Churchill message still true

The proposals to lock up suspects, indefinitely, announced by the head of the Association of Police Chief Officers Ken Jones would give police powers even Stalin's KGB didn't have.

Even they had to produce charges, however trumped up. The idea would tear up all the safeguards of our traditional liberties from the Magna Carta onwards, especially the right to trial by jury.

It is perhaps no coincidence the Government is removing Sir Winston Churchill from history lessons.

Here is an excerpt of a telegram he sent to the Home Secretary on November 21, 1943: "The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist".

Are we to allow the Government to continue to destroy checks and balances on our liberties, making us all servants of the state?

John Galloway, Shrewsbury