[Maxim Litvinov]

Law strips Hicks of UK citizenship in hours
Annabel Crabb London
August 20, 2006


DAVID Hicks was secretly made a British citizen inside his Guantanamo Bay cell last month, but spent only hours as an Englishman before his status was stripped from him.

In an extraordinary chain of events, Hicks was told in his cell on July 6 that the British Government had finally complied with a High Court order to register him as an Englishman.

But the following day - the first anniversary of the 2005 terrorist attacks on the London Underground - he was told that British Home Secretary John Reid had personally revoked the privilege.

Hicks, whose mother is UK-born, was given no opportunity to seek legal advice between the two pieces of news.

The manoeuvre was made possible by amendments contained in a new British law that appeared to have been drafted in response to the Hicks case. The amendments give the Home Secretary full discretion to strip an individual of his or her British citizenship.

Hicks's British lawyer, Stephen Grosz, was only advised of the developments after they had occurred.

The High Court ordered the speedy registration of Hicks as a British citizen in December last year, but the Home Office did not comply until July - more than six months later.

"He was a British citizen for a matter of hours, I believe - we were told immediately after it all happened," Mr Grosz said.

Asked his opinion of the tactic, Mr Grosz said: "I think it was completely wrong of them to have sat on his application until they were ready to grant citizenship and deprive him of it immediately.

"I think it was an abuse of power."

Mr Grosz said the Hicks legal team was planning appeals to the Special Immigrations Appeals Commission in the UK, and an application to the High Court for judicial review.


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Congratulations to the UK. You now appear to have a law by which a member of parliament, partisan and with no legal expertise can strip any citizen of their citizenship and therefore many rights without any right of legal response. Mosley would be proud of you.

[ness]

Yep, I heard about this on Denton the other night in an interview with his lawyer. Its all about politics ultimately. The Brits don't want to do anything that will embarrass the Australian government. Which means at least another 18 months in Guantanamo for Hicks.

[kurusch]

Sadly, so, so sadly, this is now symptomatic of New Labours tactics. Reid once was his own man, now he's reverend Tonys shoe-shine boy.

[Andres]

The manoeuvre was made possible by amendments contained in a new British law that appeared to have been drafted in response to the Hicks case. The amendments give the Home Secretary full discretion to strip an individual of his or her British citizenship.

Thats fucked up, no need to go through courts?

[C-Kokos]

Abuse of Royal Prerogative.

[Potemkin]

And to think that John Reid used to be a Communist!

Reid is a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (of which he has said: "I used to be a Communist. I used to believe in Santa Claus"[3])

(from the Wikipedia page on John Reid)

But this sort of blatant interference in the judicial process on the part of politicians is nothing unusual in Britain. The Home Secretary can unilaterally decide how long certain categories of prisoner should remain in jail. No new trials, no consulation, no appeal, nothing. They don't even have to give a reason for their decision. In Britain, there is no separation of the judiciary and the executive. If the government doesn't like you, they can effectively just lock you up and throw away the key.

[C-Kokos]

Wasn't John Reid the Stalinists' bouncer at Stirling University back when they used to run the Student Union there?

[Potemkin]

Yes. He's always been a bitter enemy of the Trots. Now he's a bitter enemy of all Communists.

[Potemkin]

I think Reid would have turned against Communism sooner or later, even if he'd been a Trot at Stirling. He's a born opportunist and Revisionist. He's even asserted that "I always believed socialists, or indeed any rational person, should be revisionist on principle." No more need be said.

[C-Kokos]

Revisionism is a bad term. I prefer opportunism.

[Potemkin]

Revisionism is a bad term. I prefer opportunism.

Revisionism has a very specific definition. It refers to the attempts of Eduard Bernstein and his followers to 'revise' the work of Marx in the light of the apparent rise in the living standards of the working class just before WWI. They attempted to remove the revolutionary content of Marxism while keeping its terminology. They also rejected the Marxist idea that recurring crises would render capitalism unstable and lead to its eventual collapse. The Bernsteinists, and all subsequent Revisionists, believe that capitalism not only can but has succeeded in stabilising itself, and in a form which is beneficial to the working class. This is what John Reid clearly believes, which is why he lent his support to the New Labour project and was in fact one of its key founders. To simply label this 'opportunism' is to miss the fundamental theoretical basis of John Reid's position, which is Bernsteinian Revisionism.

[C-Kokos]

Ah well, yes Revisionism then. My disagreement with the term is that revisionism (small r) is thrown around too often to discredit any departure from traditional dogma even if that means a new analysis of new concrete material circumstances, which many members of the old left don't seem to grasp.

[Potemkin]

I see your point. But it tends to be members of the Communist movement (both old and new) who are unfamiliar with the theoretical basis of their own ideology who throw the word 'revisionist' about as a swear word without actually knowing what it means. It's like the use of the word 'fascist'. But in John Reid's case, it is entirely correct to call him a 'Revisionist', and he himself would acknowledge that label as being correct.

[C-Kokos]

I most definitely agree.