On Liberty

by Shami Chakrabarti

These are the ideas from which our various human rights flow and for reasons this book explains, the greatest of these is equality.

I have been alarmed that this has not prevented successive Home Secretaries complaining about interfering ‘unelected judges’ impeding some of their decisions, especially in relation to deportation. However parliamentary sovereignty is not the same as the supremacy of the executive. Nor do we want it to be in any democratic system where the law binds and protects everyone alike and operates as a vital check on abuses of power.

This piece of legislation was not a response to 9/11 – in fact the Terrorism Act 2000 came into force a full six months before 9/11 and had been scrutinized and passed by both Houses of Parliament before that. It replaced ‘temporary’ Prevention of Terrorism legislation that had been passed and annually renewed since 1989 in the context of the troubles in Northern Ireland. This in itself should serve as an object lesson in how the state gains and rarely gives up power over the people and the ease with which temporary measures become permanent fixtures over time.

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. … 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.

Another issue was the breadth of the conditions that could be placed on the ASBO. People were banned from walking down a particular side of a particular street; sometimes, they were barred from routes leading to their own homes or to the homes of close relatives. Some were banned from being sarcastic to their neighbours or wearing baseball caps. A suicidal woman was banned from bridges – an exquisite example of a pointlessly punitive solution to more complex problems.

The Justice and Security Act replaces fair and even-handed civil trials in which a government, military, ‘spook’ or police party to litigation participates under the same rules as their opponent, with the ‘closed material procedures’ of the Special Immigration Commission that were used to perfume internment in Belmarsh and then punishment without charge under control orders and their replacement, TPIMs. Under this procedure, the ordinary person, usually someone making a civil claim in relation to some kind of alleged bad behaviour by the state, finds herself shut out of large parts of the proceedings, sometimes for several days of argument, while the lawyers on the other side get to present evidence and argument in secret to the presiding judge. Hardly equality before the law. Instead it’s a bit like a football match where one side is repeatedly ordered off the field so that the other team can be alone with the referee on an empty pitch with an open goal.

Anne-Marie Ellement, who committed suicide after a rape complaint against her own military police comrades was ignored.

The aggressive secularist who seeks to outlaw the speech or garb of those he finds alien and unenlightened should reflect on what this says about his own beliefs.

If there are bruises under a woman’s burka, how does criminalizing her dress do anything other than trap her at home? And if it really is an exploitative boyfriend who urges her to bare all in the newspaper, isn’t it better to have the argument and empower the woman rather than to drive the economic and sexual exploitation further and more dangerously underground?

I defend your right to foam at the mouth from the pulpit or soapbox and to irritate, offend and insult me, even to the point of preaching that I am a lesser creature than you. You should be able to bar me from your home, church or clergy, if that is your taste, view or faith. That is your freedom of speech, conscience, association and your private life. That is your loss not mine.

Suppose, in a few years’ time, my British son and the child of one of my white Liberty colleagues go looking to rent the same room, perhaps as students. How many landlords aren’t going to err on the side of caution and give my colleague’s kid the room?

The most intimate and social of revolutions began in our homes and on the streets in response to the Thatcherite homophobia encapsulated in section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. This described same-sex partnerships as ‘pretended family relationships’, effectively censoring teachers and banning certain books from our schools.

I do not trust the powerful. Not because they are inevitably malevolent or venal, but because they are human, with all the frailty, fear and vanity that comes with humanity and all its many virtues. Do you write blank cheques often? Can you afford to?

Haven’t we seen these distinctions in the eyes of various beholders? Wicked prisoners shouldn’t have the vote. Really? Not any one of them, no matter how short the sentence or questionable the crime? What if you chose to go to prison rather than take the identity card forced on you by a future authoritarian government? You paid the price for your protest with your liberty and some would say that’s a democratic contract. But how democratic is it that you shouldn’t even be able to vote from your cell for a party that opposes identity cards?