Airport "terror" scare and government repression

The “war on terror” has been ratcheted up yet again. On 10 August, British authorities claimed they had foiled a spectacular “terror plot” to blow up airplanes flying from Britain to the US, which they described as intended to be “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. The reported arrest in Pakistan of a British citizen named Rashid Rauf, allegedly a key “terror plot” figure, triggered the major alert in Britain, yet Britain is seeking Rauf’s extradition from Pakistan not on the basis of any “terror plot” but in connection with a murder in 2002.

No actual evidence of any plot was provided to the public — the sensational press reports are based only on police “intelligence”. On this basis, police arrested some two dozen British Muslims and made it known that thousands of others are under state surveillance. Predictably, the hysteria fuelled racism against Muslims and immigrants: on 1 September in London, cops raided a restaurant and arrested 12 Asians under the Terrorism Act 2000. Arson attacks were reported against a mosque in Basingstoke and another in Chester. These attacks come in the wake of a spate of racist murders: Christopher Alaneme, an 18-year-old Nigerian, was murdered in Kent in May; in July 20-year-old Shezan Umarji was murdered in Preston and 41-year-old Mohammad Parvaiz died of injuries received in a racist attack in Huddersfield.

While many people believe that a terrorist attack might have been planned, this scare was met with massive public scepticism, not least because of the disastrous results of previous “anti-terrorism” operations in Britain. These include the July 2005 London police execution of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, shot seven times in the head and this summer’s massive police raid on an Asian family home in Forest Gate in which the cops shot Mohammed Abdul Kahar in the chest and found nothing. Meanwhile the criminal July 2005 Tube and bus bombings were carried out completely unanticipated by British security forces. So why should anyone believe anything issuing from the Blair government about the latest arrests?

The “security” furore was a gift to this massively unpopular Labour government. The day before the airport alert, Labour home secretary John Reid made a speech in which he ranted against a large swath of those in the press and legal profession who, Reid said, “just don’t get it”, that Britain faced “probably the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the second world war” (Guardian, 11 August). The timing was also suspiciously convenient for the government which was facing a “mutiny” against Blair, not only over the neocolonial occupation of Iraq but against Blair’s avid support for Bush and Israel during the murderous assault on Lebanon. Government ministers were incensed when Muslim leaders, including normally pliant MPs and Lords, sent an open letter to Downing Street complaining about the government’s foreign policy, saying: “To combat terror the government has focused extensively on domestic legislation. While some of this will have an impact, the government must not ignore the role of its foreign policy”. Indeed the terrorist followers of Osama bin Laden — who were created by US and British imperialism — and the like are responding in their own distorted way to the ravages of imperialism.

Yet when it comes to the “war on terror”, Blair is far from “Bush’s poodle”. Many of the draconian measures in place in Britain — such as the powers to detain suspects without charge for up to 28 days — are the envy of the Bush administration. Blair & Co chafe against the 28-day legal limit and hope to push through the 90-day limit that was defeated in Parliament earlier this year. The EU seized the opportunity to announce a raft of new “counter-terror” measures, including profiling and plans to compel airlines to provide passenger lists to be checked against “biometric identifier” eye scans or fingerprints. The government forges ahead with police-state measures, arrogantly believing that capitalist class rule can no longer be challenged by the working class.

The airport security “threat level” was downgraded when the airline chiefs, particularly Willie Walsh of British Airways (BA), screamed bloody murder about the dramatic loss in their profits. Walsh is intent on busting the unions at Heathrow, described by the Financial Times (19 August 2005) as the “largest remaining bastion of unionised labour in the country”. This points to the Achilles heel of the “war on terror” which targets Muslims in particular but is designed to regiment the whole population and repress social struggle. Heathrow airport is strategic to British capitalism and its multiethnic workforce has enormous social power. This was spectacularly shown a year ago when BA workers downed tools and forced BA’s worldwide operations to a halt in protest against the sacking of over 600 Gate Gourmet catering workers. As we said at the time: “The government’s ‘anti-terror’ campaign singles out the country’s darker-skinned minority population in order to divide the working class. But at Heathrow the workers gave a splendid demonstration of how class solidarity can transcend ethnic lines, with the integrated workforce, including ground crew workers, recognising that their own interests and those of the more vulnerable and mainly female and Asian catering workers were the same” (Workers Hammer no 192, Autumn 2005). Key to mobilising the social power of the unions in opposition to the Labour government’s repressive measures is the forging of a new revolutionary leadership of the working class.n