UPDATE: 12-17-04
via Crooked Timber, here's a bit more of the positively Churchillian opinion.

This is a nation which has been tested in adversity, which has survived physical destruction and catastrophic loss of life. I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt that we shall survive Al-Qaeda. The Spanish people have not said that what happened in Madrid, hideous crime as it was, threatened the life of their nation. Their legendary pride would not allow it. Terrorist violence, serious as it is, does not threaten our institutions of government or our existence as a civil community….

[S]uch a power in any form is not compatible with our constitution. The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.

There are no adequate grounds for abolishing or suspending the right not to be imprisoned without trial, which all inhabitants of this country have enjoyed for more than three centuries.

Lord Leonard Hoffmann, for the Law Lords, Britain's highest court, in an 8-1 ruling against the government regarding the detention of nine Muslim men who have been imprisoned for as long as three years under UK's anti-terror laws, which allow the government to detain non-citizens indefinitely, without trial, if suspected of being involved in terror activities. The authorities are caught in quite a pickle. 

London argues detention without trial is the only way to deal with foreign suspects who refuse to leave voluntarily but cannot be deported because they face death or mistreatment in their home countries.

"Extraordinary events will lead to derogations from the practices we observe in times of peace and tranquillity," Attorney-General Lord Peter Goldsmith has said.  

But the Law Lords, a panel from the upper house of the British parliament, ruled that was incompatible with Britain's civil rights' tradition.

The Law Lords rejected the argument that the law applies only to foreign nationals, finding no justification for discriminating against them, and reasoning that Britain's tradition extends to its inhabitants, not only to its citizens.