFUGEE | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| CRIMINAL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
| OTHER | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date | Details of Situation/Incident | Media coverage/ angle taken | Action Taken | Likely Future Impact |
This ghastly bureaucratic questionnaire reminds us of those mentioned in the satire The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek.
The similarities between the incompetent police state bureaucracy just before the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the First World War, and that which has been instituted by the failing Labour regime and with its "Community Cohesion" snooping and "intervention", are remarkable.
From the chapter "Švejk's Budějovice anabasis":
(Google Books have a scanned version of this online)
Sergeant Flanderka again smiled with a satisfied smile and put the secret instruction away with other documents into the file with the inscription: 'Secret Orders'.
There were many of them, which the Ministry of the Interior drew up in collaboration with the Ministry of Regional Defence, to which the gendarmerie was subordinated.
At the regional headquarters of the gendarmerie in Prague could not cope with their duplication and distribution.
There were:
Orders for the control of the attitude of the local population.
Directives on how to converse with the local inhabitants and elicit from them what influence the news from the front had on their attitude.
A questionnaire on how the local population reacted to the war loans which had been issued and the collections which had been instituted.
A questionnaire on the morale of those who had been called up and those who were to be called up.
A questionnaire on the morale of the members of local government and intellectuals.
An order for the immediate supply of information about the political party affiliations of the local population and the strength of the various political parties.
An order for the control of the activity of the leaders of of the local political parties and information on the degree of loyalty of certain political parties represented in the local population.
A questionnaire on what newspapers, journals and brochures came to the district of the gendarmerie station.
Instructions on how to obtain information on the contacts of people suspected of disloyalty and what their disloyalty consisted of.
Instructions on how to recruit paid denouncers and informers among the local population.
Instructions for paid informers from the local population who were officially registered at the gendarmerie station.
Every day brought new instructions, directives, questionnaires and orders.
Swamped with this flood of inventions from the Austrian Ministry of Interior, Sergeant Flanderka had amassed an enormous backlog of unprocessed papers and answered the questionnaires in a stereotyped way: everything was in perfect order here and the loyalty of the local population could be graded I.a.
The Austrian Ministry of Interior invented the following grades for unshakeable loyalty to the monarchy: I.a, I.b, I.c; II.a, II.b, II.c; III.a, III.b, III.c; IV.a, IV.b, IV.c. The last fours in Roman figures meant, in conjunction with 'a' meant, treason and the gallows, with 'b', internment, and with 'c' 'keep under observation and behind bars'.
In the Sergeant's desk there were all sorts of printed papers and lists. The government wanted to know what every citizen thought about it.
In the satirical novel, the bureaucratic Sergeant Flanderka mistakes The Good Soldier Švejk for an enemy Russian rather than a Czech soldier, and, in order to make himself appear more important to his superiors, even exaggerates this mistake by convincing himself that Švejk must actually be an elite high ranking Russian officer spy.
We expect that exactly the same will happen with this "tension monitoring" nonsense. Either people will just "go through the motions" and tick all the "everything is ok here" boxes, or else some apparatchik, ambitious for promotion, or fearful of having their funding cut back, will exaggerate and invent "community tension" where none actually exists, to cast themselves in a good light.
Will such Local Authority "little Hitlers" be tempted to make disproportionate use of their Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act powers for Communications Traffic Data and Directed Surveillance, using "tension monitoring" as an excuse ?
N.B. this comment has been moved from another comment thread to here, where it it is more appropriate, and edited to show where it quotes from the interesting British National Party denunciation of Labour's Hazel Blears' community snooping plans:
Hazel Blears and Little Sister (link to Google cache version of the article as we do not feel like giving the BNP website any direct promotion)]
mary wrote:
Is this scaremongering (from the Guido Fawkes blog) or is there any truth in it?
[N.B. There is no actual Guido Fawkes article on this topic, it must be lurking somewhere in the comments section, which is often full of crass idiocy]
'the Nazis have landed - Hazel Blears brings in Big Brother on steroids
Labour bring in proposals for community spies where all families will be monitored - BBC is quiet on this the most vicious anti Libertarian descent into fascism by Labour/communist purpose and the Nazi EU to date.
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/pdf/787910.pdf
take a look at pages 39 to 40 about gagging the local press.
[mary seems to have left out the original end of that paragraph "-Multi-Culturalism and Mass Immigration prime amongst them."]
[The original BNP article did not mention "and bloggers not in tune with the Labour party."]
section 44 includes the definition of a ‘Political incident’, that requires intelligence gathering and monitoring, as: “elections or by-elections at which extremist candidates are standing”.
