NEWSNIGHT MUSICAL MANIFESTO 2 - IRAQ / TERROR LAWS


Narrator:
On the 7th March 2003
Lord Goldsmith had questioned the legality
Of pre-emptive attack on Saddam’s Iraq
With no second resolution from the UNSC
But just ten days later he’d changed his mind
And gave the PM a short statement he made
In which the Attourney General opined
That it would be legal for us to invade
And on March 18th, when Tony Blair quoted
Lord Goldsmith’s opinion the commons then voted
412 to 149, to endorse the use of miltary force

Conservatives & Liberal Democrats:
Why won’t he publish this page of A4
On the basis of which we were taken to war?

Labour:
As Falconer said, our legal system’s reliant
On confidentiality between lawyer and client

Liberal Democrats:
Tony Blair and his party must really take the blame
For the sexed up dossier and the 45 minute claim

Labour:
But everyone agrees that Saddam was a cruel dictator
And would have got his hands on WMDs sooner or later

Conservatives:
Iraq was in material breach of UN Security Council
Resolution fourteen-forty-one
So we believe the war was right, but what we object to
Is the way in which the evidence was spun

Liberal Democrats:
The Labour party’s lost all credibility and trust
And they will pay the price in this election

Labour:
But the Hutton Report has exonerated us
Of any wrong-doing or deception

All:
After all this argy-bargy there’s one thing that we’re agreed on
Now the war is over, we’ve a moral obligation
To set the Iraqi people back on the path to freedom
In a secure, stable, prosperous and democratic nation…

And what about the recent Terror Legislation?

Labour:
The terror law was introduced to help us foil
Any plans for a terrorist attack on British soil
If we have a suspect who cannot be convicted
Control orders ensure that their movements are restricted

Liberal Democrats:
Of course there must be measures to curb these activities
But it needn’t be at the expense of our civil liberties
In the first draft of the bill a single politician
Could put someone under house arrest solely on suspicion

Conservatives:
The government had eight months in which to propose
A better thought out bill, which we wouldn’t have opposed
Can it be that Blair was trying to engineer the bill’s rejection
To make us look weak on terror in advance of the election?

Narrator:
The bill was bounced between the houses in a thirty hour debate
About whether or not the contol orders could or could not derogate
From the European Convention on Human Rights of ‘98
And what the Home Secretary had the power to do

Labour:
We weren’t going to compromise on these essential terror laws
Liberal Democrats:
But at least we’ve made amendments to iron out some flaws
Conservatives:
And incorporate what amounts to a sunset clause
Labour:
It’s not a sunset clause, it’s an annual review

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© david schweitzer for the BBC 2005