Henry Porter, the British journalist, gave a lecture recently, which is reproduced in the Independent newspaper here, which lays out in trenchant terms the sheer magnitude of the Blair government’s assault on civil liberties. None of the broad points will exactly come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog but I link to it because it is a pretty good primer on the issue for those who have not thought much about this issue.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
There will be many reasonable people among you who will argue that the fight against terrorism or some other compelling problem makes the removal of a fragment of liberty the best option available to us. A little bit here, a little bit there doesn’t really matter, particularly when it involves somebody else’s rights. Without thinking very deeply, we say to ourselves “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to fear from these new laws”. Not true. There is something to fear – because someone else’s liberty is also your liberty. When it’s removed from them, it’s taken from you even though you may not be able to conceive of the circumstances when you might need it. A system of rights must apply to bank managers, illegal immigrant cockle pickers and every type of defendant otherwise it doesn’t count.
I worry that we are not alert to the possibilities of social control. No matter how discreet this surveillance, it increases the spectral presence of the state in the everyday consciousness of each individual. I grant that it is a slow process and that it is nothing like the leaden omnipresence of the Stasi in the GDR. But I think we’re heading for a place from which we will not be able to return: the surveillance society where the state will crowd in on the individual human experience and threaten the unguarded freedoms of privacy, solitude, seclusion and anonymity. We may continue to attest to the feeling of freedom but in reality we will suffer more and more restrictions. Inexorably we are becoming subjects not citizens, units on a database that may be observed and classified by a Government which is taking control in areas where it has never dared in democratic times to trespass before.
I like the way that Porter directly confronts the nonsense ‘argument’ that “only the guilty have anything to fear” line that one hears being trotted out in favour of things like abolition of Habeas Corpus or eroding the presumption of innocence in the Common Law. This is a fine article that deserves to be widely read. At the end, Porter recommends, among other things, a wholesale effort to teach children about how the laws protecting liberty were acquired, and why they were acquired, in the first place. For it is in its attempts to obliterate history, or make us feel deeply ashamed of it, that the real menace of New Labour’s modernisation obsession first revealed itself. It may strike some critics of libertarianism as paradoxical, given that libertarians are usually seen as fans of modern life, that any defence of freedom must be steeped in an understanding and appreciation of history, including the Classics. Perhaps our modern legislators would be far less of a menace if they had bothered to study the speeches of Pericles or Cicero.
“…we are becoming subjects not citizens…”
Govenment officials are no longer “leaders”, they are now “rulers”. Not a good sign.
Either is pretty bad.
The innocent have nothing to fear if the representatives of the state never abuse their powers and if they never make any mistakes. But human nature ensures that both of those things are bound to happen, so the innocent always have something to fear.
Maybe not the best place for these paticular snippets of ‘news’ from the BBC, but its the closest to the top with a tagline concerning liberties, of which the first is a prime example of the taking of :-).
(Don’t arrest me please I have a month of good behaviour)
And for a new and improved Friday night out on the Town, just go by yourself to Hexham. (Two’s a Group, move along now) Almost Biblical in its definition of a group, I may be misquoting but its along these lines ‘Whenever two or more are gathered….’
Not to worry though, its all right if you have a legitimate reason for standing in the Woolies doorway, at least if your alone :-).
Maybe I am moderately paranoid, but officials making up rules for different sets of society that, to me, appear to be fundamentally wrong, is indicative of either malice or, whats more likely and even more frightening, an inability to think through the consequences of their actions.
On that note, I think I will profess all religions that have Holy Days in the expectation that I will not be arrested and go out alone so as not to raise the ire of the local council or the police.
Later
Gengee
Except that if you go out alone, there are no witnesses to any officials exceeding their powers.
The “only those with something to hide need worry” argument relies on a bizarre idea of human nature. We all have something to hide: we may not know, just now, what it is, but you can be sure, there’s something there. That’s what it’s like to be a human being.
This assault on civil liberties is part of the Moriah programme which will see its scheduled completion by 2012. Blair is simply doing his part until he retires, broken and the next one – Gordon or David, steps in.
Eh… what’s a cockle?