It is now clear that 9/11 provided an excuse for imperialist expansion that has changed the world forever. The brutal consequences of US and British foreign policy are being lived out daily in Afghanistan and Iraq. For them the ‘war on terror’ has resulted in over one million deaths. The US has decided to compensate for its economic decline by embarking on military adventures.

As under McCarthyism, an threat of an external enemy is used to suppress internal dissent. While troops are used to take out rogue states and gain advantage for US capital abroad, historically the police have been used to protect the property and profits of capital at home. Anti-terror legislation has massively increased police powers in the UK too – something that should be fought against by all socialists and democrats.

Since the invasion of Iraq 56 people have been killed in Britain as a result of terrorist attacks. This is an average of 14 deaths per year, the same number of annual deaths as people falling from ladders. The argument is not that terrorism is a minor threat which should be ignored, but that the threat has been blown out of all proportion – to justify vastly increased policing powers which are, in any case, plainly incapable of combating that threat. So far the extent of police vigilance in fighting terrorism has been to shoot and kill an innocent tube user (Jean Charles de Menezes) and shoot another innocent man in the leg in his own home (Mohamed Abdul Kahar). Guess we can all rest easy then.

Yet, apart from highlighting how inept and corrupt the police are, these cases illustrate how the constant threat of ‘terror’ is being used by the state to excuse greater powers over the population – in this case, the right to shoot and kill anyone suspected of terrorism. Thanks to the Terrorism Act of 2006, the police now have the power to detain without charge for up to 28 days and Gordon Brown is to try once more to double this at the very least. The terrorist threat is also being used to justify oppressive laws, from stricter immigration controls to DNA profiling. And as of last month all landline and mobile calls and texts are being logged by the home office. Such measures cannot help bringing to mind Orwell’s Big Brother. Ironically, it recently came to light that Orwell himself was under surveillance – by British intelligence. In the present day, MI5 is expanding rapidly, and in 2008 will be nearly twice the size it was in 2001.

Terrorism laws have already been used to stop and search two activists going to protest the DSEI arms fair in London, and to keep the octogenarian peace campaigner Walter Wolfgang out of the Labour conference. Nobody should doubt that these powers will be wielded against the left if it becomes a powerful force again. That they have been passed at all is indicative of the weak state of the workers’ movement. The left should be taking the lead in the fight against these laws, not because they violate some abstract notion of ‘human rights’, but because, the more power the bourgeois state has, the greater a threat it poses to the concrete progress of the workers’ movement.

The possibility of counterrevolutionary violence in any upsurge also increases. Contrarily, the weaker the state and the better armed the organised workers, the less likely violence becomes. The brutal suppression of unarmed attempts at revolutionary change throughout history are testament to this fact. How long will it be before the ‘crowd control’ measures the US military is testing on Iraqis – such as heat rays and sonic waves – are used against any domestic challenge to the ruling class?

Communist Students will fight against any attack on Iran – and we also believe in solidarity with the Iranian people in their struggle against Ahmadinejad’s regime and for democracy. Such solidarity must manifest itself precisely in the fight for democracy here in Britain. Victories in this struggle would give us greater power to stop the imperialist plans of our state and to support the women, trade unionists and democrats of Iran. This fight must be led by the only consistently democratic class – the working class.

Jamie Linney