Samizdata

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.

The press has covered the walkouts by the brothers, and where friendly to the government has characterised it as ‘brave’. But Tony Blair’s advertised last speech to the Trades Union Congress was fascinating in itself, calculated in a cartoonish way. Who was it for?

Who would be entranced by the sententious, treacly opening, claiming some sort of credit for sympathy with the victims of terrorism and war?

Before speaking to you today, I want to remember all those who died, including the many British people, repeat our sympathy and condolences for the loss of their loved ones and rededicate ourselves to complete and total opposition to terrorism anywhere, for whatever reason.

Who would be persuaded by the windy pseudo-rhetoric, the clichés set in shattered sentences, and exhibition of truism as valuable policy insight?

We have to escape the tyranny of the “or” and develop the inclusive nature of the “and”.

The answer to economic globalisation is open markets and strong welfare and public service systems, particularly those like education, which equip people for change.

The answer to terrorism is measures on security and tackling its underlying causes.

What, addressed to trades unions, was the point in half the time to international affairs, and Mr Blair’s role on the world stage?

Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.

Yesterday’s announcement of a government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the quartet – the UN, EU, US and Russia – we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the government, the whole government.

Then, piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again.

Is this really carefully scripted? Is it aimed at an English-speaking audience? What on earth does it have to do with congress?

And who could miss, or be fooled by, the manipulative slide from lachrymose anectote about exploited foreign workers to the hint (immmediately contradicted) that they might be stopped from coming here at all (and thus from competing for work with union members… er, being exploited…) by magic biometric border controls?

I know this answer isn’t popular, at least in some quarters. But I tell you, without secure ID, controlled migration just isn’t possible.

You can have armies of inspectors, police and bureaucrats trying to track down illegals but without a proper system of ID – and biometric technology now allows this – it is a hopeless task.

And as identity abuse grows – and it is a huge problem now across parts of the private as well as public sector – so the gains for consumers and companies will grow through a secure ID database.

And we all want effective armies of inspectors, police, and bureaucrats, don’t we, children? The whole thing (offered by The Guardian here) is extraordinary. The relevant bits – attacks on protectionism, allusions to Labour’s success in enacting union-friendly legislation – would be a perfectly good TUC speech. Short, but to the point. One might not agree with it, but one could see it as a piece of working political machinery. But that speech is suspended in a mush of late-Blair messianism that is much more instructive.

He’s going to fix all the world’s problems. All it requires is for all the great powers to come to a final lasting peace agreement in which he is playing a vital role, defusing the grievances that (alone?) drive global conflict(s), and monitoring all activities of everybody who lives in or visits Britain using a big database.

So who was the speech for? It was the calling-card of a War Leader for the lecture-circuit, some cynics may say. But this cynic suspects the speech was mainly for Mr Blair himself – that this is how he sees the world, and how he wants us all to see it too. It is a preamble to rants to come.

A British evangelical Christian, Stephen Green, has been charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour’ after he handed out leaflet contained Biblical quotes critical of homosexuality at a homosexual event in Wales. The article indicates neither he nor his leaflets were abusive or threatening, just that they pointed out that the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so it urged homosexuals to ‘repent’ and stop sinning.

What caught my eye about this case was…

Several thousand people attended the event, which included a gay rugby tournament and a ‘top gayer motor show’, and which was addressed on the importance of tolerance by Liberal Democrat council chief Rodney Berman.

So as Rodney Berman is such a strong supporter of tolerance, presumably he will soon also be arguing for Mr. Green’s right to be tolerated for his views and behaviour. After all, tolerance does not imply acceptance or approval and so even if Mr. Green calls for gays to stop being gay (i.e. he does not approve of their sexual behaviour and wishes to convince them to act differently), unless there is more to this story unreported, there seems no evidence Mr. Green does not tolerate gays. Yet some homosexuals who disapprove of Mr. Green’s views of their behaviour are clearly unwilling to return the favour and tolerate him. They called for the law (i.e. force) to be used to prevent him peaceably expressing himself.

As the LibDems pride themselves on supporting (non-economic) liberty, will they come to Mr. Green’s defence and demand tolerance for everyone? I wonder what Mr. Berman has to say on this matter.