Le Carre’s civil liberties protest

John Le Carre, the author of numerous spy capers, has unleashed a torrent of abuse at Labour government ministers for voting to extend the time limit that terror suspects can be held without charge to 42 days and at the wholesale erosion of civil liberties in Britain.

His comments come only weeks ahead of a key vote in the House of Lords that could see peers throw out the Government's controversial proposals, and also, a cynic might observe, at a time when he is promoting his latest book, A Most Wanted Man, which deals, oddly enough, with the war of terror and the iniquities of "extraordinary rendition". But never mind that.

In an interview with Waterstone's magazine, the writer says: "Partly, I'm angry that there is so little anger around me at what is being done to our society, supposedly in order to protect it. We have been taken to war under false pretences, and stripped of our civil rights in an atmosphere of panic. Our lawyers don't take to the streets as they have done in Pakistan."

He goes on: "Our MPs allow themselves to be deluded by their own spin doctors, and end up believing their own propaganda. We haul our Foreign Secretary back from a mission to the Middle East so he can vote for 42 days' detention. People call me an angry old man. Screw them. You don't have to be old to be angry about that. We've sacrificed our sovereignty to a so-called 'special relationship' which has nothing special about it except to ourselves."

In fairness to the 76-year-old author, he has long been an outspoken critic of Labour's erosion of civil liberties. In March he was one of several big-hitters in the arts and academia who wrote to Gordon Brown to protest at the 42-day detention limit. That said, you have to admire the old devil's eye for self-promotion, a talent that has extended, as reported here, to making a mini-film, broadcast on the video-sharing website YouTube, to publicise his new thriller. ·