BRITAIN: British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has declared "the end of the 1960s liberal, social consensus on law and order" and promised a society built on "rules, order and proper behaviour".
Signalling a change in what he termed a "personal crusade" against "the society of fear", Mr Blair said his government's new five-year strategy would put the law-abiding citizen at the centre of Britain's Criminal Justice System.
Ahead of today's Commons debate in which Mr Michael Howard will press Mr Blair to say what he knew and when about the intelligence on Iraqi weaponry before the war, the Conservatives accused the government of seeking headlines without substance.
However, Mr Blair was responding to an issue which dominated much of last week's Birmingham and Leicester by-elections. And Labour appeared confident it could neutralise law and order as a general election issue as Home Secretary Mr David Blunkett promised to empower local communities in a renewed crackdown on street crime and anti-social behaviour.
In a statement to MPs, Mr Blunkett indicated that communities would be able to force police to be more responsive to local needs and priorities by petitioning to trigger snap inspections of their local police force.
Mr Blunkett also announced a new neighbourhood policing fund to help recruit an extra 20,000 community support officers or wardens, and plans to double electronic tagging so that 18,000 people will be tracked at any one time, with 5,000 of the most prolific criminals in England and Wales subject to constant satellite tracking.
In a one-day exercise to establish the extent of anti-social behaviour last year, the government recorded 66,000 incidents. Mr Blunkett said fixed penalty fines would now be extended to cover offences like under-age drinking, lower level damage and theft and the misuse of fireworks.
Announcing a 'Big Brother' style network of border controls to keep track of terrorists and criminals, Mr Blunkett wants every traveller entering or leaving Britain to have a photograph taken for instant comparison with national and international data bases.
The system would use hi-tech "facial mapping" techniques and be introduced alongside his controversial plan for a national identity card scheme around 2008.
In his speech trailing Mr Blunkett's detailed announcements, Mr Blair hailed aspects of the 1960's revolution. "The 1960s saw a huge breakthrough in terms of freedom of expression, of lifestyle, of the individual's right to live their own personal life in the way they choose," he said.
"It was the beginning of a consensus against discrimination, in favour of women's equality, and the end of any sense of respectability in racism or homophobia. Not that discrimination didn't any longer exist - or doesn't now - but the gradual acceptance that it was contrary to the spirit of a new time."
However it was John Stuart Mill who articulated the modern concept that with freedom comes responsibility, said Mr Blair.
"In the 1960's revolution, that didn't always happen. Law and order still focused on the offender's rights, protecting the innocent, understanding the social causes of their criminality."
Today, he added, people had had enough of this part of the 1960's consensus: "People do not want a return to old prejudices and ugly discrimination. But they do want rules, order and proper behaviour.
"They know there is such a thing as society. They want a society of respect . . . They want a community where the decent law-abiding majority are in charge, where those that play by the rules do well, and those that don't get punished."