Could this mean New Labour - or am I getting confused?
what gives Labour the right to define extremistspolitical candidates?
pure fascism from the Labour party!
the current push to up the period of detention without trial to 42 days, is no doubt all part of this ghastly idea. It may be being put forward as only for terrorist offences now, but keep in mind the EU has kept drafted the death penalty for political unrest - presumably targeting the political trouble makers!
but who defines such trouble makers why Labour and the EU off course.
Now we start to see the real need for ID cards. (EU directive)ID cards were originally called ‘Entitlement cards’.
People like us would rapidly find we had no access to employment, social security benefits or even health care. We would not even have recourse to appeal when the doctors receptionist put our card in the reader and it came back ‘Withold Services’ purely because of our political affiliations and our love of freedom and belief in democracy. The receptionist would just say ‘nothing to do with me, you’ll have to speak to the NHS’ and then we would enter a beauracratic nightmare that would make Kafka’s The Trial look friendly.
The building blocks for this have been quietly slipped into place over the last 30 years.
Labour politicians are ideological kinsmen of the people who built the Gulags, known in this country as Titan Gaols
The following is to be “monitored”:
“Political extremist political activity (leafleting, graffiti, meetings); elections or by-elections at which extremist candidates are standing;local demonstrations;”
after the monitoring i presume it is the gulags for anyone who does not agree with Labour/EU policy and wishes to reject it or protest.
no doubt the new ability of the lowest of local goverment snoops having access to your emails and telephone calls will be used in this war on the people.
If anyone thinks I’m exaggerating, then read it yourself. Just remind yourself that this is not a museum piece from Communist Eastern Germany, or part of the script for ‘Animal Farm’, or the synopsis for some horror film: this is, in effect, the official plan for the takeover of Britain.
It stinks of the EUs subversive group common purpose, who also have a hand up the conservatives back!
Obviously the BNP feel that some of these NuLabour control freak community snooping plans are aimed directly at them, but it is interesting that they correctly identify the exact parallels with Fascist and Communist police states and their community snoops, and bureaucracy, just like Sergeant Flanderka in The Good Soldier Svejk.
Will any Guardianistas also condemn this wretched plan ?
Is there any new money being made available by Blears, or will this plan, like so many other political headline grabbing schemes, die a quiet death from apathy and underfunding ?
Is there any actual active or passive resistance to this scheme, by insiders working within Local Government, the police and the other agencies which are to be turned into sate snoopers ?
Are there any insider whistleblowers out there willing to identify the individuals who proposed this scheme ?
@ mary - thanks for your comment,
Do you have a source for your statement
The death penalty is expressly forbidden under EU law and constitution and treaties, even the possible threat of the death penalty in non-EU countries is what has lead to all the malarkey with Control Orders and interment under immigration laws instead of deportation or extradition.
The first bit of that sentence may well be true, but they are also incompetent.
However, no Titan Jails have yet been built, and Jack Straw's Ministry of (in)Justice have admitted that they have not secured the funding for building all of the ones which they are planning to, in the face of opposition of everyone who has actually worked in the existing much smaller prisons, which they cannot manage properly.
As with other people who mention "Common Purpose", do you have any actual evidence that they are a corrupt cult, or are they just exploiting the UK Government and EU gravy train of public money for "community leadership training" programmes ?
Are any of those LGA and idea docs listed in Annex A available publicly ? I've tried the first two and can't get them.
@ Laban - do you mean Annex B ?
Perhaps there were copies of these on Hazel Blears' computer which was stolen from her constituency office ?
There seems to be a 2006 version of this first document at
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/publications/publication-display.do?id=21989
(you need to use the LGA website's search facility)
This one now resides at:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/publications/communities/communitycohesionaction
This now seems to be lurking at:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/publications/communities/sevensteptool
No URL link published for that one.
No URL link published for that one.
My God, Hazel Blears reminds me so much of Mrs. Umbrage from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! She seems to be the exact same type of nosy busybody, micromanaging every little detail she can of people's lives simply because she can. I wonder how long it will take before Britons rise up and revolt against that police state insanity.
Wikileaks seem to have a leaked Restricted document which lists the pyramid of acronyms and bureaucratic quangos which constitute the UK Government's counter terrorism PREVENT strategy to supposedly win the hearts and minds of the "yoofs" in the "communities".
https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/UK_Police_Chiefs_counter-terrorism_PREVENT_strategy_briefing_2008
The actual .pdf document:
https://secure.wikileaks.org/leak/uk-police-prevent-strategy-2008.pdf