UK Anti-Extremism Plans May Contribute to Creating 'Thought Police'

The head of the UK government anti-radicalization program warned Tuesday that a new plan proposed by the Conservative party, seeking to introduce measures against alleged extremists, may create "thought police."

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – According to the Conservative Party bill unveiled last Wednesday during Queen's Speech, anti-terrorism police officers are allowed to legislate against people defined as extremists but who do not take part in or advocate terrorism themselves. The bill envisages powers to outlaw organizations which are considered extremist and allow local councils to close premises which appear to be promoting hatred.

"Unless you can define what extremism is very clearly then it’s going to be really challenging to enforce. We don’t want to be the thought police, we absolutely don’t want to be the thought police," Simon Cole told The Guardian newspaper.

Cole said that the government's plans were putting police officers at risk by making them "judges of "what people can and can not say".

"The police need to be able to safeguard people without being drawn into a hugely contentious potential role about a kind of thought police control of what people can and can not say. And that needs really clearly defining and it needs parliament to lay out what is and isn’t acceptable," Cole said as quoted by the Guirdian.

Last week, the government counter-terrorism plans were also slammed by an alliance of organizations such as Liberty, Index on Censorship, the Muslim Council of Britain, who said that the safeguarding proposals would only feed fear.