CIVIL liberties campaigners opposed to Tony Blair’s planned anti-terror laws are discovering some unlikely allies across the Atlantic among the leading lights of the American Right.

A growing number of conservative organisations have raised objections to the Bush Administration’s bid to renew, or make permanent, security provisions introduced in the Patriot Act after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US.

But even these measures pale into insignificance compared with Mr Blair’s proposals. For instance, the Patriot Act does not make any effort to criminalise the incitement of hatred or deport extremists who might damage a culture of tolerance.

Frank Gaffney Jr, of the Centre for Security Policy, wrote this week in the Washington Times: “Mr Blair has become an exemplar of the old adage that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Tony Blair’s mugged liberal response to terror attacks in the United Kingdom makes the USA Patriot Act look like the American Civil Liberty Union’s fondest dream.”

David Keene, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, told The Times: “When you are cracking down on someone simply because of their beliefs, I think you have a problem. You are on a slippery slope.” Others cited the case of Eugene Debs, a newspaper editor jailed in 1918 for criticising the First World War, as evidence of what can go wrong when liberty is sacrificed for security.

Roger Pilon, the director of the centre for constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, said yesterday that the British Government’s proposals were fraught with peril, adding: “The further you go down this route, the more you depend on ‘good men and women’ to enforce the law because legislation can be crafted with only limited precision.”

He suggested that British proposals could even be used to silence views which are commonplace on the American Right. “I believe it’s British policy to respect the rights of homosexuals. Is someone who is critical of that on religious grounds going to be deported because they are deemed to be undermining your culture of tolerance?” he asked.

James Carafano, a homeland security expert at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, said yesterday: “I’m worried that Tony Blair is making a knee-jerk response. Criminalising free speech is not the best strategy. Britain may well have tolerated some of these Islamic extremists for too long — but the way to deal with it has to be in the war of ideas.”

In a message to opponents of President Bush’s law, Mr Carafano said: “It could be worse, you could be living in Britain.”

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