Picture for a moment an early morning, say, next Spring.  It is the middle of the rush hour in a city in the north of England.  But this is not to be just any city or any morning.  This morning will be remembered as long as men draw breath.  This morning local radio has reported that three identical backpacks, each equipped with a tank and motorised aerosol, have been discovered - one at the railway station, two on busy street corners.  The tanks were said to be empty.  How many more there are out there nobody knows.  Shock and rumour spreads.  Al Qaeda.  People are talking about biological weapons, smallpox possibly.  Could it be true?  It doesn’t matter.  Everyone knows what it means if it is true.

By nine the broadcast media are reporting the events and speculating on their cause.  Scheduled programming has been suspended.  A few talking heads – opposition politicians, terrorist experts, ex-military men, an ex-scientist at Porton Down – are wiseacring at short notice in the way they do.  But as yet there is no official statement.

In any case almost as one, people are drawing the obvious conclusion and deciding what they must therefore do.  An exodus of citizens terrified for their children and themselves bursts into being.  Schools just filled are quickly emptied.  Cases are packed, cars loaded and driven out into streets in which no law, no bar to progress is tolerated.

It takes another sixty minutes for central government to act.  There is no great appeal for calm.  Calm, if that is what it is, will be enforced.  Everyone attempting to leave or who has left the city is to return.  Everyone contemplating leaving the city is to remain where they are.  All are to obey a 24-hour curfew to be effected from 6pm.  Ominously, there is no confirmation or denial of the rumours, no attempt to appear other than authoritarian.  Public fear reaches a point of conflagration.

Now survival is the only consideration.  In the tightening gridlock, mob rule and chaos quickly take over. Armed police, garbed and helmeted in bio-suits, are deployed.  But their numbers are simply too small.  The murderous will and uproar of the mob greets them.  When it comes to it most cannot train their weapons on their own people, for which kindness they are overwhelmed and beaten to the ground.  Some simply turn around their vehicles and flee the city and their masters too.

By mid-morning everyone who can or wants to run is engaged in the attempt.  The remainder, violent and vengeful whites and criminal blacks either unawares or uncaring of the biological hazzard, embark upon an orgy of rape, looting and racial homicide.  No one with a brown skin is safe.  The city’s two large mosques and all the Muslim meeting places are burning.  Ironically, Asians of whatever religion have mostly calculated the odds of survival to be better if they stayed off the streets.  They understand at whose cost Al Qaeda hopes to awaken the Ummah.  They have to keep their heads down and wait it out.  They lock their windows and doors. 

The madness catches up with them anyway.  They are firebombed or just hacked to pieces in their living rooms.  Known Muslim households are the prime target.  But any dead Asian is better than none.  Some are crucified in trees, a few left to die next to their naked and mutilated women.  By the end of the day there is the sound of gunfire across the city.  A permanent haze of dust and smoke filters the dying light of evening.  Too late, bio-suited Army units have moved into the city, taking control, shooting to kill at the curfew-breakers.  Tomorrow morning the sun will rise on a different country. 

Alright, nightmare finished.  What wouldn’t you give for a government that could handle such a disaster decisively and in the greater interest of the nation?  Well, what wouldn’t you give?

How about your freedom of speech?  Would that be a fair exchange in return for effective government in extremis?  Yes?  Well then, how about all, absolutely all, your civil rights?  Would you object to them being thrown into the bargain?  No?  Well, how about the suspension of Parliament and the democratic process?  Or suspension of the Constitution?  The scrapping of the Monarchy?  How about mass arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial?  Still with me?  How about if this beloved, free land of ours could be transmogrified into a totalitarian police state by the signature of one Home Secretary, and with no prior Parliamentary debate?  Oh yes, and with no right of appeal –  merely a review by appointed judges a few weeks afterwards, just to make sure it was all done quite properly, y’know - and no allotted time after which governance must revert to the one we know and love (sort of).

Beginning to wonder yet whether that wouldn’t be a tiny bit over the top?  Well, how about if the definition under which this great leap into the dark could be taken is not confined to a major terrorist attack.  What if it was any public order offence … anything the Home Secretary doesn’t like, really?  One man and an “Enoch was right” placard in Bradford?  No problem.  Suspend Parliament and the Constitution.  Send in the tanks.  Just like that.

If you don’t already know all about David Blunkett’s Civil Contingencies Bill you may want to check out these links, the first dating from this September when it was still only a worrying possibility.

ThoughtCrimeNews video interview with Lord Lucas.

www.statewatch.org

That nice, friendly and shiny new government department that explains just why we need this nice, friendly and shiny new legislation.